91: First 30 Days with Stacy Justino

Charlotte Ward: 0:00

And of the Hello and welcome to the Customer Support Leaders Podcast, episode 91. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is the first 30 days in your new role. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome to the podcast today, Stacy Justino. Stacy, it's lovely to have you join me as a brand new guest. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Stacy Justino: 0:43

Sure. So Stacy Justino, I am the director of customer happiness at Wistia, a video marketing software company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I've been here for about two and a half years. And before that, I was the head of support at Big Fish Games, a casual mobile gaming company. So I went from B2C, pretty high volume, to B2B supporting small to medium-sized businesses.

Charlotte Ward: 1:06

And two quite different roles, therefore, I would imagine.

Stacy Justino: 1:09

Sure. So this was my first time taking over a new team at a new company at Big Fish Games. I came up from being a customer support rep, worked my way up to managing the entire department of 70 people. And so moving to Wistia, where the company was just around 100 people. The support department was 12 people when I started two and a half years ago. They hadn't had an outside leader. So I wanted to make sure that I didn't come in and try to change everything. I was really cognizant about coming in as somebody from the outside and especially coming into somewhere where I wasn't an expert. I went from somewhere being the expert where I could answer literally almost any ticket that came into our inbox to a situation where I couldn't answer any of them. It was kind of humbling in that way. You know, I really had to be patient with myself. That's the advice that my old boss gave me. I was like, you know me, what would be your advice to me? And it my boss said, I know you really like to get things done, but nobody's expecting you to uh have an impact on day one, right? They hired you for you and um what you can do, but nobody expects you to do all that in 30 days. Uh so be patient. So that really helps me. And I actually still have to remind myself that, right? Uh, to be patient with myself. Um, I am making progress, I am doing good work, um, but sometimes it can feel slow going, especially going to a smaller company where you maybe don't have quite as many resources as uh where I came from, where we had a reporting analyst, a Zen disk administrator, three quality specialists to go to a team where everybody has to do part of all of that work. Uh so that was a big adjustment in those first 30 days is being like, okay, where should I start? And I started because it was a small team. I was able to meet one-on-one with every single person on the team. And I asked them each the same set of questions. What is the team doing really well? Uh, what is the team not doing very well? What's something that uh we were doing six months ago that we're still doing today? And you're like, why are we still doing that? Then I asked them, what do they want to be doing? What do they want to be working on? Where did they want to be in six months in terms of things they want to learn or get better at? So I was able to pick out some themes. And one of those first things is people didn't know how they were doing performance-wise, oftentimes tell the review. So I introduced productivity expectations and I didn't want to do it in a way that was, you know, seemed unfair. So I looked at the data and I looked to see what people were actually doing. 70 to 80% of the team was hitting whatever, like that average. So I was like, well, that seems like a good place to start. That's good enough to keep up with our volume. And so we rolled it out. I made sure everybody knew how I came to that number, what that productivity expectation was. Let them know that, hey, everybody's already doing this. I just wanted you all to have like a bar so you know before we get to that review how you're doing. And it really was impacting the people who are far exceeding what everybody else on the team was doing. And I think it was really important to recognize those people because those are the people who want to stay on our team.

Charlotte Ward: 4:05

Yeah, finding what one early priority is where you can really make a difference, being really transparent about why. Which is which is interesting because that's a a counterpoint to what you were saying right before that, which is about being patient with yourself. I I'm the same as you. I want to go in, I want to make a difference. And yeah, and and that sometimes that carries a lot of pain both for your team and personally for you. I arrive at a role with a full 30, 60, 90 day plan. And my first 30 is all about listening. And I I do, and I genuinely, really, honestly, from the heart listen and or try and listen, but I'm also really impatient to make some differences, right? And that and there's a real balance. I find that a real conflict. How did you work through that patience you needed?

Stacy Justino: 4:51

It wasn't easy, like you, Charlotte. I'm also very similar in that regard. I had an interesting constraint where I was five months pregnant. So I had three months really to get things in order before I left for three months. So that really helped. And I think that if I were to do this again in a different role, I would really think of like a three-month, like finite window. Imagine myself in a similar situation because it was super helpful to have to prioritize things. Uh, because I knew I couldn't do everything I would want to do. Well, you have to make some um good choices, have some solid planning, and decide what are the things that could wait. And I wanted to really get the team set up so that we had some of those building blocks for success long term. Uh, and I think that was the other thing is trying to figure out, okay, what are some like a small thing we could do now that would have an impact and especially would make the team realize that I was really listening to them, right? Then I was able to look at the other things that needed to get done. Uh, luckily for me, it was things that were very tangible, like hire new support people and hire a new manager. So a lot of the work was already like laid out there, but then my process was deciding which was which to do first in that case. Do you hire a manager first or you do you hire four new people because you are swamped and you are behind? I would only have less than like three months to onboard this new manager. It was an internal promotion, but still somebody who had never been a manager before. Um, so I thought that their time one-on-one with me was going to be more impactful for me to be gone for three months. So I prioritized that.

Charlotte Ward: 6:22

It's very easy to think about all the things, and there are usually 20 of them at least that you want to kick off and get going. But thinking about when you can finish them, when you can have them completed and bedded in, it's probably a really good way to think about how you prioritize them as well. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash 91 for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.