8: Future of Support with Meredith Molloy

Charlotte Ward  0:14  

Hello, and welcome to episode eight of the Customer Support Leaders podcast. I’m Charlotte Ward. Our theme for this week is the Future of Support. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I’d like to welcome to the podcast today my good friend Meredith Malloy. Meredith, would you like to introduce yourself? 

Meredith Molloy  0:40  

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. So my name is Meredith Malloy. I have been a support leader for about the past six years, and I’ve my career has spanned customer support, customer experience customer success for a bit over a decade. Now. I’m really passionate about managing mentoring, building and leading support teams that are empathetic, customer-centric and provide really personalised experiences. 

Charlotte Ward  1:13  

Meredith, the topic for today, given that we’re so early in 2020 is the future of support. I’d love to know how you’re looking forward to support developing over the course of this year and maybe the next decade.

Meredith Molloy  1:29  

Yeah. Um, so I think you know, for the future of support, we are in a really exciting time, especially on the technology side, we are hitting a time where all of a sudden there are all of these tools, there are self-service tools, there’s AI chatbots, there’s other you know, artificial intelligence on the horizon that really can help create an incredibly efficient and seamless Customer Support experience, I think that said a challenge that we have in front of us is, you know, how do we continue to keep the support experience really personalised, and really humanised and, you know, leaning on these automated efficient tools and utilising AI and self-service tools to their maximum capacity where they benefit the customer, but not to where it’s detrimental to the human support experience. 

Charlotte Ward  2:35  

So do you think that the responsibility for ensuring that humanization of the support experience? I guess, go with it. That, that a human level of experience of the support service, do you think responsibility falls for that with the technology providers or with the support Leaders?

Meredith Molloy  3:00  

Oh, that’s a good question. My gut instinct answer to that is that it’s really on the support leaders. Looking at it from that angle for the technology providers, their job and their role is to make sure to provide the best technology solution. And I think for it means for us as customer support leaders, that it is within our own day to day within our coaching within how we lead within how we communicate with our teams to continue to emphasise that the humanization of your experience, but looking when thinking about the tools and the systems that we use, to shape the future of support. I think it’s how in how we lead that will help balance out the very efficient tech-heavy pieces of the support tools. 

Charlotte Ward  3:55  

So how do you think you join up both sides of that balance then that technology to the human part of the equation. Do you think that’s leadership? Do you think it’s messaging? Do you think it’s process? Is there something else there that I’m missing? I haven’t thought of, 

Meredith Molloy  4:12  

I would say all of the above, and probably some that we’re not thinking. 

Charlotte Ward  4:17  

Yes.

Meredith Molloy  4:19  

I do think you know, I think for a customer support leader for me leading in a customer-first customer-centric manner, that recognises customers as humans, leading with that mindset and certainly helps, or at least I hope helps my team put themselves in in the customer shoes. That said, I think messaging plays a huge component as well. As far as the tone that we choose to craft and define for the brand as a support leader. It is super important regardless if you’re in a, you know, consumer brand organisation or in a very, you know, technical SAS organisation. I think one thing that is industry agnostic, is that who you’re talking to is a human. And so 

Charlotte Ward  5:19  

I said, I said it before, and I’ll say it again, developers are humans too.

Exactly. Exactly. They’re human too. And they appreciate genuine human tone, as well as funny because it’s like, duh, of course there. Oh, yeah. And so I think you know, whether you’re at a very, you know, technical organisation, or a consumer brand, I think that looking at the tone that we use, making sure that it is conversational, and making sure that it’s genuine, making sure that not super stiff, I wouldn’t Want a customer of mine to receive a very stiff and bland doll? Yeah, email or live chat like this actually conversational. That you know, for for that to not have some sort of human element would be it would just be really detrimental to the experience as a whole. And I don’t think that that’s how we at the end of the day promote loyalty to the brand that we bought for.

So we essentially saying that the future is human,

Meredith Molloy  6:32  

The future is human I mean 

Charlotte Ward  6:33  

Who knew?!

That’s it for today, go to customersupportleaders.com/8 for the show notes and I’ll see you next time.