126: Support’s Relationship to Product with Simone Secci

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 126 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. This week we're talking about support's relationship to the product team. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Simone Secchi. Simone, lovely to have you back again. And we're talking about support's relationship to product this week. So I think this is one of those relationships in a business which can be one of the best investments that a leadership team can make, right? If you get this relationship functioning really well, I think that the the loop that you have between support and product can be so valuable to the business, can't it?

Simone Secci: 1:06

Yeah. And you know, I think that also there's a um a circumstantial sort of aspect of it, right? I think that you might um uh be in an organization from the beginning and and then you follow a little bit of the different environments get organized, or you might step into a leadership role where this uh dynamics already exist in, if it's a long-standing company, for example, like you might not end up in connection with the product team directly, which poses a little bit more of an obstacle to this path of connecting with them, right?

Charlotte Ward: 1:42

If the support team might be organized under the guise of the sales team or or or uh or the marketing team, uh yeah, and and definitely as as organizations mature, just the amount of hoops that you have to jump through to reach the relevant parties to it becomes more distant, doesn't it, as organizations grow. Historically, the bigger organizations that I've been involved with just have you have you practically have a suggestion box for enhancement requests, right? And that's your only feedback mechanism to product. You have no visibility as to what's happening internally and and how that other half of that relationship's working.

Simone Secci: 2:26

Absolutely. But I'm happy you mentioned visibility because then you know, from the sort of uh faithful aspect of it, we can go to the to the what can I do about it aspect of it, or the practical like um aspect of it. So there is definitely something that you can build um in terms of like creating a bridge with the with the product team, uh, which is enhancing the visibility of uh the players involved and building your team in a way that sort of uh uh mirrors the needs of uh of the product as it's as it's built by um by the company. Uh I mean there's no product that's already that is just finished, right? It will it will dynamically grow as you you know as you uh are in the role and and things take shape. So I think that within that you can create both roles within your team and and initiatives that uh are beneficial to the the growth of the product that take into account things like the OKRs of the company and the OKRs that are directly linked with the product. And and so how can you serve these OKRs? Uh and by doing that, creating uh a bridge uh and a and a two-way street with the with the product team where you get included more as you as you do more things that they uh see as interesting and useful, uh also do what they're trying to do. So I think that's something that it's built no matter what, that you are in a in a position that it's like here, uh like the one I was where I was brought in in a company where the support team was already under the the product team, so to speak. So we had that the relationship already going and and uh and you know there were meetings, they were already including the support teams and things like that, or not. So either way, I mean there is a structure to build there.

Charlotte Ward: 4:27

Yeah, yeah. And the structure, I think I think the structure is exactly as you describe. It's a bridge, it's a bridge with a two-way street on it, right? Because I I I really love that analogy, because I think it's um I think product teams generally potentially anyway have a propensity to operate as an island, you know. I think I think that they um I I think I don't want to tar all product designers and product managers with the same brush, but nonetheless, I think that unless you regularly refer back to your customers' needs and wants and desires, it's easy just to build the pretty stuff, isn't it? Or the clever stuff and and aim for what you believe your customers to want. And so that that bridge, that communication between your customers through support to product and back again, that kind of that that two-way process is really key to ensuring that what the product team builds is really what your customers want.

Simone Secci: 5:29

Absolutely. And and to use another analogy, just like you do, and when you're trying to um I mean understand what type of conversation you're gonna have with somebody you don't know, you're trying to find common grounds. And so this is a similar thing where like you you start thinking, okay, what does the what ultimate goals does the support team and uh and the product team have in common and what um things are we both looking at um you know in in uh sort of like building our strategies? And one thing is obviously uh customer feedback, so customer experience is both very important for product team and for support team, right? So you have that in common. So might as well try to build a common strategy there because you can um provide a lot of uh free non-uh Amazon card that award needed, you know uh um you know UX uh research um propelled uh custom free customer feedback that comes flowing into support as we know. And you can just you know box it up nicely and and make it um you know um come in and centralized uh in a way uh in a common place where uh you know product team can reorganize it and and and you can be part of that conversation, an active part of that conversation. So that's one way, that's one common ground, right? And and probably the most fruitful relationship can be build around this common ground, I think.

Charlotte Ward: 7:05

Yeah, absolutely. Um I I think that the the other thing as well is that um the quantity of conversations that we have with customers is you know is so high. Even in even in a support team where the volumes are pretty low, that your support team are talking to your customers more than any other part of the business. Almost, almost invariably. I I would say more more than sales, more than implementation, probably more than success. Your support team is talking to customers more often. And I think has a better and more holistic record of the needs of your entire customer base in in a way that's different to success. Success have the needs of individual customers at heart. But I I think that there is such a lot of data available. And I know we we've both had conversations before about data and about the kind of things you can extract and how you can extract them from those conversations. But I think just that quantity of conversation, if you get that um if you're able to extract the main themes, it's very easy to quantify and prioritize. It's very easy to find the common ground between what uh as you said, what what your company's OKRs are, what your product team I ideologically kind of want to do with the product, but what your customers need, right?

Simone Secci: 8:36

Absolutely. And I mean uh you mentioned one of my favorite subject data, uh, and uh, you know, the the very act of of quantifying and measuring it, this this feedback involves like uh you having uh a growing interest and understanding of of uh what kind of data you can you can leverage and uh what kind of data you can um also just really cause in a way because there's sort of like a passive attitude to it to sort of like looking at at like the raw data of the interactions and the the unstructured data, like just the comments the regarding words, regarding terms or and whatnot, and and sort of like taking it in and classifying it. But it's also like okay, what can we actually um sort of find out um that that there is there? What can we stimulate in in a way as sort of like sort of feedback, right? So now this sounds like a little bit cloudy and sort of like smoke here, but what I mean by that is uh, for example, how do I uh how do you structure your your CSAT, for example. What I uh see in the in the CSAT, and this is obviously just my opinion there, um, but I see that there are several types of service that you can have in order to get customer feedback. You have your MPS, you have your your uh customer effort score, and and then you you have uh you know uh CSAT, and there I you I'm I'm really trying to measure the performance of my team mostly, right? But then there is what I call the accidental feedback there, which can be just as precious, which is mostly obtained from actual like negative um outcomes into CSAT. But so you can let those negative outcomes weigh you down, or you can slice those negative outcomes with uh with questions where you really understand uh what this negative reaction to support performance was about. And that's where you can say you you can ask, are you as a customer actually upset about your experience with the product? And that's you turn that CZ into an app underscore.

Charlotte Ward: 11:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I think um I really like the the observation that a negative actually is really informative. I think I think that if there's one thing I've observed and I I think we should aim to do in our relationship with product, I say one thing, it's really two things. The first is we should endeavor to tell our product teams what our customers are trying to do with the product. But then we should also tell our product teams what our customers want to do next. And and I think they're two quite different things. And I think that you know, what they're trying to do is essentially, you know, probably a missed expectation. I think that's probably the extraction of the negative uh comments, the negative sentiments that you're talking about. It didn't do what I wanted it to do, um versus love it, would like it if it could do this for me next, even if it's not the customer actively telling you that, if you can extract those sentiments. And I think that comes more from positive feedback and questions, whereas the the not meeting expectation side, the what your customers wanted it to do that it didn't do right now is it is is in the negative feedback, isn't it? And I think that's those are the two things I think we should aim to do with product.

Simone Secci: 12:25

Absolutely. And and what you mentioned can definitely inform a better um customer experience, uh a better flow, which are all things that product design are very important, um, you know, and can inform, for example, and and can be beneficial, like like I said, it's a two-way three where you can have those fruitful conversations about this type of feedback, and uh you sit down with a product designer and you're thinking about the position and shape of uh, and what by shape I mean like the design of uh of tooltips, for example, like about the product, and how can you redirect those tooltips to your to your help center, uh, and by that also cutting down in the interact the possible interaction caused by the absence of that uh TX uh of that customer experience that helps you, helps your team in deflecting a lot of possible um you know tickets.

Charlotte Ward: 13:33

Yeah, it's as simple as that, isn't it? It's finding the gap, getting that gap bridged in product results in fewer support tickets. That's the two ways straight. It's as simple as that. Yeah. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash one two six for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.