173: Fireside with Craig Stoss

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode one hundred and seventy-three of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today I'd like to welcome Craig Stoss for a Fireside Chat. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Craig Stoss. Craig, it's lovely to have you join me again for the second time this time for a fireside. We know the format, you bring the topic, and I'm I'm really curious to hear about what you want to talk about today. So welcome back.

Craig Stoss: 0:50

Thanks, Charlotte. Yeah, I was I was hoping uh we could have a good chat about the social media support within a support department. I um this is a trend that I think we all know exists. Companies are starting to pile into Twitter and Facebook and and various social media platforms to support their customers. Uh, again, you know, my favorite phrase of where they are in the context the customer is contacting you in. And and social media support is just a great way to do that because most people have those accounts right on their phone. They there's something that's it's very handy, they're used to using the platforms. And so we've we've rightfully seen that boom in people claiming to have social media support. But um I'm not convinced right now that it's uh it's the best solution for the customers, at least in its current form. And I think that would be an interesting conversation.

Charlotte Ward: 1:43

So so what concerns do you have then, particularly? What's top of that list? What do you think is particularly challenging when it comes to supporting customers, I guess?

Craig Stoss: 1:54

I think the current challenge is many companies have separated out social media support from your traditional support. They they're potentially using different systems. I mean, social media management is done through a variety of tools, but least of which are your main ticket management tools, like your Zendus and your Salesforces and things like that. And so um I think immediately we've created that disconnect between the tools that people are in. But on top of all of that, there's also uh a difference in training. Social media support in many places uh is probably not trained to the same level as as a as a support rep would be. Um they they are typically people who are more of a marketing background, which is not a bad thing. It's just that it creates this disconnect in the in the customer experience. And I and I think that's the biggest uh top of the top of the the chart. If you're gonna do social media support, you should do support on social media, right? It's it shouldn't be this opposite impact where it's we have a social media presence and we're gonna use it sometimes ad hoc for support. It's it's more of uh something that we need to actually embed support in that. And that maybe doesn't mean uh someone from support staffing that channel 24 by seven, uh, but it might it might mean some sort of integration where marketing can flag the the appropriate tweets or or posts to to someone in support for for more uh uh for more insight from the support team and a more cohesive experience.

Charlotte Ward: 3:30

Yeah, that makes sense. Um I want to touch first on what you said about the different training that may be applied to the people providing social media support compared to your main channels into your support team. Um and I'm thinking, you know, social media support is very, very obviously a very frontline role. Do you do you think really and genuinely that the levels of training are so very different from your very frontline roles? And and if so, is that I mean, you described maybe it might that the individuals doing that support there might come from more of a marketing background. So I guess that's an entirely different business function. But for those companies that are actually um having people with the right product skills or the right service skills, um man those so that social media channel. Do you think that the training is still different? And and actually, I guess the extension of that question is does it need to be different anyway? Because this is a different type of support. Maybe we're maybe I maybe we're in a little bit of denial about that.

Craig Stoss: 4:39

I mean, different, uh different, probably almost certainly different, right? I I think that there is a you know, when every every comment you make is incredibly public-facing, um, tone probably becomes a lot more important to to monitor. Um so so yeah, there probably is an element that you need to focus a lot more on your empathy, you need to, you need to, you know, your your realism, I think is important. You know, uh I've been to social media support for um Twitter pages where if you actually go to their their tweets replies section, you see the same message like, oh, we feel so sorry for your uh for for your situation, or oh, you know, I can really empathize with you, or it and you read that about 50 times in a row, and it it loses some of the you know uh genuine nature of of the comment you're trying to get across, especially when that's followed up with please contact you know this phone number for more information, you know, or something something that's completely context switching, channel switching, and and wouldn't fall into a best practices guide for customer experience.

Charlotte Ward: 5:46

So yeah, yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you actually. One of the first things I do if I'm remotely thinking about contacting a service or product provider on Twitter is go and look at how they're talking to other customers because it's so public and the entire history is there. And if all I see is a row of things that says, please contact, please contact, please contact, I just don't even bother reaching out. I may as well just go and find another way to do that.

Craig Stoss: 6:11

Yeah, and I think that that's a big a big issue, right? Is the fact that you want to be able to provide support. And most of the time when you see these crisis modes, you know, um, when there's like, for example, internet outage and you see the telecom's Twitter page light up with, hey, my internet's out, my internet's out, there probably is only so many ways to respond to that, right? Um, but but asking, you know, for the the customer to go somewhere else is just not the right solution, right? You're you're you're you're redirecting both their frustration, but you're also redirecting someone where the answer is probably known within your organization. The social media team may just not have it. Um, and that that's something that I've talked about before, I believe, with you is this idea that especially in crisis mode, your whole company needs to have be on the same page. And and I don't necessarily mean that you know your your your front desk administrator needs to be able to solve support tickets or your or your your you know your customer success managers or your BDRs, you know, have to be able to talk technically about your product or whatever it is, but they should at least have an idea of what's going on. You know, you know, something someone calls in and just says, hey, you know, looking to do something with your product, but uh I'm having this bit problem, having them say, oh, well, you know, go call our support team, they'll help you is just not that great experience. So, you know, even if it's the update is purely we are aware of it, and and uh I will get an update after this phone call and I'll send you an email back personally or I'll ask support to contact you, but do it on behalf of the the customer. And to me, that's what social media support should be as well, right? It should be, it doesn't have to be a deep technical conversation. I mean, we all know how hard it is to type that in in you know 200 characters on Twitter or or in again in a public forum where you probably don't want to air every debugging technique in in such a place. Um, but at least be do advocate for the person contacting you. So as opposed to saying, please call this number, you know, maybe it's a could you DM me your email address and I'll have support contact you, you know, with details on this issue or or basic triage. Like if you were, if you were to send me uh, you know, private message with these five pieces of information, I will, I will get someone to do the analysis and contact you, or something where you you are taking the ownership of it as opposed to redirecting the custom the customer themselves to another location. And um, and yeah, uh so going back to the original question, I do think that requires some some extra training or some different types of training. Um, do I think that everyone that that runs a social media account for a company needs to be a full-fledged frontline support rep? Probably not, but they should at least have the basic, you know, customer experience skills, expectation setting skills, empathy skills, like the same soft skills that you would expect in a in a frontline support rep, and and at the very least have a consistent way of taking ownership of those, those, those queries and and getting them handled without a redirect of the customer, without a canned message. I've had a I've had it where the canned message is something that is just totally unrelated to my query, you know, something where it's like, oh, well, here's a knowledge base article, and it's and my my initial query is like, hey, I don't see this on your knowledge base, for example. Or something where it's like it, it's just they you can clearly see that they're they're trying, but it's not, it's not really what you would expect from from a support rep. And um, and that's the fine balance. You you want the the you know, the Wendy's example that that's famous in in North America for being you know quippy and and and you know funny and sarcastic, but combine that with, oh, your burger wasn't wasn't up to your standards. Well, here's what we're gonna do about it, and here's how we're gonna support you in, you know, in in making sure that you we correct your customer experience at the last Wendy's you were at.

Charlotte Ward: 10:14

I mean, wow, there's so much to unpack there. One of the things that you said really early on struck a chord with me, which is how in in redirecting a customer just to another channel, just to a another, even if it's a document, um, if you all you do is redirect a customer, you're redirecting the customer's frustration. I love that. I think I'm gonna take that away from this conversation and say that elsewhere quite a lot.

Craig Stoss: 10:44

Yeah, and and I think that that's true, right? I mean, think about think about how that builds up in in your own life, right? I mean, how if if you're at in your office and you go to the the leader of some department and you're you know asking for for you know something, and they're like, oh, go talk to to to so and so over here, and you go and talk to them, and it's like probably not the right person, go talk to this person. And I mean, that's something minor and something that you need to do probably. And so you're gonna follow that breadcrumb trail, but it's it's frustrating because you're you're like, just I need to find the right person who can tell me who the right person is, and and um inevitably you get to that right person and they're on vacation, anyways, right? We all know that story. So it's it's one of those things where it's one of those things where you you know at some point you have to take ownership of it. And and and to me, in support, you know, support should be the owner. When in any support world, you know, the company and the and the department specifically needs to take that ownership and say, I am going to solve your problem. I might not know the answer, I might not be able to give it to you immediately, but I am going to solve your problem and and go and find that.

Charlotte Ward: 11:53

And I think I think that's just all echoing something which I've been saying for years and I think just fits really nicely with this. I've I um I and I think this ties in quite nicely with your your the people who are providing social media support might not have the greatest depth of skills, they might not have the greatest depth or or breadth of training, um, they might not have all of the tooling and all of the customer context, but nonetheless, nothing prevents them being the owner of that, being the owner of that solution. And in fact, what I've the the way I used to phrase this, it's it's um it's typically uh a sort of nebulous concept for I quite like to put things, put too many words into things if I can at all help it.

Craig Stoss: 12:43

Yep, yep, yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 12:44

But but um but I used to say it's actually it's not ownership of the solution, it's ownership of the solution path. It's it's I will steer you to the solution, I will make sure you get there, even if I'm not the person to provide the solution. I think I think that's clear. And I think that if lack of that ownership is what you're projecting to the world, it speaks a lot about the brand, doesn't it? I think.

Craig Stoss: 13:13

Yeah. I and I I actually that's a great way of saying it, right? I I feel like in that to me, that to me is support across across the gambit of support. But in social media sport, when it is public, I think it's even more important. Um, because it's something that you are you are you're projecting literally to the world um your your the way you handle it, your your tone, your attitude. And and I think that that's the key. And and you're right. I I don't think this all social media support teams need to have the full breadth of tools, you know, to your point, but they need to be connected. And if they are going to hand it off, you know, um, I've used this example in one of your podcasts before of like when I contacted a company on Twitter and they asked me to email a support team, and that the person they they weren't connected, right? And and and so then I had to re-explain the issue to the person's support, and it was like, well, you know, just go to your Twitter account and copy and paste everything I've said and put it into Zendesk. I mean, there are tools that automatically do stuff like that between between your your social media management, like Hootsuite and those types of products to copy into Zendesk. And that is um so vital. And then I think one thing we haven't really addressed is the timeliness of Twitter support or Facebook support or like the support on social media is the timelines are also expected to be faster, right? You know, we whereas you might be okay with a few hours via email um and a few, you know, a few minutes on this on the on a phone call. You know, when you're talking social media, you're talking, you know, seconds to a very few number of minutes as a response time. And and in crisis, that might be very difficult to do. You know, day-to-day, maybe that's fine. Um, I remember being when I during when COVID hit, I was stuck in I was in another country. I was I was traveling and and I was using social media support to contact the airlines that I were involved in my trip because I mean the phone lines were a two or three hour wait time. And it was like, I don't need anything complicated. I just need to know, you know, is this flight flying? If it's not flying, am I doing a refund? Like it's it's very simple questions that anyone with my my booking reference probably could look up. And to their credit, most of the airlines I contacted were very timely and very polite. And and I did almost all of it through social media support. And and I was very impressed by that. Um, had I been traveling in the US, that might have been different because some of those airlines are known not for having that level of service, but uh being international, it was uh uh it was much better experience.

Charlotte Ward: 15:55

So um I think I think the timing, I think the timing thing comes back to your point about customer context, doesn't it? It's understanding the the times at which your customer has left what they're doing, gone to their laptop three rooms away, opened up their email client and sat and typed something out to you in a very considered way. Or are they stuck in the middle of, I don't know, a very busy airport or in their kitchen with a you know baby hanging off the hip and a and the stove boiling over and the phone in the other hand just trying to get some help. I think I think that that everything you've said is just like about understanding context. And I think the channel does speak quite a lot to the context. For me, you know, Slack support is something that um I talked about a couple of weeks ago on the podcast, and the timings of that there are different again because the expectation is that it's a a channel for solving the problem and talking through the problem rather than being hyper-responsive in short form. So I think the context is really key in the timings.

Craig Stoss: 16:59

Yeah, well, I mean, it it's the analogy of you would, you know, if your house was burning down, you wouldn't email the fire department. You know, like it's it's that type of thing where where you know the context is is a two-way street, right? Is if if uh if you are gonna if you're using a certain method, the the likelihood of you choosing that method is is probably you know deliberate based on your current circumstances. If I if I know I don't care about the response time on something, an email is just convenient, I can fire it off from my phone and go about my day, and it doesn't really matter how long it takes. But if yeah, if I'm if I'm engaging with you, a Slack is a great example of that. If I'm engaging with you on a Slack forum where where like within an hour that message is gonna you know disappear into the ether on on the on the wall of text, um yeah, I mean I would expect a fast turnaround because that is an engagement, uh an engagement uh uh type of uh interaction. And and so, yeah, I and text messaging support is becoming larger in in some some areas. And uh I know in Asia Pack it's become a huge, uh huge trend for WeChat and such. And same thing. I I would I would lump this all in together that um you know the the different channel implies a different uh a different context. And and the team on the other side, the in you know, your team needs to be conscious of what those mean and maybe have SLOs that are different based on your channels, have a and have them very clear. Um, I've seen social media support teams uh where that's right the banner of their of their header. You know, we we respond within X number of minutes or hours or whatever it is. Here are our opening hours. Um, there are companies that sign each reply because it otherwise it might be just an anonymous, you don't know who you're talking to. So they sign it with a name or some initials so that people know who's been working on it. All of those techniques are fantastic at building that cohesive experience. Because if you if you see a reply to someone else on your team, um, you know, you might be able to hand that off because they have more context, they've already read the thread that that's existing. And um so so, and this is true in in in probably every channel, right? We would do this, we already do it with email, but we're so used to email as a support mechanism. I don't think we're used to social media support. And I I mean, my my prediction would be social media support is becoming is going to become bigger than it is today, right? I I I just see the the use cases are there, the tools are starting to get better integrations into support tools. Um, I mean, there's now customer success platforms which which measure sentiment analysis of your of your customers' tweets. Like, like that's that's incredibly specific, right? You know, if if you can you can pick out a company name, pick out your company name, pick out a sentiment, and then match that tweet to some company that is a one of your customers, and then and then include that in some sort of like red, yellow, green. Rating system for how your customers are feeling. I mean, that's that's fantastic. Um, Shopify, where I where I'm at right now, uh the the uh CTO posted a tweet just before the the Christmas break that just said, I I want to know what's frustrating you about our product. And and he had a huge thread replying to that of our customers, um, the merchants that work with Shopify talking about their biggest complaints about Shopify. And it was all the dirty laundry out there in the air waving around for everyone to see. And we've talked about that thread internally in a couple different meetings. And and how how exciting is that that that you could get direct line of access to the CTO of a company the size of Shopify. And and um, you know, would I recommend every company do that? Probably not, but but and and I'm sure the the social media team at Shovel Vike probably had a field day with with that one, with with what was happening, right? Because they monitor sentiment and and and such. But that just shows what you what the power of social media can be. Like talk about instant feedback as opposed to you know having a data team put together a 20-page questionnaire and and seeing what comes out of it and who actually takes the time to respond to it. You know, um I that's to me the the future of social media is is the companies can use it to get that real-time engagement and and you need to treat it as such. You you need to you need to have the right people, either the right people in place to do it or the right processes in place to make sure that they the the teams that can be handed off to easily and and that and the flow is smooth and the customer experience is smooth, because that's the biggest disjoint right now is either the wrong people are doing it, they're they're they're not set up for success, or when they do get a support ticket, there's there's no consistent way of of propping that information to the to the support team or the team that ultimately is responsible for it.

Charlotte Ward: 22:02

That's it for today. Go to customer supportleaders.com forward slash one seven three for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.