176: You’re the Host with Matt Dale

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode one hundred and seventy-six of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today, Matt Dale is the host of the show. I would normally say that I would like to welcome to the podcast today, my very good friend Matt Dale, but I don't get to say that today because Matt has stolen the microphone and is here to be the host. Hi, Matt.

Matt Dale: 0:47

Hi, Charlotte. And I just want to welcome you to the podcast today. You know, we've been on the opposite side of the table here before a few times, and I'm I'm super excited for the uh audience to have a chance to get to hear a little bit more from you and hopefully less from me, because I tend to talk too much and talk fast. So uh hopefully today will be a chance for us to kind of get to hear a little bit more about your experience as a leader in customer support. Um, and for today's topic, uh just kind of starting off in general, I'd kind of like to talk about what it's like uh coming into a new organization as a leader and just some of the challenges and some of the things that you've experienced as you've as you've done that. So um I just kind of like to start off on on kind of your general thoughts on that. As you as a new leader coming into a team, you know, what what where do you start? What do you what do you first kind of think about and and and and kind of what does that look like as you progress over the next couple months?

Charlotte Ward: 1:32

Yeah, it's a super interesting topic, isn't it? And I am 11 months now into my role at Snowplow. So um not very new, but I still have some memories of those early days.

Matt Dale: 1:45

So I'm sure I think we we've spent a lot of time talking to over the over the last you know 12 months about hey, I've got this new gig coming up and hey, I'm getting started. And so I I it's something that's really interesting to me is kind of seeing, hey, how how have those last 11 months been?

Charlotte Ward: 1:57

Yeah, yeah. Um, like the really early days, um I you know, when like many people coming into a role like this, when I was going through the interview process and and when I've interviewed for similar roles in the past, you you arrive at a role with kind of that 30 60-90 plan, don't you? Even if it's pretty generic, I think that um, which mine usually is because you can't make definite plans until you're in the door. Um but I think I think that there's it the 30 60 90 that you form before you get in the door is idealistic, I think. And I think all you have to do when you're finally in the door is accept that that's probably not gonna happen. And you actually have to re like completely reframe the upcoming three months in your own mind. And and and that's not something either that you you can just finalize on day one. I think that that there is there are peaks and troughs of of learning over those first few weeks and early months, aren't there?

Matt Dale: 2:58

So so let's talk a little about those first few weeks then. Like you're getting to know the team, you've walked in the door, you've got your plans, your 30, 60, 90, which you also know are going to go completely out the window once you actually see how things really are in the organization. Um, what's what's kind of the first steps as you get in there? Do you do you focus on getting to know the people? Do you try to learn the product? Like, where where would you start or where would you recommend uh starting for for some of our listening audience here?

Charlotte Ward: 3:23

Um I think it would horrify most of the people in my organization now and maybe every organization that I've ever stepped into. If I was to say that I think as an experienced support leader, I think the product comes almost last.

Matt Dale: 3:44

I I think that makes sense. That's that's where I would be kind of going too. Like, that's good and we can get to that, but it kind of almost doesn't matter in that first few weeks, right?

Charlotte Ward: 3:52

Yeah, yeah. And I I think that's something I would never say in an interview.

Matt Dale: 3:57

That's awesome. Yes, luckily we're not in an interview here. No one's ever gonna hear this, so we're we're fine, right? Yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 4:02

Yeah. If someone's dug this out of the archives a few years from now, absolutely I advocate for for learning the product before you do anything.

Matt Dale: 4:09

How are things going this year, Charlotte? I listened to the last podcast here, and I and you were and you said that you didn't care about our product. Holy cow. No, but I I think that's a good point when you're when you're looking at that. I think, at least from where I from what I've seen, uh focusing more on the people and kind of how things are and the dynamics is a really great place to start. So what does that kind of look like kind of in your situation? Setting aside the product for a minute, uh, what what would kind of be your first steps there?

Charlotte Ward: 4:34

Yeah, I I think that I think the product comes by osmosis largely for me. And I think it comes through understanding the team's relationship to the product and and to the rest of the organization. And and um I think very, very quickly also you get a sense of the health of the operations. I think that's something that those two areas are the the key for me, like the people, how what their challenges are, uh, how they fit together, how well they work right now, um, and the operations, how smoothly are the operations running. And I think if I can draw two quick judgments about those in the first week, that gives me like a really, really clear direction for the next few weeks.

Matt Dale: 5:16

Good. Okay. No, I I think I think that makes a lot of sense. I I know when I've uh at Illuminate, we've gone through situations where we've brought different teams together through an acquisition. And and that that's a similar situation where you're you're the person coming in from the outside going, hey, I'm you're you're you're part of my team now. Um, I need to understand what you're doing. I need to understand who you are and how things are functioning so that I can then understand how I need to bring that together with our team and how we can get everyone on the same page in a good go forward plan. So I think that that resonates with some of the experiences I've had. Um when I when I start out too, I find that I just want to interview each person on my team and say, and let's let's let's sit down for you know as much time as you want to share with me and and let's let's talk and get to know uh each other and and you know, tell me what's working really well and tell me the things that are you know that that aren't working well, like that that we need to that we need to improve as we as we come together. And I think those are things that have worked well in the past for me. Have you had similar experiences or is there any questions that you like to ask folks in those situations?

Charlotte Ward: 6:15

Yeah, yeah. I I I think that's a really, really strong way to start. And uh I try to have those conversations more than once. I I try, you know, I I need to set up one-to-ones and they've got to be regular, and they still are regular. And for as long as I can remotely manage doing weekly meetings with every single one on my team, as long as that's scalable, I'll continue to do that. So um I think that because I think that in those early conversations, you might learn some early pains, but also what you do is develop trust and actually you learn much more about the pains after a few months than than in those very first conversations. I think that's just about social connection and trust and maybe getting some early understanding, but I think it's going to be pretty superficial.

Matt Dale: 7:07

Yeah, I think that matches my experience as well. It's really about listening and learning and sharing about yourself, not from a professional perspective, but just hey, this is who I am as a person. Um, you know, I think you have one chance of that first, you know, that first interaction, that first impression, and and that can make such a difference there. So good. Okay. Well, that that's kind of talking about the first parts here. We've we've talked about, you know, having the 30, 60, 90, we've talked about getting to know folks on the team. What are some of the other things that you look at kind of big picture as you're coming in? Maybe not the first couple of weeks, but you know, maybe let's say the first three months, what are you working on and what are you thinking through? And how are you approaching um those different challenges?

Charlotte Ward: 7:46

I think in a really informal way for me, it's about the health of the team as a whole. Like, and again, this this I've said this so many times. My my support career, when I stepped away from being on the front line, for me, the thing that pulled me away from the front line was operations. It's like understanding operational pain and challenges. And so when I think about team health, that's how I think of it. I think about how healthy they are from an operational perspective. Where does it seem there are bottlenecks in process? Where does it seem like there is wasted time? Where does it seem um that there are frustrations because they feel blocked? Um, you know, in in terms of like achieving the end goal of serving the customer. And I think it's just like operationally for me, I think that's how in it that next stage, that next stage of of understanding is is kind of about that sort of operational health. Let's call it operational health rather than team health.

Matt Dale: 8:53

I think that's actually a good distinction to make between the how are we functioning as a team and how is the team doing mentally and emotionally and all that? Because I think you can have a team that operationally is functional, but maybe very dysfunctional, you know, from a relational perspective and vice versa. You know, you may have a situation where stuff's all broken and but the people are really good, they're strong, they've connected well, you've got a good foundation to kind of work from there too. So I think that makes a lot of sense. Is there any tools that you use to identify those bottlenecks or or help prioritize? Like, how do you kind of approach that process?

Charlotte Ward: 9:25

That's a good question. I think I think that really varies organization to organization, right? Because I think every support team functions in a different way. And so you have to apply different tools to it. Um, like if we if we're being like really specific about the tooling. Um, I think I I like to obviously take a dive into Zendesk or equivalent and understand, like, you know, are there any actually find things that I don't understand? Like if things just if there are crazy outliers in number of replies or the time it takes something to be resolved, or the ticket volumes like just have you know, no coherent cohesive kind of pattern to them. So looking for like alarm bells there in in the in the operational metrics of of of providing the support. Um, but uh, but then also looking um at the the structure of the team's day, if that makes sense. And and I think there's different ways you can do that. Certainly, you get some sense of that from your help desk. Some of that will come from conversations with the team. Um here uh in my current place, the single biggest um gain I've made is by putting time tracking in place, um which I absolutely and only use to help us better operationalize. It isn't there is no performance measurement, individual performance measurement around time tracking. We only use it to drive improvements across the team.

Matt Dale: 11:01

And let's talk about that for a second, because I know time tracking is one of those tender subjects where it's kind of like, oh man, like the boss is trying to look at me and you know, make sure that I'm doing everything. This is there, I've got to spend all this time writing down everything I do, and it's taking a bunch of my time. Like, how have you been able to balance that? Or what are some of the keys you might suggest in in kind of balancing that instead of it being a punitive or a particularly onerous task? How do you kind of find that sweet spot where it's useful to the organization, useful to yourself, your higher-ups, but isn't killing the folks that are trying to do the work?

Charlotte Ward: 11:32

Yeah, finding the right tool is really important. Um, I I there is such a variance in time tracking platforms out there. And for me, my team at Snowplow work at such a fast pace. They do not have the luxury of saying, hmm, what have I been working on for the last four hours? I'll write one time entry for that. They they are logging time sometimes that is a minute and a half that they were working on something. So I actually need uh because with time tracking and and other initiatives like it, the you the better the quality of the data and the more complete the data, the better analytics you can draw from it, and therefore the more success you're gonna get from any uh any initiatives that you drive out of it. So for me, prioritizing the completeness and the accuracy of the data was was the kind of dual dual north star, if you like. And that came down to one thing, it had to be as frictionless an experience as possible for the team because it had to not interrupt their flow, or let's say it interrupts their flow for sure, but it does it in the most frictionless way possible. So all the research I did around tooling for time tracking was with that single um that single goal in mind. How frictionless could I make it for the team?

Matt Dale: 12:58

Nice. That's I think a useful thing and a good, a good North Star, certainly. I know when I've seen initiatives like this in the past, uh in the old days at Illuminate was like, keep tracking this Excel spreadsheet of everything you're doing all day long. And it's like, oh my gosh, kill me now. This is like the worst thing ever. We're gonna make everybody frustrated. It's not what are we gonna do with the data? Is it gonna be even useful? And so yeah, I think there's a knee-jerk response from sometimes from management. It's like, hey, we need to do this, but but I think it's a good to be able to push back and say, hey, what kind of friction are we introducing in in our agents' lives and in our team's lives? How can we is is the data worth it, right? Is the juice worth the squeeze?

Charlotte Ward: 13:32

Um Yeah, you have you have you have to absolutely have a uh you have to have a vision of what you're gonna achieve with it. And and you might not be able to, and I certainly couldn't quantify what the ROI was gonna be in terms of minutes or dollar or anything, but but for the fact that I knew that without it, we had no visibility, and that every every data point I could layer on to visibility to that visibility was gonna be key to making the changes that I recognized in those early few weeks were like the big operational pain points. So um we were time tracking with I think within three weeks of me joining the company.

Matt Dale: 14:14

Nice, an early initiative, and and it sounds like it's been fairly successful from uh an operational perspective.

Charlotte Ward: 14:20

I mean, yeah, the thing with something like time tracking is it has a lead time as well, and that was why I put some urgency to it because I'm I knew that we had to get the tool in place, we had to develop the habit, we had to understand like develop effectively a taxonomy for it, um, and uh and then um obviously operationalize, like actually analyze the data and then operationalize on the data. That's assuming that I mean that really is four to six months lead time on getting anything useful out of your first time tracking entries, um, if you're lucky. And that's assuming that, you know, people run with it from day one and they hit all of the kind of targets around completeness and and accuracy and everything else. Well, they're human beings and they didn't. Um it took a few months to develop the habit. It took a few months to understand that we needed to measure some things in different ways. And and we actually gave it a complete overhaul after about five months where we completely reinvented the like all of the tagging taxonomy and everything that we use within the time tracking tool. Um, so it was far from a bump-free start, but we are now 11 months down the line. We have a really clear picture of we we now have a few months worth of very accurate, very complete, very analyzable data. Um, and we are making improvements and significant projects are coming out of that data now. Um, and so it's just like sometimes you have to just do the thing, knowing that the lead time is gonna be quite long. Um, and it's not gonna be easy. But if you if you believe in it and you know that it's gonna get you to a good place, you you just have to kind of help your team along on that journey, really.

Matt Dale: 16:08

And I think what you've said there too, one of the big key takeaways that I would have from that is the the idea that, hey, we're gonna we're gonna get something out here right now. Um, it's not gonna be perfect, it's gonna be a challenge. You you're not expecting your people to be at the at the perfect level. Um, and and you're also committing to saying, hey, we're gonna reevaluate this in a couple months. And I think that's a real key to some initiatives that you know that are big picture that are that are challenging. Uh, when I when I look at our business uh at Illuminate, we do software for schools. And so our back to school season is really busy. Um, the first year we ended, we we added some areas in Zendus that allowed us to track different um types of issues and different parts of our system that we were seeing the issues. Um after looking at that and working on that for the first you know, back to school season, we spent the next six months kind of retooling and saying, what do we want to have so that when we enter August, we're ready to go and we can we can then have a solid busy season with good data that's not causing a bunch of friction to our team, but that's actually stuff that our product team is able to take and use. And I think a lot of times it's easy to get kind of focused on I've got to do it perfect right off the bat, and it I'm gonna sit here and be paralyzed rather than hey, we're gonna get this out here, it's gonna be messy, and we're and I'm committing to you, my team, that that we're gonna that we're gonna fix that. So I think that's really, really solid and a good kind of approach when you're talking about uh change management in a in a team, especially in an environment where you're you're new.

Charlotte Ward: 17:25

So yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and like for the type of team I'm leading right now, the these are like incredibly um skilled engineers and they understand the importance of accuracy and and of being like laser focused on the solution. But we we're human beings and we are a bit messy and we produce messy data, and and so that's a conversation I have to kind of revisit a few times. Um, you know, every couple of months. It's like that there is this kind of sense of like, I'm not sure this looks right. Should we be doing it this way? Because this isn't the most accurate way to do it. It's like it's the most accurate and it's the best right now. And we can evolve this two months from now, and we'll probably evolve it two months after that. But but right now, this is the best we've got. So let's just start here, you know. It's you you have to build something of a foundation before you can build the pyramids, right?

Matt Dale: 18:15

Well, and I think that idea of good enough is really powerful too, right? Like it's not perfect. And and dealing with engineers, that's it's hard because the world is perfect. It's ones and zeros, it's it's on and off, it's black and white. But I think if we can be kind of comfy in that gray spot going, hey, this is this is 80% of what I'm looking for, um, and and living with that and trying to kind of be in that environment for a while, it's much more powerful than trying to get 100% and and not even being able to start because of that. So so kudos to you for that initiative and and being able to kind of watch that progress and continue to evolve over the time. The last topic I kind of like to touch base on as we you know get ready to wrap things up here is I kind of want to talk a little bit more about um what it's like coming in with with senior leadership then and and coming into to a team as a new person. They've got ideas about what they want for the role, perhaps. Uh, maybe they're aware of some of the challenges, but you're coming into this situation and you've got to communicate to them the the truths that are going on for your team. You've got to set the direction. How do you kind of approach that process, perhaps in general or or you know, in your last uh initiative or the last 11 months?

Charlotte Ward: 19:19

Yeah. Um that's a that's a hard one to answer because it has so many levels. I think that um so I I I think that one thing that I've learned joining a company that the size of this organization is as their first head of support, um, is that I was hired as the person who knows support. And uh I think that consequently I am bringing a bunch of quite specific expertise um to a company that hasn't had those expertise. I mean, like a lot of startups, they were they were making it happen, right? They were they were doing the job. They were like every day they got they got the the service out the door and they did it well. And like they have such a like my team has such a great relationship with our customers, but um ultimately there comes a point where you need to figure out how you how you can maintain that over time as you grow. And and think that was one of the reasons I was hired, really, was that they had reached that point where they needed someone with those expertise. Um what that does mean is though, that when you are the the uh only person with that specific skill set in an orgas in an organization, and this is true of any of the functional competencies in an organization, right? That um you have to find ways to um like build trust that you know what you're doing, frankly. Um help them understand, help anyone in the organization understand why you're making the calls that you're making, um, and and and believing in the value of what you're doing as well, and like just sticking to like like just actually trusting yourself that like you were brought there for a reason, and that actually might not be always obvious to people who haven't worked in your in in your air in your arena before, but um, but trusting that you'll get there and that's why you were hired.

Matt Dale: 21:30

I think it's an interesting point too. Sometimes they say, hey, we need someone in this role, in your case, perhaps maybe a little bit, where it's like, hey, we we know we need someone like this, and then we get them, and then we like, oh, this is making us uncomfortable because it's pulling us in this direction or pulling us that like we we intellectually know we want it, but we're not really sure at the heart level that like when push comes to shove, like, do we really need to do this? And and I think winning them over and being able to, like you said, show that um the competence, uh, show that they were right in in selecting you as the hire, and and then, hey, this is the this is the direction we need to go. Here's why. Um yeah, I think I think that's really important. In your organization, it sounds like there's a very much kind of an engineering mindset and very kind of technical. Is there a specific language that you need to to share information with in that case? I know some places are very relational, some places are very data-driven. What what kind of language do you use when you're communicating with with your leadership team?

Charlotte Ward: 22:21

Uh data is the way to go in a behavioral data management company. I think that's the way, you know, I think that just uh that there's nothing that speaks to speaks better than a graph with three dimensions and kind of a clear narrative over it. Um, or for that matter, like if you can distill something to one number, you know, um, that makes sense that you can tell a story around. Um, and and and that helps me because I'm very data driven as well. So when I think of all, I like why why else would I put time tracking in place within three weeks? It's because I need data.

Matt Dale: 22:57

You definitely have a data bench, right? Like you want to understand what's going on. So that's that's good. Okay.

Charlotte Ward: 23:01

And I'm absolutely not a data analyst. Um, so I have to relearn a bunch of like charting and everything in Google Sheets, every and I have to go digging around for help in functions and things, but but nonetheless, like just um understanding like that that you can not only work with that data yourself, but you can use it to talk to other people.

Matt Dale: 23:24

Well, I I think we're pretty close to the end of time. Do you have any one um thing that you want to share with the audience about uh about your experiences kind of coming into a new organization or any one thing that you think would be particularly helpful for them?

Charlotte Ward: 23:36

Wow, my one piece of advice. Yeah, that's right.

Matt Dale: 23:38

I mean, you've asked me that a million times, so I want to turn turn around the favor here and nice.

Charlotte Ward: 23:42

So yeah, and you have given me a million pieces of advice and they've all been gratefully received. Um, so you want me to give one piece of advice that isn't go and ask Matt Dale.

Matt Dale: 23:51

Um that's totally fine. If you want to come ask Matt Dale, I'd be happy to happy to help. But no, let's let's give them something that's applicable to their lives, yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 23:58

Yeah, yeah. So I so I think that um when you step into a new role, I think that the the biggest single thing that I would say is that you don't and can't know everything on day one. Um and you're damned lucky if you know a reasonable amount by day 30 or day 60. Um, and I think that just accepting that this is a journey, it's not something that you begin and it's it's done, you know. Um, and I I think that's most it's you don't you don't know what you don't know. And and uh I'm still discovering things. I'm still I'm still making like huge, I'm still having like huge personal learnings almost every day in my role. And I'm 11 months in, and that'll probably continue because this is for me, this is a very complex environment. It's a very complex product, very complex uh uh sort of set of um operations for my team, and so on and so on and so on. And so it's there is this infinite landscape of things to learn. And um I think just keep learning. There we go. That's my piece of advice. Keep keep learning.

Matt Dale: 25:10

Love it, keep keep learning. And also I heard there, you know, don't get don't get psyched out, don't spend too much time in your head thinking you got to know everything right off the bat. Because I know personally that's something that I've struggled with a lot over the years and still struggle with, you know, as a nine-year veteran at Illuminate, I'm I'm still feeling like I'm I'm not the right person for the job. So so yeah, I think, you know, we're two experienced people and we we've have those feelings. Folks out there that may have less feel like they have less experience know that we all feel that too. So cool. Well, Charlotte, thank you so much for letting me have the main mic today. It was fun to kind of switch the switch the table around here and uh guest host and interview you. It's been a true pleasure, and I look forward to the next time we get together.

Charlotte Ward: 25:48

Thank you so much, Matt. Thanks for having me.

Matt Dale: 25:51

Yeah, there you go. Perfect.

Charlotte Ward: 25:57

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