182: Startup Support with Craig Stoss

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 182 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. This week we're talking about startup support, so stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Craig Stoss. Craig, it's lovely to have you back after a small absence. It's been a little while since you've guested on Customer Support Leaders, but here we are again. Thank you so much for rejoining me.

Craig Stoss: 0:45

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Charlotte Ward: 0:47

I'm uh quite excited this week because we are talking about startup support. And this is a world that I'm in right now. You have done several times in the past. Um, so I'm I'm I'm here to soak up all of your knowledge and like take it back to what I'm doing right now. And I'm sure there are plenty of other people out there who are going to learn something from the next 10 minutes. So so so uh set the bar pretty high, right? Oh, absolutely. I expect nothing less from you. So uh so well, let's begin. I mean, maybe maybe we begin with like what's peculiar about startup support. How is support in a startup environment different from support in any other environment?

Craig Stoss: 1:31

I think support in a startup environment is different because you probably are in a situation where you haven't fully figured out what the customer is demanding. You haven't fully staffed for maybe all the time zones or all the verticals that you support, all the different types of customer segments. Um and and and then on top of it, typically startup support has started with a developer, maybe, or a founder, or someone like that that that maybe isn't necessarily suited for the right for the position of support. And and so, you know, if as a first support leader coming into a startup, um needing to then create a support program, uh, you know, there might be you know a lack of tooling or a lack of consistency on the messaging, or or maybe even even uh expectation setting is a little bit um all over the place. And and so I think startup support is is pretty unique in the sense that you have smaller resources, you probably have lower budgets to spend, you know, in the startup phase, uh support probably is considered a cost center for better or for worse. And and so I think all of those make for a really interesting way to to kind of build up from the build from the ground up and actually make something into the support you would be uh you would be proud of.

Charlotte Ward: 2:47

Yeah, yeah. Um you kind of touched on there about how support tends to grow out of development in a startup, and I think that that's very true. Do you think that there is a point at which it makes sense to bring in a dedicated support leader, or do you think that that it's nearly always better for that to grow in-house?

Craig Stoss: 3:09

I I think if you want to scale fast with a really high customer experience and and you know, you want to provide um a serve a consistent service level, having someone who has experience within support, knows a lot of those concepts, uh, has at least some understanding of the basic tools that are available, the basic mechanisms is really important, right? Um, in in my experience, support run by developers is is fantastic. They they know the code, they they answer the questions, um, but the tone might not represent the tone of the company, or the time to response might be higher than than you would want on on an average. Um uh it might be not consistent. I was I used to deal with a company as a vendor where they they I I actually got to visit their office once. They were they were six people in an apartment, you know, it was a very tiny startup, and they just kind of had a bell go off every time an email went to the support queue, and whoever happened to have time would would grab it. And and if no one happened to have time, or if it happened to be after 5 p.m. or between you know noon and one when they were eating lunch, you know, they might not even notice that it actually happened because no one was actually looking at that at that email queue. And it was literally email. There was no Zendesk, there was no, there was no kind of ticketing tool. And so that's where the inconsistent experience comes from. And so, you know, there's nothing necessarily wrong with that when you only have a few customers and you maybe know them more intimately, but there is a critical mass when you when you when you get to a point where where the load justifies someone constantly looking at that. And I would be the first to argue that you don't want a developer being the person to first look at that. Not because they're they're bad, but because they have better things to do. They have they have they have their development to do, which, which in a startup is probably even more important than than support in many ways to make sure your product is functioning. So um, so yeah, I do think there's there's a lot of value. And once you hit that mass of someone need at least one person needing to full-time look at that that email queue or that ticketing tool, that's when you need to hire someone who can come in, build the metadata, the process, you know, at some point you're gonna want to measure the the cost of support or the the cost of support support. Um, and and I think that's where the support leader brings the value.

Charlotte Ward: 5:28

And it's um I I think particularly that that scale, that fast scaling that you talk about. I think that one thing that I I truly believe is it's important to get those measures in as early as possible, even if you don't act on them, actually. I think that it builds a culture of understanding and and the ability to act when the time comes. Because in my experience, most of these metrics have a long lead time, either in terms of the information they give you or just in the culture and set of behaviors that you need to encourage in a in a in a team or in a wider organization, right? I think there's it's worth getting the measures in and beginning to socialize those concepts as early as you can.

Craig Stoss: 6:12

Well, we've talked about this a lot, right? You know, that the fact that customer experience is it needs to be a mentality of the company, not a department. And and that is exactly what I think you've just said, right? Is you start to socialize that customer satisfaction is important, that that we will be measuring NPS or or customer effort score, or um, you know, and we in here's the style of support we want to provide. And and you know, these things that that make it clear that we, you know, as an organization want to be a customer-centric organization and and a support, um, support our customers appropriately for that. Um, that's really important because A, one thing that I I've noticed in startup support is that people seem for whatever reason reluctant to highlight support. And to me, if you have a good support team, if you have a support team that's going to answer you in less than an hour and that you have a knowledge base and you have, you know, uh, you know, tiers of support, maybe you have a paid support model that that people get uh some added bonuses or whatever it might be, um, as much as maybe I don't agree with that last one. But why are you advertising that? Why is that not a slide of like, hey, here's here's an outline of the support you get along with whatever the contract you you're you're you're going for is. And and uh that is something to me that is a company mentality that the support has value. Um, you know, we heard we heard of product-led growth. Um you and I uh talked to a friend who who talked a lot about uh success-led growth. Support-led growth and is is um is important too, right? And and and so making that a mentality across the company from the ground up builds it into the culture of the organization. Um I worked in a company for a while where um where the one of the founders was was actually kind of created the support department, and and that is unique. And I and I was actually excited to work for that because um because usually you're dealing with a founder who one person's development, one person's sales, and you know, support was just something they needed to do. Whereas when one of the founders is is kind of a customer experienced person and has that support background, they're they're able to talk a different language and able to promote at that C level executive um front the importance of support. And that's the culture that people should want to strive for.

Charlotte Ward: 8:33

Yeah, absolutely. I want to rewind to something you just said there about um support-led growth having or it should have equal billing with product-led growth and success-led growth. I would I would slightly extend that um ideal and say that actually there should be no distinction between those three arms by and large. I think, particularly in certain types of industries, um, like where I am now, I think that there is, you know, where when you're talking about high-tech, high value, high touch, in that sort of environment, there are there is a continuum, right, between the the product and the support that you need to service that product to ensure that a customer is successful and therefore the success management side of that as well. I think it becomes a continuum. Your your customers and your prospects are buying into the whole piece, they're not just buying the product and everything else is thrown in for free. So I I think that particularly in that kind of model, that support should have equal billing because I think it is a continuum.

Craig Stoss: 9:40

I I completely agree. In fact, if you if you kind of boil it down, product success and sport-like growth are really just customer-centric growth, right? It's listening to feedback about your product, it's it's understanding how your your customers use the product to make them more successful, and and it's and it's recognizing from a support perspective when customers need that little extra attention um or need um or could potentially upsell or or uh being able to have a good feedback loop from support into your product teams or such. So yeah, I I do. I think not I I can actually say that that I would agree that that not only equal billing, but you could call them all the same thing. And it's it's customer-centric led growth. And um, and that's uh again, I go to me, it goes back to a mentality, totally. It's it's if you breed that mentality that everything the customer says is valuable, and some maybe less valuable than others, of course. Um, you know, that's that's just the nature of it. But if you figure out a way to take that feedback from all those different departments and assess it in in kind, like together, um, apples to apples comparison, uh, I think you're gonna be a much more successful company. And and so support can drive a lot of that. I I think support is instrumental in product-led growth. And and if you can build that into the culture and a startup phase really early on and make sure that feedback is is categorized, is is reviewed, uh, is is fed into a product, um, uh product development cycle of some sort. Um, yeah, I think the support leader in a startup can really make uh uh promote that culture internally.

Charlotte Ward: 11:20

Which which expands the role like way beyond just just leading the support team and operationalizing it. It it becomes something that is bigger than support. And and I think that's a really exciting place to be, like a lot of startup life, right?

Craig Stoss: 11:35

Yeah, that is the truth, right? I think I think it's um we we've romanticized startups a lot, but I I think there are parts of it, you know, that there's certainly parts of it that are bad. Um we we probably all know that, but there are some parts of it that are just so engaging because you know, you you come to a support department of a of a few hundred or you know, even a few thousand people, and driving some of that culture is is nearly impossible because even in if you have two 200 people in a sport department, even an attrition rate of 1% is is just constantly refreshing that pool, right? If you do 1% a quarter or something, you know, you're you're you're having to train new culture every quarter to two, three, four people. Yeah, and changing the culture of a of a team of 200 is is is a lot harder because A, there's more people, but even at even at small attrition rates, even if you're losing and replenishing and rehiring um you know at a small rate, that's still a lot more people than than that same small rate of attrition at a small uh small team of five or 10 individuals. And so the the net outcome is that if you build that into the culture early, if you build that into the people's minds, the company, the teams, um to get the processes in place, get the tooling in place, sure it must evolve as you scale, absolutely, but that culture will remain. Whereas if you're coming into a team of of a couple hundred or or a larger team anyway, um there's a lot more work to do there to add that after the fact. And so um as a sport leader, that's where where I really like to play is in that in that building that culture up from the from the ground up.

Charlotte Ward: 13:15

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you convince one person in a startup and you've you've won maybe 10% of the battle. Convince one person in a team of 200, it's it's still a long way to go, right?

Craig Stoss: 13:26

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And and and and this stuff is so important. I I well, we we've talked about this before, you know, if if I were to predict the trend for the next you know, two or three years, it's all going to be about customer centricity, right? Supporting your customers, how they want to be supported, and and taking their feedback seriously. And and now with with the different tooling around the machine learning of sentiment analysis and all these all these chat analysis tools, analysis tools, and and everything that that now exists in the ecosystem, that's a lot easier to do.

Charlotte Ward: 13:59

Yeah, we're not reinventing the wheel all the time.

Craig Stoss: 14:01

No, yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 14:03

Thank you so much, Craig. Thank you.

Craig Stoss: 14:05

Thanks for having me.

Charlotte Ward: 14:10

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