187: Support in the Business with Doug Akers

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode one hundred and eighty-seven of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. This week we talk about support in the business. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I would like to welcome to the podcast today, Doug Acres. Doug, it's a pleasure to have you as a guest. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Doug Akers: 0:41

Yeah, thanks so much, Charlotte. I appreciate it. I've been listening to your podcast for quite some time, Stellar Job. As you said, my name is Doug Acres. I've been in the tech scene for quite a bit, played roles from product management, customer success, sales and support. And I'm looking forward to our chat today.

Charlotte Ward: 0:56

Awesome. Thank you so much. So, Doug, the topic for this week is supporting the business. And you've got quite a uh, yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's a kind of hmm. Hmm. That's kind of how we all feel about it, right? Um so let's talk about supporting the business. You you've been involved actually in different parts of the organization, as you just said in your intro, you've been involved in quite a few different parts of the business. So maybe like maybe you bring kind of an interesting perspective here.

Doug Akers: 1:28

I think I do. I think it's a little biased though, because I did start my career in support. So I do have a soft spot for uh for the group and the function for sure. But every role that I've I've played across the various companies I've worked for ties into support quite well. Uh market research, you're looking for the customers that have something to say and the trends uh of the issues that they're finding and the problems that they're finding. Um product management, obviously, support is uh a treasure trove of information, um, whether it's uh user experience or or the problems that they're trying to solve again, or or just anecdotes you need for this, that, or the other release or PC or product. It's really, really fantastic place to gather stories as a product manager. Um, when I was in the customer-facing side of the world, so sales, customer success, and and support, um what I found was a lot of people think of the latter two of those, success and support, as one group. And and that's not really the case. They're doing different things at different levels of the organization, and and I think it's important to separate those. And then uh sales, um, they rely on support as their as their technical part of their brain. So um, yeah, everywhere you are in the business, every function that I've been a part of or led, um, support's played a very, very big role.

Charlotte Ward: 2:42

And I think what's interesting is that um every one of those parts of the organization has different objectives and different measures of success and different uh paths that they're trying to tread right organizationally. That but we're um we're all ultimately part of the same organization, but we're all ultimately in theory heading towards the same set of goals. So how do you how do you relate from a support perspective, how do you relate yours and your team's goals to other parts of the organization and and to those higher level higher level objectives?

Doug Akers: 3:24

It's uh it's a great question, and it's a tough question. It's one that I struggle with um quarter over quarter every time you're calling up for new OKRs or new ways to measure. And um, you're absolutely right. The the entire company, um stem to stern, should be shooting for that North Star. And that North Star better be very clear from the management about where we're going and why we're going there. Um highlight on the ladder, make sure you're you're communicating the why. And then each function has to line up what they need to do day to day um with achieving those goals. And and for some, it's pretty straightforward, right? Um, sales has a target. Usually it's monetary, um, sometimes it's your volume of customers, um, but it's it's a very tangible target. With support, it's less so. And uh and and our our job uh and the way it's viewed by the rest of the business most times is tactical. And I don't I don't believe that's truth for a second. I think there's very much a strategic arm to support, but but the perception of the function is it's tactical and that it reacts um to what the users are doing and what the market is doing with your product, whatever that product may be. Um so the typical things that you would line up, you know, um open time for a ticket or number of tickets closed or uh the number of tickets open at a certain time, or you know, the the really easy stuff to collect is not the most useful stuff from a line to goal perspective. Um so so finding that line to goal perspective and finding those OKRs that really point to that North Star is is tough. What I've had success doing is saying, um, are we operating as a as a cost center or are we operating as a profit center? And and they help define the goal lines of what you can think in from support's perspective. Uh is it is it an area of the business that we know we're we're taking a hit on because our product is very early stage, as an example. It doesn't have all the nice you know ribbons and frills and whatnot of a more established product. So support is taking on more of that burden because there are gaps, there are issues, and that's okay, in which case you probably trend towards a cost center. We're gonna overload support to hit that north star of growing our business. Um if it uh if if you're looking for it to be more strategic, more of a profit center, like a product-led business, this whole wave of product-led growth, I absolutely love it. I think it's fantastic because it puts support you know from the center, whether the product-led growth people will admit it or not, um, it is your voice of customer. And uh and then you can start measuring cool things like number of stories collected and number of uh you know, number of ideas submitted and and uh and the traction of those types of things. Um I'm not really answering your question at all. I apologize for that. But um uh what I guess I'm trying to say is the easy stuff, the the operational stuff is is not north star stuff. So you've really got to dig for what that North Star is and say, okay, what is the function of support and how is it uh helping us achieve this, this North Star? And and depending on where you are as a company, um, some of the answers may be obvious. Um I mentioned early stage companies uh before. So I'm going for land grab, I'm going for customer grab. So making sure that customer's experience is is top-notch. I'm not saying all support departments shouldn't aim for that, but early stage companies, absolutely, because word of mouth and and referral traffic is how you build really, really fast. And um and if you can go above and beyond in your support job, uh so I would use things like um ratings, you know, survey ratings or or ticket ratings uh and and the number of um the number of five stars as an example you can generate as a rep or as a group, as one of those for early stage companies. Later stage companies where you're you're in the in the mode of maintaining the product and and keeping it status quo, it would probably be measured by things like um you know your ability to reduce the number of incoming calls through self-serve support or or on the saving side of the business, right? Making sure that as the product enters that um that latter stage of its life cycle, so too is the support function, right? It's more self-serve, it's more hands-off, uh, it's more in-product type resources rather than the higher cost people resources. And really aligning your okay's and whatnot to to what the business is trying to achieve. I don't know, I don't know if that really didn't answer your question. It did.

Charlotte Ward: 7:42

I think it did. I think it did. I think you've done an admirable job of answering my question, which is which is ultimately that I think that you're right, it's it's about not necessarily drawing a really obvious line, because there isn't an obvious line, and you and you do just have to find actually what it is that you can do really quite internally within the team to particularly early stage, particularly we're talking about efficiencies, probably early stage. And then, as you said, later stage, more about uh, you know, more about I hate the term, but ticket deflection, which which is another form of efficiency in some respect. But but yeah, yeah.

Doug Akers: 8:24

I think ticket deflection is an interesting term. Uh I like low-touch support over high touch support because it's still a necessary thing, but you are absolutely right. You're you're highlighting things to the product team that will minimize the number of high-cost interactions you have to do with your customer base. And you're implementing things, video tutorials, uh knowledge bases, knowledge base articles, and whatnot, that again minimize those high-touch interactions. And it's no less valuable, and it's still giving top quality support to your customers. It's just doing so in a different way. Um and the and the early stage stuff, yeah, you're the efficiency is about okay, we we we don't have money, uh, so let's do the best we can with what we've got. And everybody's on support, right? Everybody's everybody's filling the role in some capacity. Yeah, yeah. At least in my experience from an early stage perspective, uh, CEO down to down to your support person is is is playing that role.

Charlotte Ward: 9:16

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