189: Support in the Business with Craig Stoss

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 189 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'd like to welcome to the podcast today, Craig Stoss. Craig, it's lovely to have you join me again this week where we are talking about support in the business.

Craig Stoss: 0:43

Yeah, thank you so much for having, Charlotte.

Charlotte Ward: 0:46

So let's let's unpack this then. It's a very deliberately ambiguous topic, actually, because over the course of the podcast, I've talked about support's relationship to different business functions, which are very you can dig really deep on some of these really specific relationships and the way support interacts and how you operationalize and so on and so on, any of those single relationships. But this broader topic of where support sits in the business, how support functions in the business, its place in the business, is one that I think there's there's a lot of room for maneuver in. What do you think?

Craig Stoss: 1:21

Well, I mean, I think to keep it even more ambiguous, I mean, I would argue that it if unless it's considered arrogant, the support should be everywhere in the business in some ways, right? So um yeah, it's it's one of these topics that uh when I think of support in the business, I go back to the quote that I love and I know we've talked about before of customer experience being a mindset, not a department. And and part of that mindset is is some of the stuff we discussed in a previous podcast on on crisis management, for example, where we talked about how your entire team, your entire company doesn't have to be support level trained, but also needs to have updated information when there is a crisis, for example. And so they can they can speak intelligently to customers. And that's what I think support in the business means to me is how to support and engage with all these different departments to make sure that uh feedback is being delivered to the right people, to make sure that processes are being adjusted as necessary, to make sure red flags are flagged into your account management team, um, the product is changing, crisis uh communication is done, all of these things that that are probably controlled by the support department or maybe owned by the support department, but really have so many stakeholders outside of that department.

Charlotte Ward: 2:36

Yeah, yeah, that's very true. Uh, I and I do, you know, I've always loved that quote of yours that about customer experience being a mindset, not a department. And I think actually it's it's something that you have to sell as well, isn't it? Internally, I think that um often organizations will assume that their customer service team is their customer experience, or that their customer success team is their customer experience. Um, or you know, their entire customer office is their customer experience uh rather than that is uh an enabler for that customer experience.

Craig Stoss: 3:18

First, I'm not going to take credit for that quote. I'm sure it's someone else's. I just I repeat it a lot because I really believe in it as a mentality. Um but uh yes, I think you're I think you're right. And I you hear a lot about um, you know, market and sales-driven companies, uh, marks, sorry, marketing and sales-driven companies where where there's uh you know clear value and they have campaigns around that value and they they they actively seek out customers and try to convince people of the value. Then you kind of have the product-led growth side of it where the strategy is more about, okay, well, you know, try our product out, see what it looks like, and we'll convert you into paying customers and growth. And then there's more of a account management side of the business. And and I think support plays so well in both of those because in a product-led side, uh, you know, product like model, support can go in and highlight the feedback, highlight the areas of the product that need improvement, uh, highlight the feature sets for that potentially are being used or commented on more from a support context or a community forum context that are driving either good sentiments or bad sentiments, run the voice of customer surveys and be able to feed that in, uh, which is again a huge product-driven uh thing, part of that model. And on the marketing sales side, I mean, we've probably all had an experience where sales potentially has misspoke or or oversold something and and and support has to kind of clean the mess up, which obviously hurts the customer experience. And and that could be fed back into the sales uh cycle uh comments, or or support could build a slide and advertise the value of the support department and make that part of the sales and marketing uh efforts. That's a that's an initiative I drove at a previous company where you know we had this amazing support team that provided tons of services, including, you know, code structuring and things like that, tech very technical support. And it wasn't even a blip on the sales radar of what value that the customers could get from that. And um, those are the things where I think that support fits within the business is people should be seeking out the fact that they're they're a point of contact for customers and using their data and information.

Charlotte Ward: 5:18

Uh you raise an interesting point there, which I think is an interesting little aside. So I'm going to go down this tangent um somewhat, which is which is that you said um, you know, you'd created content that talked about um support for sales. Um I just think that when I've worked in organizations before, and I've written about this kind of in my early and and less high quality writing days, um, even if I say so myself, I I I attempted to uh describe uh a mentality that I've heard and and I've seen demonstrated in organizations, which is that when they attempt to describe support to particularly customers, it's described in the manner of the activities that support team does. Here is the it's and it's like a shopping list. Here's the things our support team does. And instead of here's the value our support team brings. And I think that's a really I think that's something that's I actually I find difficult. Like I can I know in my head and I can articulate it in the moment, but as soon as you try to commit that to paper for someone else, I've always like it it's a it's a constant um battle, I think, between that list of what they do and actually really articulating every one of those things, or even much more holistically at a higher level, the value of your support team in a way that makes sense for other people because we can do it. But but enabling other people to do that, that isn't just uh that list of activities is quite hard, isn't it?

Craig Stoss: 7:01

Yeah, and and so I I I actually completely agree with your sentiment, right? Is we should be talking about uh tasks, uh should not be talking about tasks, we should be talking about value, right? And um, and you have to draw some task restrictions, like you don't want your support team, you know, writing complex customizations for whatever you're doing, or and certainly they're not being the ones that are going to be, you know, flying to your your house or your business and and and fixing it directly. So there's just be lines drawn. Um to me, the focus should be on, you know, again, we we talk about if you ask support uh leaders you know how they support their their customers, the the response typically comes back in this in the form of channels. Oh, well, we have a chat, we have a forum, you know, we have we we do phone support, whatever. Um I don't think that's how we support our customers. And if you really, if you really peel the onion back, it's it's that's that's the that's the channel, that's the mechanism. But really in the background, it's um, you know, when are you available? Um, what what what services, again, going about the value, what services can you provide that get me back on track? You know, what SLAs are you going to adhere to? Um, are your different departments connected? Like, for example, if if uh I need to escalate to tier two, is there some sort of interaction there? Is there a handoff or or a collaboration thing? Like that's that's what the value to the customers are, so they don't have to repeat themselves. You know, I I always go back to some of the poorer examples where you call a department and they you talk to them, you describe your problem. Maybe you're you're you're you're going through a series of scripted or unscripted questions, and then they say, Oh, well, I have to hand you off to another department, and then you have to re-describe all that again. And and and it's just time after time after time these things happen. Um, that's the stuff that you should be highlighting in a sales initiative, you know, like collaborative tooling that enables us to seamlessly handle your your problem no matter what department it is.

Charlotte Ward: 8:52

Yeah.

Craig Stoss: 8:52

Uh, you know, notifications when when your defects are fixed that are automated and help you know that you can now accomplish something that you might be not able to accomplish a month ago or a week ago. You know, things like that. That's the value uh of how you get a customer back on track. And to me, that again is support being embedded in all parts of your business. Uh and uh we shouldn't be seen as that that you know, support department cost center, you know, trademark logo, this is a thing. Uh it should be it should be uh a service. Support is a service that permeates the the entire organization.

Charlotte Ward: 9:29

And I think that is the the bottom line, isn't it? I th I think that support permeating your business is just going back to what we were saying a moment ago about the art about enabling other parts of your business to articulate that. I I think that that happens if you allow and are willing and enable support to permeate your business. I think then it becomes the the the articul the the the onward articulation of that value from your sales team and and and the operationalizing of that value beyond your own remit as the support leader becomes much more natural. It's not a thing they have to talk about. It it is a thing they do, it's a thing they relate to, it's a thing they live and breathe.

Craig Stoss: 10:20

It's one of those situations where support as a department needs to exist, it needs to have its policies, it needs to have its own budget growth plan, all that stuff that every department needs. But as a concept, um has to be something that your your entire company believes in. I'm a huge fan of all hands support, where leaders, cross-functional individual contributors all participate for a shift a week or something, a shift a month, something like that, where they can understand the different types of pressures that that support is under, the different types of questions the customers are asking. Uh, you know, even if it's just a shadow session or or uh, you know, listen into a phone call or or something to that effect, or read an email thread. All of that has value to be able to understand, you know, there are people here, there are real problems that are being uh that exist with because of the product that you're producing and and how to solve those problems and how to be empathetic towards those situations. Uh, you know, those those are the things I think companies need to start driving a lot more. I I just I just see a future where we're gonna start getting much more automation into the world and and the human element is gonna become so much more important. And that human element may not be like it used to be, where you dial a phone number and you get a support agent, or you send an email and you get a support agent. It might be, you know, you're on the phone with someone, it's someone in the company because you're you don't want to talk to a computer, and that person needs to be enabled to do something. Again, not to the support training level, but somewhere who can direct you, even just making people aware that there's a knowledge base and how to search that knowledge base and what it contains is a huge win for support. Because if if a success manager or an account manager, uh anyone in sales or or someone is having a conversation, an executive is in a customer meeting and is having a conversation, they can say, oh, that type of question, like that type of like setup question that you're asking me, that's in our knowledge base, and and we update that knowledge base on this cadence and and we make sure there's screenshots and videos and explainer uh content. And um, even just having that that you know, going back to the sales deck slide, even having those three bullet points that are somehow included in a talk track just shows the value of support beyond, oh, well, we have a phone number and we're open nine to nine, you know, you know, Eastern time or whatever it is. And you know, like that, those things are those things used to be valuable because we used to be brick and mortar and knowing that they were open from nine to nine, that was valuable. Now we're not brick and mortar anymore.

Charlotte Ward: 12:54

Yeah, yeah, very true. And I think that finally it just comes down to some of the some of the language there that you use, you know, the the fact that salespeople would would kind of talk about support as this other thing. You know, I I I've had salespeople at multiple organizations that not calling out any particular one, multiple organizations that I've been involved with, talking about support as this other thing, this bit of the business that A, they don't relate to, B don't know much about, and C that they articulate in a in a very them and us way. Um, so a salesperson talking to a prospect would has historically approached me and said, when do you support our customers? How do you how do you do it? You know, rather than how do we do it or what it's it's the it's the them and us versus the we. And I think I think that just speaks exactly to everything you just said about permeating the business and enabling it throughout the business and and making it accessible in the business as well.

Craig Stoss: 13:57

Yeah, absolutely. I've always hated the term I'm gonna hand my account off to support now, you know, when sales close the deal, because it's like, well, no, we should have been probably involved in that sale. We should have been, you know, understanding this technical challenges of the of the customer that we're trying to solve or the what value the customers try to drive and you know being consulted on that. Um, so yeah, I 100% that sentiment is is how we should start thinking about support.

Charlotte Ward: 14:27

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