204: Fireside with Lauren Fearn

Charlotte Ward: 0:12

Hello and welcome to episode two hundred and four of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today, please welcome Lauren Fern for a fireside chat. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Lauren Fern. Lauren, it's lovely to have you join me again. It's been a while. I think we just established it's been something like six months since we last spoke. I don't know what I really don't know what's happening to the world, or to me, maybe one or the other. But it's lovely to have you back. No worries. Um you're here today uh for a fireside chat and talking about something that I am really passionate about, passionate about, which is like building those career pathways within support, right?

Lauren Fearn: 1:04

Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 1:06

So um I and I think this is something that is um it's not like it is careers and support, first of all, are not obvious. Like I think people think of support as kind of a single track. You you get in, you work on the front line, and then you either become a manager or you go elsewhere in the in the organization, right? But we can do we can do so much more with it, can't we?

Lauren Fearn: 1:31

Yeah, exactly. And and I see I see this this um kind of conversation happening in support-driven. Um, I've had you know um folks ask me about it as well, is is essentially how do we do it at Zapia? Because um we've gone through a real process of evolution around this. Um, you know, back when I joined the company in 2018, everyone did everything. So we had a customer champion role, and um everybody was doing a bit of everything. So it was it was a bit chaotic, but it meant that we could really, everybody was trying things and pushing their skills. Um, but there was no standardized progression, so there wasn't even kind of like a senior role um or beyond that. And so what we did was we introduced back in 2018, we introduced a senior customer champion role and a principal customer champion role as well, um, which is pretty standard. Those those um, I think those roles definitely for um, I think having two roles in support is definitely pretty standard. The principal one might be one um that folks haven't really um introduced, depending on how many people you have on the team and everything. But I just think it's so important to try and retain support folks. I think I'm biased obviously, but I think support people are just the most incredibly smart, talented, interesting people. We should be doing whatever we can to keep people in that industry and keep support fun and and um innovative and motivating. So that's why I wanted to chat about this.

Charlotte Ward: 2:56

Yeah, I and I think you're right. I I first of all, I agree about support people. And and I would also add to like that, that set of um that set of skills and characteristics. I was I would add that they're also multi-talented and flexible with it, which actually is both a joy when you're within working with a team of people like that because they can turn their hand to anything, but but it's also like the danger zone, isn't it? Because it just it blows open opportunity for them within an organization. So they can turn their hand to anything. So, you know, I have heard of obviously tech support people heading to engineering or heading to product, but even like going from or into success or something, but but even like going from support to finance and places like just these weird leaps. But it's because these people can generally turn their hand to so many things and like how you retain that interest and keep keep them kind of compelled to stay in the team and and exercise those skills to the benefit of the team and the customer.

Lauren Fearn: 3:57

Yeah, exactly. And the thing that we found was we had these roles, we had these job descriptions, and they've evolved over time and everything. But then this the the sticking point really was that you you have these, say you have two job descriptions, you have customer champion, you have senior customer champion. There's no there's nothing in the middle to kind of connect the dots to say, okay, here's what you need to do to get from A to B. Um, and so what we kind of found was that we'd have folks kind of come to their manager and say, I really want to level up. Um, you know, how do I do that? It and it didn't feel very transparent, which is just not really at all aligned with what we're trying to do. Um, and the core support teams especially are growing, and there's a lot of folks in those teams now. We really needed to make this a standardized process to a certain extent. Obviously, everyone has different skills, so their their tracks might be different, but for the most part, we needed to make it as equitable as possible. So we just recently rolled out um what we're calling pathways into. So we have a pathway into senior customer champion, which is essentially to really boil it down, that sounds very jazzy, but to boil it down, it's a checklist of things that we think people should do around that's that's kind of centered around the job description, but is a bit meatier than a job description that will allow people to really feel like they're ticking stuff off and saying, okay, I'm progressing. And I'm a very like visual person, and the way that I see it in my head is that it's literally somebody who is like walking along a road and then they're picking up these skills as they go along, and then they're getting further and further along, and then the end is kind of like you know, promotion or whatever it is. Um, and so we we kind of introduced this um pathways intersecting customer champion concept. Um, we and it's gone really well. It you know, it was kind of what you were saying before the call, is that it just works kind of thing. So it was very you said an amazing sentence that you've got to say it, Charlotte.

Charlotte Ward: 5:54

Okay, all right, okay. I I was just I was just I was I was on that path with you thinking about picking up skills, and I was thinking that's that's almost how I visualize it. Like I've just rolled out something within within my team as well. We were just talking about before the call, and the way I see it is almost like tracks as well. So so all the things you just said that don't necessarily like it's not an abstract job description, it's a set of really tangible things. They have a continuum, and I think that's important actually, that this isn't just a cut-off from one thing to the next, it's a continuum and it's and it's allowing people to grow in certain ways and and grow in different ways as well. And and first of all, the thing we talked about before was like you know you've got it right when it kind of just works, when it's fairly frictionless to introduce it. But but what I found is that like creating something like this, creating these tracks that feel more continuous um without that hard cutoff, my my my team have just seen themselves in it. Like they're all at different stages and they've all got different skills and they've all got different interests. But in I I have a sort of slightly different take on it, but the basic structure with tracks is is very similar, I think, with with these, um, with these minor like checkpoints and skills to build up. The thing is that that feels like it's not binary, and I think that that's the point that and I think that aids that kind of any one person in your team, it helps them see themselves in it because it's not binary. It's like I'm not I am definitely doing all that, but I'm not that yet. Yeah, they're stuck in the middle. Actually, they can see themselves on that continuum.

Lauren Fearn: 7:35

Yeah, yeah. And I just I love I love the way that you've put it, that people can really see themselves in it. I'm gonna go and tell all of my direct reports about that when when I finish this call. Cause I think it's a really powerful way of talking about it. Um, so we've we've introduced these kind of pathways, tracks. Um, I think it's a really good way of thinking about it. And as you say, it's been very easy to roll out, it's very simple, it's very clear. Um, we've made it very clear to folks that you know there may be you maybe working on one thing longer than maybe another person is working on it, but the goal is still the same, the expectations are still the same as well. Um, so that's been really um, really important and very well received. And so we're gonna be we've introduced a pathway to team lead as well, which is very similar. Um, again, if you boil it down, it's a checklist of things like take unconscious bias training, be on the interview team, all of these things that we expect to be a bit of a program of maybe like a six-month period, so that when a role does come up, someone you know has done all of those things that we would expect of a team lead. Um, so that's been really nice as well to have those just clear expectations. I feel like basically everything comes down to clear expectations, really.

Charlotte Ward: 8:45

It certainly does. And um you've described two paths there, one into a more senior technical role and one into a team lead role. Um, and growth does happen in different ways, doesn't it? And and actually, I'd I'd I'd love to like explore with you like how much overlap there is between those two pathways as well. I assume that most there's going to be elements of it that definitely both of those paths will kind of they're skills that anyone on either of those paths will need. So there'll be some overlap. But but do you see the do you see them as like quite mutually exclusive paths? Once you're on one, are you on that path? Or can you, you know, how how mutable is it all as a as a track?

Lauren Fearn: 9:23

That's a really great question. So they're they're relatively separate because um we've always kind of thought of of leadership as a separate skill, just like being technical is a separate skill. And so the thing that we try to do at Zapier, and this isn't like a we don't say that you can never try anything new, but we say it's a really we our recommendation is to choose something and work on that for an extended period of time. You know, I'm not talking years, I'm talking, you know, weeks or months, to really get into it and feel like, okay, is this what I want? Um, and that's what the pathways are kind of intended to do. But you're right, there's so much overlap with with both ways, really, because to be um a team lead, you still are going to be in the queue for a substantial amount of your week. Um, and as a senior customer champion as well, we we try to encourage and expect from folks peer leadership skills as well. So helping to shepherd the queue and making sure that if there's an outage that a senior customer champion um is around can weigh in. All of these kind of things that um are level up opportunities for folks. So yeah, they're very we try and keep them separate, but there is a lot of overlap. Um, so for sure it's um yeah, they're both probably useful things for everyone to do as they level up.

Charlotte Ward: 10:37

Yeah, yeah. And and therefore, like despite committing to something for a period of time, it's not a complete wrench if you decide it's not for you and you want to head off on the other path. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lauren Fearn: 10:51

I think it's really important to to you know to identify that and and to be able to say, say you have been in a um on a team lead pathway, or uh, you know, we even have folks who have been team leads, and the intention behind the team lead role was that you can do it for a while, but if you decide that leadership isn't for you, that's fine as well. Um, so we have folks who have tried it out for a while and then decided that it wasn't for them and decided that they'd rather be an IC and work on their projects and stuff. So um I think that the pathway allows people to dip their toes in in a bit more of a um focused but not super committed, like right, I'm in the role kind of thing. It allows you to kind of you know do things like interviews or or doing QA for other uh folks and things like that that are things that a team lead would be doing on a daily basis.

Charlotte Ward: 11:40

Yeah, yeah. Um how has so when you built these pathways, one question I would like to ask is um, because I I know that I I kind of here where I am now, I brought to bear a kind of a couple of other experiences I've had in other organizations and I pretty much drew it up. But then, you know, before before this life, I was I was giving masterminds where one of the one of the workshops I gave was on career progression and support. And so I kind of had, I I don't add like I don't necessarily advocate for arriving in a role with like a an a fixed idea of how you're gonna do things, but yeah, I I kind of in this sense already knew the approach I would take, even though there would be be some flex in it for the specifics of my team and organization. Um, but in terms of Zapia, it's a much bigger team than I'm working with here. Um, and uh you have the opportunity therefore to bring in a bit more structure than necessarily I have um in terms of leveling. How much collaboration and discussion was there from the ICs about what they wanted this to look like and and how did you shape it? And and you know, because I think that that um it seems to me that like understanding what those checkpoints are and and how people feel they sit on one track or the other is going to be a big part of like the the buy-in that you get from the team, right? So so how tell me how it was formed.

Lauren Fearn: 13:08

Yeah, I mean the biggest thing really was that we we just we have such a great managers and team leads and ICs have a very open communication, you know, we we do really, really um have deep conversations about career growth, and growth is always something that we've talked about, especially within the core support team, um, to make sure that people feel like that they're progressing. And so it's always been a thing, really, you know, how can we continue to be the best when it comes to career progression? Um, and one of the things was to have these different levels, but what I would say is that we're still not at that point where we want to be, because in the future, what we will want to move into is way more specialization. So we have a principal customer champion role, um, which is like a we have a rough job description for that, but it needs to be very specific to the job that somebody is doing. So they made the the kind of common denominator might be like a set amount of queue time, project time, um, you know, uh experiments and things like that, but the actual specifics will be completely different. Um, and so there's some ambiguity around that role, so it's not perfect. But what I would love to do in the future is for us to have more specialization within the team so that we can continue to offer those um opportunities to everybody. Um, but the way that we kind of fielded feedback about this was just through having these conversations of like, what do you want to do? Where do you want to go? Lots of people saying, I want to stay in support, but I don't really know what I want to do, and I feel like I'm kind of at, you know, I'm I'm I'm where I wanted to be, what's next for me? Um, and in terms of the specific kind of tasks that we have listed on the pathway, they they came from conversations that we had previously around um promotions with ICs as well. So managers and ICs working together to figure out what those specifics are, pulling out the themes of those and then trying to make those into kind of um specific tasks for folks to kind of tick off their list. So um there's still there's still work to be done, but I think kind of what we were talking about earlier about foundational work, this is a solid foundation, I would say now.

Charlotte Ward: 15:20

Yeah, yeah. And and therefore, um you in terms of like how you roll it out, did you um like just like really practically how did that look? Did you roll it out and like everyone was able to kind of, as we were saying before, kind of identify where they were within that? And you presumably then you have people at different points on that journey, right? And it allows you to identify the one or two missing gaps and actually accelerate people quite quickly compared to where they might have felt before this program existed, right? Suddenly they're in a different place. Is that how you found it, like practically as you rolled it out?

Lauren Fearn: 15:58

Yeah, so the the the biggest thing that we did when we rolled it out was to we spun up a working group. So we had a manager who was working on it and a team lead, and then a group of I uh ICs who had kind of said, I want to be involved with this, I feel like I this is important to me. Um, so they were all responsible for really giving the feedback about that and kind of being the voice of the team. And then practically when we rolled it out, it was having conversations in small team meetings, and then we published a um kind of uh essentially, I guess, a results blog of of how it had gone and what we would what we were doing and what the future of that looked like. Um, and then after that, what happened was individual conversations in one-on-ones, and we kind of said to ICs who were looking to go through that level up process, um, think about where you're at, think about what you want to do, think about um what the opportunities are, because the the purpose of it was to really raise the bandwidth of opportunities and say, like this, you you're you're on this list somewhere, like where are you kind of thing. And so that's been really nice to kind of I think give people a little bit more confidence that they probably know they're probably further along than they think they are in that process. So that's always really lovely to be able to say, hey, you're doing great, like this is where you're at, these are the other things that you might want to be doing to get to that senior role. Um, and the other thing that we've done is we created a what we're calling the growth workbook, and so that's a coder doc um that is a template that we copy for everybody now, but it has all of their goals, all of their metrics, um anything basically that's related to the individual contributor is all in one place. So people are able to like really keep track of their goals, so they have skills-based goals and then they have practical goals. Um, and that all ties in with those pathways as well. So we've been able to just, I feel like we've kind of gone, here's loads of stuff that you can like use to your advantage. And and we haven't sort of said anybody has to do anything, but I think what we probably will do over the next few weeks is make the growth workbook required because it allows us to make sure that every single individual contributor is having the exact same experience when it comes to growth. So um that's the like next iteration of this, I think.

Charlotte Ward: 18:14

Yeah, yeah, that that makes complete sense. Um, and I think something that you just said there, just it just while you were talking about like the the checklist and everybody identifying where they are, and it's it's like clear how close you are to that endpoint. What just occurred to me actually was that there are a lot of echoes here in onboarding as well. And and actually, like if we think I've never really I've never thought about onboarding like this, but onboarding is another growth path, isn't it? It's like you're new to fully fledged. Um, and and the the way I operate onboarding is exactly in that manner. It's like these really clear points. You're picking up the skills as you go along, and then you then you kind of cross that that barrier into the next stage, which is of course at the start, it's just you're doing the job. But but I've never really thought about that parallel between the growth side and the onboarding side.

Lauren Fearn: 19:10

Yeah, it's really but that I I love that. That makes perfect sense. It's kind of like this constant evolution of learning um in this in the exact same format, but just at different times of your career, isn't it?

Charlotte Ward: 19:20

Yeah, absolutely. I'm gonna I'm gonna remember that.

Lauren Fearn: 19:23

Yeah, love that.

Charlotte Ward: 19:25

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What what do you do then? Um, so uh this is one final question um for you, which is you you touched a few times on specialisms. Um, and and at the moment, the the growth paths that you've laid out uh going towards they're going in two directions. They're going in the direction of leadership ultimately, or the direction of technical excellence and expertise ultimately. Do you see any um any other specialisms in there or any breadth of that to that that you might give over time? And if so, what does that mean? Look like?

Lauren Fearn: 20:01

This is like the thing that's constantly on my mind at this point because I feel like there's so much scope for this that, and and you have to get it right, it has to be the right specialization. So it could be a specific um type of app specialization for Zapia because obviously we have so many different apps. Um, or it could be you know more project-based because we we have personal development time where folks work on projects. Would it be something that is more project-based? So, okay, this person's going to work on um a specific tool within Zapia um that we use as their specialization, but then their queue time is exactly the same as what it is now. So I haven't really fully fleshed that out yet, to be honest. But um it's something that I want to start thinking about soon because and I don't I hate to say this out loud, but obviously it's nearly middle of the year.

Charlotte Ward: 20:53

Oh, it's just between you and me. Like we won't remind anyone else of that. Yeah.

Lauren Fearn: 20:59

So yeah, it's just a weird place to be because you know, I really want to be doing this next year, and now it's starting to get to the point where I know before I know it it's going to be August. I'm going to start thinking about planning again. So don't have a super clear idea, but what I do know is that what we'll do is we'll sit down with all of the all of the team, all of the ICs, and and do some feedback around it and have a really good conversation, like what you're seeing in the queue that you think we could really tap into um as a specialization and understand what the goals would be of that specialization. So, I mean, other things, it could be that the specializations are are driven by metrics, so an upgrades kind of um focus or or however we want to play that, but there's a lot to uh figure out.

Charlotte Ward: 21:43

So many directions, which is why it's hard to craft it in support, yeah. I the what the the the the take I I built on it in in my own um plan here and and in previous plans is is to think about growth happening in two ways. It it happens like in in depths of expertise, effectively, and but then also it can happen in breadth. And I think like what I've tried to do is build tracks, but allow people to run on multiple tracks at the same time and go to different depths. Um, so um my the the area, the specialisms, if you want, that I've kind of drawn out are more like functional specialisms within the business. So I have like an operational specialism, I have a what I call a growth specialism, which is kind of speaks to our relationship with success and sales and marketing. Then I have a a product specialism and a an engineering and tech specialism. So so like and and they're not exclusive. So so they can they can go to that, they can walk as far along the track on any one of those specialisms as they want, but but ultimately they're not exclusive. So we can kind of you can dip into one but be quite far advanced on another.

Lauren Fearn: 22:57

Yeah, love that. That's yeah, that's super interesting. I think um, yeah, those specializations within the business as well obviously really helpful folks if they did want to long-term move into other roles. Um, you know, they've got all of that kind of history of of helping out with with other work.

Charlotte Ward: 23:14

Yeah, and I I find that um you can drive them quite a long way as well. And and um because it's always from the support side, um, there's there's uh it's not directly it can be uh exactly as you said, it can be a path into other parts of the business, but but my hope is that there's enough runway on those tracks that I'm gonna retain those people for quite some time, you know. Um and then you start, and then there's other tracks available, but then there's also the leadership or like this the super um depth of technical skills kind of expertise that would that would naturally sit with like a senior role or something, exactly as you describe as well. Yeah, it's really fascinating. There's just so many fascinat facets to this uh in support because we're complex people and uh varied people, you know. So uh it's always it's always an education when I hear how someone else is doing it. So yeah, thank you for bringing that to the podcast today. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to chat about it. Thank you. No worries. Um, come back soon. Let's not leave it another six months. No, let's not. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks very much, Lauren. That's it for today. Go to customersportleaders.com forward slash two zero four for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.