207: Fireside with Josh Magsam

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode two hundred and seven of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today, welcome Josh Maxim for a fireside chat. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today. Josh Maxim. Josh, lovely to have you back. Always a pleasure to have a chat. This time it's summer, but let's pretend we've got a roaring fire. You're here for a fireside today.

Josh Magsam: 0:46

Excellent. Yeah, I always love a good fire.

Charlotte Ward: 0:50

So with Firesides, my guest brings the topic. What would you like to talk about?

Josh Magsam: 0:55

Well, something I've been thinking about quite a bit lately is um specialization and support. You know, we think a lot about support is basic customer service and assistance, and however you define it, it's a fairly uh you know narrow set of parameters. Um but I'm thinking and hearing and seeing there's demand for more specialized type work. And I don't know that that's something that everyone has on the front of their radar, but I'm wondering if they maybe they should.

Charlotte Ward: 1:24

Interesting. Um I I've got some thoughts on specialisms myself, but I think first of all, like I'd I'd like to understand what your understanding of that word is in this context. What what exactly do you mean by specialisms?

Josh Magsam: 1:41

Yeah, it's fair enough. You know, specialization it's it's definitely a big, big topic, right? So what I'm thinking about really is um building out really customized work that probably falls outside the scope of what a lot of people think about support delivering today, right? Um you know, I'll give an example at a partner here. We were approached um by one of our current partners, excuse me, to think just a little bit about uh staffing delivery drivers for for one of their programs. Um now your customer support team is not gonna say, oh sure, we're gonna do delivery, that's something else. Um but it sort of opened the door to in my brain and in some conversations around our company, and I'm finding with a few other folks elsewhere to say, you know, beyond the traditional product support or account service or you know, technical assistance, um how else does this affect the scope of support if you say, I'm gonna go out and get a team of you know extremely dedicated and detailed um subject matter experts in a very unique field to do something unique and almost sort of turn it into a consultancy rather than um purely like I've got someone here who specializes in trust and safety, and someone here specializes in content moderation. And those are the sort of maybe specializations that you hear about you know more frequently in support kind of subsets or adjacent to core customer services, but really kind of out-of-the-box thinking in terms of what can support deliver? What does support, what else does support do that's very much um you know, front of office?

Charlotte Ward: 3:35

I think I think you used the the the right words there. It's the adjacency, isn't it? It's like where can we extend just beyond the remit of a traditional support team? And some of the things you said there are I think are fairly typical, you know, the kind of the trust and safety, maybe the operational side, the kind of success slash account management side of things, you know, these are all kind of specialisms within a business function. And then you have deep, um, what I would say are more technical specialisms perhaps that do lend themselves. Um, but and by technical, I don't necessarily mean technological in the like engineering or the technology space type things, but but um but the deep special deep specialisms that are much lend themselves much more to a consultative relationship with a customer rather than just being there to troubleshoot uh at a very surface level, right?

Josh Magsam: 4:35

Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, for for me, this goes hand in hand with um something that that that probably seems like it's a well it is a topic for another chat, really, but um, you know, what what is the role of in the future a human person in support, right? Um you know, AI uh advances are continuing to roll out, and you know, we're we're a few years away from AI handling everything that support does, depending on who you ask in the C suite that day is today, and depending on the actual engineers working on the product, that's a decade out, you know. Um, but you know, it it does sort of open up the door, I think, to say, okay, well, what what what is the role of high quality, um, well-trained, educated, adaptable, creative, human experience in the support world. And, you know, sure enough, um, if you talk to a lot of different managers and teams and and some of our partners, you know, they will say, Oh, basic account services feels like we should be able to deflect that to turn that over to a an automated solution. You know, they're not wrong. Those those sorts of things are increasingly easy to be accounted for, even in terms of security issues, if you know, two-factor authentication, all these other sorts of things, you can help people get their account settings back online. It's a better experience for the customer than waiting for you know a human person to get back and how to reset their password. Um so then it says, well, what else um needs to happen that maybe support isn't currently delivering, but could? How do we grow as a field? And um, you know, there's just been some interesting cases pop up in some brainstorm sessions. You know, do you do you go out and and find people who are really heavily involved in a certain process manufacturing and and have them actually be part of your your product support world and say, um, hey, customer who's coming in needing to support a business-to-business um operation? Um we we actually have people who've you know uh 3D printed, they've welded, they've got engineering backgrounds where this is really high-stakes work, right? They can they can come in and talk about the production line and actually consult with you and sit down and go over your um your customers' needs and really help be part of your sales process as well.

Charlotte Ward: 7:11

I mean, my my mind is going off in so many different directions. I'm gonna have to try and contain it a little. Um, I think I think I think it's um the thing that occurs to me is that you could go and seek those skills and find things to do with them, or you can grow them within the team, or you can utilize the people who are probably already experts in your organization and bring them into those, into those sort of more customer-facing relationships as well, couldn't you? I think there's a number of ways you could you could explore um you could explore making this service that we provide to our customers more of a partnership um and and more uh you know beneficial to the customer's whole organization, to their whole business, probably, rather than just getting that that one problem answered.

Josh Magsam: 8:04

Yeah. Yeah, I I think that's exactly it. It really is about deepening the relationship between the business and the customer. And you do that by connecting the customer to folks who really understand the product better than the customer. They've lived it, they've they've used it. And I don't just mean in the sense of um, you know, uh a lot of you know, product teams uh and support teams, they try to collaborate together and they you know they dog food the product and sort of make sure everyone kind of uses it, understands it. Absolutely all good steps forward. You know, but I'm I'm thinking very much about um uh you know, I'm I'm trying to trying to riff on an idea here without giving too much away on a current project. You know, but if if you're really looking for uh let's say um help with uh or you're you're you're gonna be purchasing um uh you know home improvement products and it's increasingly people do these things online and post-pandemic, if we are truly post-pandemic soon, you know, a lot of those online buying habits are gonna remain sticky. And so things that people might previously have gone to the you know, brick and mortar for, they will want to go online for. Um right now, if I go to a big box, um, you know, US Lowe's or Home Depot or something like that for audience here at home. Um, I'm gonna get a chat system. Maybe I'm gonna get a phone call. Um, maybe I'm gonna get connected to someone in the store if I really want to see about a specific um, you know, building material. Um, but I've been in the store when those folks get those calls and they're those poor folks are trying to check out three people, um, stock two shelves and then answer five phone calls. There, there's no time, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, what if instead you said, hey, the the support is actually connecting people to um to you know, a carpenter, a certified carpenter who can sit and say, Yeah, what you're gonna want for this project is this and that and that. And I would recommend this. And don't overblot, don't overblow it and buy these three materials over here. You're not gonna need that for the love of what you're doing. You know, do you want to upload the schematic? You're looking at a PDF or something, I can look at it with you and sort of sit down. And so in a sense, it's almost like returning to a very old school experience, right? In some ways, maybe replicating that experience of going into the small shop and talking to the the shoemaker or whomever is it has built the thing that you're about to buy and talking to them about it and learning where the material came from and all of that. It's trying to take that experience online and scale it.

Charlotte Ward: 11:05

Yeah, yeah. What I love about that example is it's so far removed from our normal conversations around SaaS. You know, and I know a lot of our audience are operating in like the technology and SaaS space. And and as you as you were talking through this kind of early, the early stages of this idea, I was thinking of an example I know with one of my other guests with Mo McKibbon, who um works at Moxian. So she she pulls in those expertise from the film industry all the time into her um success and support conversations because she needs people who understand like things that I don't understand about the film industry, like about colour technology and things like that, that you know, they're actually like in the processing rather than you know, that that rather than that are directly related to the software necessarily. Um but she needs the expertise from the industry. But you've brought a completely different example, which is very um it's entirely out of that realm. It's very related to, as you said, what we're we're all used to doing in person when we go to a brick and mortar, but it it translates actually relatively easily to uh say a remote-based support team with with these in-house expertise, these these in-house experts, right?

Josh Magsam: 12:27

Right, right. Yeah. Um, and I think any anywhere in a way, this is again almost maybe a callback to traditional retail where there are consumables and people want to know about it and where did it come from? And you know, what can I trace it down? I I do think there's something, you know, maybe out of the zeitgeist around it as well as people trying to be more conscious about their consumption. Am I buying a product? Where's the factory? How are people compensated at this facility, you know? Um, and and just being able to talk to someone and hearing, yeah, well, you know, the the you're about to buy a table from us, lovely. The the wood for the top is harvested from this particular region of you know, I don't know, in Norway, and the wood for the legs comes from uh uh somewhere in the central United States, you know, and and I mean you're you're definitely talking about a customer who's either making a very conscious and rare purchase, or um someone who sits at a level of the market where they have this capital and can spend it and want to be very cautious and careful about the purchase at the same time. Um so I don't think it's necessarily sort of full-blown. I think a lot of a lot of the the average consumption decisions, it's I'm buying a new set of you know, you know, ballpoint pen. I go to Amazon or wherever it is, I'm gonna buy the pack of pens that I like and it's the cheapest price, and et cetera. I don't think that's that's gonna drive it, but I do think the larger purchases, um, the things where there's a process involved, you know, connecting to uh uh a chef to walk you through, you know, that that uh meal delivery package you just got. You know, sure it was easy enough to follow the instructions, but now I'm thinking about what else I can do with this. Who can I talk to, right? Um, some of those sorts of things.

Charlotte Ward: 14:28

Um, one thing that occurs to me as well, now that uh we're talking about some of these considerations that a customer might have for any product or service that they're buying into. Everyone's coming with their own agenda. Some people are cost conscious, some people are environmentally conscious, some people are, you know, um trying to be more aware in one way or another around their consumption, um, or have other particular needs, right? I mean, they're trying to get something and they're trying to fulfill quite a specific and personal set of needs and desires from that product or service. And that the same is true as it for in the B2C environment, I think, as well as B2B. And I think that um all of those types of considerations, if you were to just kind of blow them out into the kind of wider B2B environment as well, they really speak to customer success, don't they? I really like the sort of definition of success as being, you know, are you helping your c your customers achieve the thing that was agreed when you sold them the product, you know?

Josh Magsam: 15:37

Yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 15:38

Um so you know, a successful customer is one who's had all of those promises fulfilled. Um, and it strikes me that as a as an individual consumer, if you're picking something up off the shelf in a hardware store or virtually online, and you're poking around with your own agenda, you're trying to figure out if this fulfills the promises you want it to fulfill, right? And I think that in some cases, you're not going to get those answers from an ingredients list or a or a sourcing page or whatever.

Josh Magsam: 16:12

Yeah, yeah, and an FAQ or knowledge base or or um or the community. You know, this is this is another aspect. Um, you had at a former role, we had a wonderful community. The the product had grown out of the community. There was a lot of activity back and forth, and you saw people helping each other. Um you know, but uh, how many times in your experience, you know, have you gone, gosh, I need to find the answer to something that isn't just you know documented in the first five hits on Google, and you find yourself going down the rabbit hole of you know Reddit threads, dear God, or you know, uh some community forums. And and by the time you get to the end of it, you're like, well, now I'm even more confused than I was before because I thought there was a solution to this, but like five people have told me that what I actually need, you know, I was just trying to figure out how to re-rewire my uh you know, plug uh wire a new plug into my toaster rather than go buy a new one. And by the end of it, it it sounds like I need a degree in quantum physics to do this, right?

Charlotte Ward: 17:17

You know, so well and also walking through this. Yeah, and also when you, yeah, exactly. That's what you want is somebody to walk you through it. Sorry, I completely interrupted you there, Josh. But uh I got a bit excited because also the other thing is that uh when you are in the depths of those Reddit threads or wherever you may be, you're having to collate all of that information, right, which is vast. It's an area that you aren't expert in, and you're probably getting a bunch of different conflicting opinions as well. So you're almost trying to kind of like ratchet, like rack up the votes for doing something one way or the other, or or give like increasing sense of trust to two different truths, aren't you? You know, as you as you kind of get gather these opinions and form a judgment based on them. Whereas if you do have that trusted advisor, which is something that we we we talk about in kind of support and success anyway, so really this is almost just an extension of that. If you actually have that trusted advisor, right in a you know, and single point of access to it, that would that's amazing.

Josh Magsam: 18:25

I I love that the trusted advisor, you know, and and something you said a moment ago too, the thinking a little bit uh in terms of maybe this is a B2C scenario that I'm describing, but there are parallels to B2B, you know, that the SaaS model, all of that. It there is some similarity for sure in terms of if I'm representing a large company and we're gonna make a purchase in a software application for productivity or you know, time tracking or whatever, what have you, you know, we're gonna talk to a few different entities, we want to see some demos. Um, you want to get some expertise. And here's where my critique comes in is that I I don't think a lot of the times that's what you get. You still get the sales team. Right. And and I don't know how many of us have had the experience of and I'm not throwing throwing shade on anyone here, of of doing one of those calls. Maybe if you've gone to the level of your org where you're like, yeah, I've I've been tasked to find us an application for something, I'm gonna do a bunch of demos, you know, and your first pass is with um uh a junior customer success manager or advocate who is really just there to read your script. And that's all they know, and that's all this put in front of them, and they're there to just to sort of vet you as a lead. And you're like, look, I'm serious about this. I've got a budget of X, I need a suite to plug out within the next quarter. Can we move on to the demo and then the follow up? And can I actually, you know, talk to someone about this? And so that's that's I think maybe a good area. To show the comparison, to say this is a miss, right? What if what if that level is to say, oh, you're going to connect with um the product expert right off the bat, right? We're not going to sort of do that screening. We're going to bring someone in who really knows this back and forth, doesn't run me through the CAN demo. Um but says, What is it you're trying to accomplish? Really? Can you show me your current system or something like that? And then says, okay, this is how I do it. This is what we use. This is a setup. Let me walk you through X, Y, and Z. Let me really unpack that for you. You know, I think probably less than half of those first pass demos I've been in have really told me much about how the application is going to affect me. But if I got to go back and advocate for a five or six figure a year budget for a productivity suite, I need to, I really need to talk to an expert who can tell me this will solve the problem rather than plug it in and at six months later go. Well, it's only doing half of what we thought it would, right? And I think we've all had that experience.

Charlotte Ward: 21:00

Yeah. Which goes back to that that statement I made earlier about, you know, a successful customer is one that has all of those first promises. Right. Uh delivered. Right.

Josh Magsam: 21:12

Yeah. Yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 21:13

Yeah. Hmm. Well, this has been an interesting fireside chat. I really feel like we have just chewed the cud for 20 minutes. But I think like I I hope I hope it's um it's been as uh thought-provoking for everyone else as it has certainly been for me. So um I thank you very very much for bringing the topic. It's been super interesting.

Josh Magsam: 21:37

Always a pleasure.

Charlotte Ward: 21:40

And uh in closing, I think I might just pin you down and get and ask you for a parting thought or a parting piece of advice just to make sure we deliver the final brand promise of this podcast, which is to take something away that people can uh can go away, think about, maybe spark a new idea for them. What what's your top tip, last piece of advice, parting thought?

Josh Magsam: 22:04

Oh gosh, uh sparking uh uh sparking an uh an insight. You know, I'll just share something that's that's been top of mind for me and my team lately, which is making sure that um uh your your you as a leader, as a manager are are taking a moment to breathe, practicing self-care, giving yourself uh a little bit of perspective. Um and particularly if you're a uh freshly new to management and customer support leadership, welcome. And also uh, you know, you need to pause, collect your thoughts once in a while. Um you're gonna make more mistakes the more burned out you are. You can feel a lot of the times like your role is to lift all the burdens for your team. And some days it's true, but you can only do it if you're rested and ready. Um, so watch out for burnout, give yourself a breather, give your folks some time off, and take care of yourself.

Charlotte Ward: 23:03

Yeah, I I love that. Thank you. And I think I think to give a little context to that, you and I are both just back from a break, separate breaks, I should say.

Josh Magsam: 23:11

That's right. That's right.

Charlotte Ward: 23:12

But we're both back from a week off. So maybe we're a little bit more refreshed than we might usually be. So take care out there. Yeah. Thanks so much, Josh. I will talk to you soon.

Josh Magsam: 23:22

Talk soon.

Charlotte Ward: 23:26

That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash 207 for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.