208: Fireside with Doug Akers

Charlotte Ward: 0:14

Hello and welcome to episode 208 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today I'd like to welcome Doug Acres for a mini fireside chat. So today I welcome back Doug Acres. Now, this is a conversation that I recorded a little while ago. It wasn't officially a fireside chat, but I think it's worthy of being one. So have a listen and do tell me what you think. Thanks so much to Doug for joining me again. Doug, it's lovely to have you back this week to talk about all hands support.

Doug Akers: 0:55

Thanks so much, Charlie. It was a pleasure uh being here every time, and I'm I'm looking forward to this topic.

Charlotte Ward: 1:00

Awesome. Thanks so much. Um so yeah, so let's talk about that. Um when when do you think it's appropriate to begin conversations about all hands support? And I suppose actually, um, one thing that occurs to me is is whether you think or not all hands support as a concept suits every organization. Is it something that every organization should consider doing in some way or another?

Doug Akers: 1:24

I I don't think every organization should do it. I think at some point in an organization's evolution, all hand support ceases to scale. There's just too many bodies uh and and it's too much of a scheduling um thing um to keep everybody in the business on the support desk. That said, I think every early stage company should be all stage all hand support for sure. It uh it gives every function, regardless of what you are, exposure to the customer. And I think that's super important, not just the salesperson, not just product management, not just success, but um the development roles, the product roles, and the executive roles, I think uh equally important.

Charlotte Ward: 2:06

Do you think that there are organization types, say industries or verticals that it's particularly suited to? I the reason I ask this is that the thought of all hand support, I've worked generally my my whole career in really quite high-tech uh organizations. Um and for the last 16 or so years, I've been leading support teams in those organizations. And the thought of doing all hands support now in in some of the technologies that I've been involved with in recent years, pretty pretty darn scary. I can tell you that.

Doug Akers: 2:45

That's absolutely fair. And and uh I can only draw on my experiences, which predominantly is uh software, and uh I'd say roughly split 50-50 between consumer-facing software versus uh technical audience software. So if I hearken back those same 16 years in my career to the uh high-tech software, you're probably right. Uh, I don't think some of the executives, uh necessarily some of the folks, and I'm not belittling these roles at all, or their skill sets, they're differently smart, they're not less smart, um, would have the technical chops to do what the support teams do on the front lines. In in my last two organizations, what was one was education technology, the other was e-commerce. Um, a hundred percent. Everybody, it's built and made for the every person. Um, so everybody could do do that level of support. And I think it's it was pretty pivotal in in one of those organizations to really shift the mindset of the entire organization towards customer and the customer story. And uh, and I used the support department and having those roles on support as a means to foster that change. Um, and it was quite successful. So you're right, I can't speak to uh to hardware-based products, I can't speak to Uber Technical. Uh, I don't know if I'd want to do support for John Deere as an example uh or NASA, uh Rolls-Royce and their helicopter engines over in your neck of the woods.

Charlotte Ward: 4:08

Uh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Doug Akers: 4:10

I don't think they'd have me. Um, but at least from my experience in software tech and consumer product, I think it's it's absolutely a good thing.

Charlotte Ward: 4:16

Yeah, yeah. And you know what? I think thinking about it, even in those high-tech industries, um, maybe even with you know, Rolls-Royce helicopter engines or whatever it was you just said that that I think you know that there are certain aspects to the to the frontline role though, right? That anyone can get involved in. That there's there's nobody on the planet who can't pick up a virtual telephone and talk to a customer, I guess.

Doug Akers: 4:43

Well, have you met some of the software engineers? I I would have refused that actually. I'm kidding, of course. I'm kidding, of course. But um, at the very least, they can shadow a rep, right? They can shadow a support rep. And you could tailor your your all-hand support across those types of businesses to one that that is like um co-programming, right? Uh um just having someone shadow the call and and understand how the customers talk about their problems and how the customers talk about their products, and how the support rep handles those situations and the resources that are available for them to point to. I think you don't have to be um the one speaking, the one put on the spot to answer the question to get this information. I mean, in that company that I talked about, we recorded a lot of the interactions with customers on video calls and whatnot, and made those recordings available to the product team, the engineering staff. And they would gobble them up on their own time. And uh and then they would come back and ask questions about that customer. And when they're proactively asking questions or in a in a meeting, they're throwing out, well, this customer on that call said this, you know you struck goal because they found the empathy that the support function knows to be today. And that's what you want from them. You want them to touch uh the customer, hear the customer voice, uh, in the customer voice.

Charlotte Ward: 5:57

I think that's a beautiful moment when your product team reaches out and says, you know what, we've had this idea.

Doug Akers: 6:05

Right, and it's based on something customer language, yeah.

Charlotte Ward: 6:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and they they that we we want to make this better, either either for your customers or for your support team. It has happened. I've had it happen to me.

Doug Akers: 6:18

And makes your heart go pitter patter.

Charlotte Ward: 6:22

Living the dream, living the dream, dark, I am. Well, I will say, I will say that uh in my case it wasn't through um because because I couldn't be trusted to talk to talk the language of some of my uh some of my customers and certainly not my uh my own engineers at this point. I am, as you so diplomatically put it, differently skilled. Um that um at this point though, I I am able to tell some stories based on what I know about the support team. And I'm able to tell stories about their challenges and the challenges that they're facing with customers. And beginning to be able to tell those stories, whether you've got them directly, or as you said, whether it's through some kind of shadowing or you know, kind of just having the conversations with the people who are doing the work, um, being able to surface some of those stories is an interesting point to be. And if you can tell those stories and and round them out and give them visibility, um then the the moment, well however it comes about when that software engineer, when that product engineer reaches out to you and says, I think I've got an idea. I as we just said, it kind of is like this this is this is what I've been living for.

Doug Akers: 7:40

It's all about the context, right? It's all about providing the context for the work that people are doing. And the paired programming way of shadowing is interesting in the other direction as well, because the support rep understands how the software engineer thinks and the things that they care about and the things that they you know pay attention to when they're doing their work. And it's really a great way to um, by osmosis, if you will, um, share the share the world's walk in the shoes um of the other role. And I think um bringing the customer empathy to the other functions and then bringing the other functions functions empathy to the support wrap is really what all hand support is all about. It's not optimization, it's not saving money on hiring new support bodies, it's not about um handling a volume, although all those are our secondary benefits. It's all about you know sharing the empathy and walking a mile in the other person's shoes.

Charlotte Ward: 8:32

Yeah, couldn't agree more. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash two zero eight for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.