Charlotte Ward: 0:11
Hello and welcome to episode three hundred of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today, welcome Alec Maloney Reflecting on the Year So Far. Hi Alec, lovely to have you back on the podcast after I think it was five five months, something like that. I think we we got together here. It's not really that long. It really has. It was January when we relaunched that we had our kind of you know kickoff chat for 2026.
Alec Moloney: 0:48
Jesus, time flies. Time flies when you're having fun at a new job.
Charlotte Ward: 0:55
Well, uh, yeah, I I I know that uh you are having fun. Um so and you've you've relocated in that time as well. And um yeah, uh so it's taken us a little while to catch up. You've you've you've been out there helping on the platform, and obviously, like we're still here doing doing customer support leaders as a thing, but the podcast has been rumbling along while you've been while you've been getting getting life sorted out in a new city.
Alec Moloney: 1:21
Yeah, no, it's it's it's been a big move. Obviously, a new city here in Melbourne, but it's been you know an exciting move and starting to settle in now.
Charlotte Ward: 1:29
So Yeah, yeah. So yeah, a little bit of breathing room to uh catch up on all things customer support leaders, and we thought we'd get together as a good time to have a a chat about you know the year so far, the some of the topics that I've been talking to people on the podcast about, some of the some of the uh reflections you and thoughts you have on the year so far, because as well as changing jobs, changing cities, things are developing and changing very, very rapidly in the industry, aren't they?
Alec Moloney: 1:59
Absolutely.
Alec Moloney: 2:00
I moving into a new job, I'm seeing a completely you know, completely different way of how teams are operating, not just you know, it's been a much more older established team that's rapidly transitioning and transforming into a very different model, but the differences between just like how AI is being like you know able to be used within Teams, how it's enabling customer experience at a you know much larger scale, and it's not necessarily sort of like uh deeply technical engineering, which is you know a lot of the time we spent together in the past on, and it is more back to like product support, focused engagement with customers in its you know much higher volume environment as well, and how we're trying to unlock value for customers with the AI, but also operational technology that is well established, is it's been a lot.
Charlotte Ward: 2:53
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I feel like um there's just so much that um we are being asked to do, and um let's let's just loosely say cope with or roll with on the change front as leaders and uh and with our teams as well. Like we have we're having to take our teams on quite a journey this year. It really feels like I um I we're gonna dive into I think three main themes from the year in a minute, but I I just I'm staggered at how quickly things are moving and I reflect on some of the things I've done at Snowplow in literally like building whole ecosystems, building tooling from scratch in and you know, not not small platforms, but well, maybe maybe platforms are a grand word for some of the stuff I've been doing, but but you know, not not small efforts, but really things that didn't exist two and a half months ago are now fully operational, multifunctional, you know, sitting inside the team, actually achieving outcomes. And this is and this is gonna lead nicely into our first topic and our first theme of the year in a minute, but but the stuff that you can achieve very rapidly now, I cannot believe how much I've done in just two and a half to three months. And um, it really is staggering. Uh it's it's unbelievable. So um we have three themes, three major things we talked about for the year, right? Um, should we should we lead into those? What was your first observation from from some of the some of the things that have been happening this year?
Alec Moloney: 4:25
Yeah, absolutely. I'll I'll just echo what you've said. I'm three months you know into my role at RMS, I'm supporting report into our global VP, but one of the things I was tasked with sort of after you know getting my feet under the desk and settling in a couple of weeks was two of my team members have been leading what has been like our AI implementation of you know a customer-facing AI experience, both in terms of live chat and uh what we're now looking at as well as you know, email response for you know tickets. And this was sort of you know starting to bleed some of that theme that we're talking about, you know, like uh here at RMS, we've been looking at that's more by ecosystem. So we haven't been looking at you know building our own solutions, it's been what's available out there in the market and uh what what we're seeing though is really rapidly you know, there's there's differences in that market, but exactly to your point around outcomes, uh you're you you're a step ahead of us where you are at Snowplow, but where we are at the moment is we've just finished sort of mainstay evaluations of uh the platforms that you know we've been sort of scoping. And uh now we're talking about within this next quarter, we're hoping to serve 20 to 30 percent of our tickets through AI platform, which is for a team that we've got quite a large CX team that have traditionally, you know, that's been a job for someone, either you know, someone answering a telephone, someone you know replying to emails, that's been a huge transformation effort already, getting people prepared for that new reality. And when we're looking at how do we implement this tooling, there's a lot of it's still it's staggering to see that you can just plug your KB and turnkey it and away you go. And that's been like I think my learning of the past few months at RMS has really been around there is the bio ecosystem, it's it's got its shades of light and dark, but it really does offer uh quite a lot of turnkey solutions if you're you know if you're partnering with right vendors and the right solutions in that space. This is opposite though to obviously the experience we both had at Snowplow, and you've obviously carried carried much more sort of deeper build you know DNA since. So yeah, I'd be interested to hear you know your side of it as well.
Charlotte Ward: 6:41
Yeah,
Charlotte Ward: 6:42
yeah. And so really this comes down to you know the the old paradigm of build versus buy, but um it's the acceleration and the enablement and the possibilities that are now available that you know, as I said, just weren't around six months ago um and certainly weren't accessible to people who weren't engineers six months, nine months ago it was unthinkable, and and here I am building systems. And yeah, I I think what's interesting is that this has um that enablement has kind of accelerated um not just the implementation but also the the ideation. Like it the the the level of possibility now is huge for anyone in uh any role, obviously, but but like in a leadership role where you might have historically been relying on other people to either implement the tool that you bought or or build something from scratch to that maybe you specified, but you'd have to hand over to other people. Now it just comes down to I've got a problem in front of me. And and actually, if people think they don't have any ideas on what they can do with AI, my my my big kind of almost meme of the year has been solve the problem in front of you because it's all possible. It's all possible. And so that that's been my philosophy when I have when I think about managing a a large team, I now have 11 direct reports, so organizations are flattened because of all of the capabilities. And and that is true of any tool, whether you are building or buying, but but the the uh um the bandwidth that some of these tools give you and the the capacity uh increase that you get from particularly a smart AI tooling and application is incredible. So, so you know the fact that you can uh manage more people, you can manage the work better, you can uh, you know, when we're talking about build versus buy, we all have problems in front of us. And and for me, the natural inclination now is to build because I have that that that ability to.
Alec Moloney: 8:56
Yeah, absolutely. I've I've found I haven't quite given up my build DNA when it comes to day-to-day tasks. I've I've firmly I've I've been sold on the Bicamp a lot more for the like customer facing, just having that ability to plug your cake, like your knowledge basin, right, and have immediate results is insane. But for day-to-day ops, I found build still works. It's something I've done recently. It it's it's pretty straightforward, but you know, it's plugging the plugging effectively a Python script into the Zendesk API to run some customer reporting for me. But uh I didn't actually write the Python script. I you know, we'd fondly remember you know working with the team back in the past, right at Snowplow was uh you know, it'd be a couple of days really to write the script, test it, make it work before we could do all of that. And now I think it took me about 15 minutes just talking to Codex, going, hey, can you write this script, test it for me? Here's the things I want it to do. And 15 minutes later with a bit of bug fixing, I had a fully working, like a fully working script. It wasn't even a prototype. And I think that capability is just it massively unlocks how much you can achieve. It's no longer fiddling around and you know, explore necessarily to try and find the right data. It's no longer having to export it to a you know a CSV and a giant export. It's hey, I've got this problem exactly to your point, I've got this problem in front of me. This is how I want to solve it. And there's that obvious, you know, the saying, I'm putting in there quotes for everyone who can't um who can't. The little bunny is I love calling those funny ways around it, but you know, ask AI to help you use AI. It is so effective when you're trying to develop a prompt, when you're trying to develop a solution around how can I use AI to do this. It is scarily effective. I guess there's some very good marketing algorithms written into the back end of it somewhere, but it is scarily effective at being able to help you and provide that context and that information that you need.
Charlotte Ward: 11:01
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um I spend um a significant portion of any of these efforts going through that kind of brainstorming with AI. So I've got this problem in front of me to your point, like I this is how I want to solve it. But then always with a question, does that make sense? Is that feasible? All of you know, and it will come back with some suggestions or some things I hadn't thought of because we don't we don't all even with 30-something experienced years in the business, like I there's still things out there, like everything changes, and you know, um the ecosystem develops as fastly as the technologies we can build on top of it. And so, and so um I find going through um, and particularly something we'll get on in a minute, uh get on to in a minute, about like the blurring edges of our roles, is um I find when I get to the edges of my roles and think my role and think about what I and what the next thing is I need to achieve just slightly beyond the boundaries, that's where it's really super useful is to think about okay, how can I solve this thing that's maybe more of a like a in Bunnier quotes, you know, like a HR thing. Like it's it's maybe more about team management than support leadership, for instance. And I've got ideas because they've been leading teams for such a long time, but there are many, many ways to solve a uh like managing a team. You can do that in so many ways, in so many, you know, uh there's so many uh different paradigms, so many different ways to kind of build tooling around that, depending on the type of team, the the how operational you are, versus how creative. You know, the needs are very different team to team. And so finding the solution for my team is where I think build gives me kind of that superpower of of solving the problem in front of me. And and yeah, hey, it discussing it with AI is a huge part of that.
Alec Moloney: 12:56
Absolutely agree with that. It's it's really interesting. I've this is my first time transitioning into a leadership role in a global team where I've got you know significant number of peers alongside me. And seeing how right now with AI over the past few weeks, we've all gone away and we've kind of developed our own slightly different solutions to problems. And yes, you know, we're starting now to build towards okay, what's the consistent middle that we want in terms of our reporting, in terms of how we want to surface insights and visibility of performance to our teams. But what it's really allowing us to leverage is we take that central report and then our like UK Amia uh support manager, she's developed a clawed artifact that she can now plug that spreadsheet into and it generates it in a visual way that her team really resonates with. Whereas for myself, I stick, you know, plainly with an explore report filtering, and my team so far have you know being quite receptive to that. And I think having that flexibility though to take that central reporting, which everyone's working from the same hymn sheet in terms of the data, but flexibly adjust it to meet the needs of the meet the needs of the team, uh is is like the really great outcome we're seeing there.
Charlotte Ward: 14:15
Yeah, yeah. Um so we we've talked, I mean, uh as we said, my my uh my um instinct is to build. Your instinct historically, I know, and and somewhat operationally still, as you just described, is still to build, but but I I have almost an aversion to the built-in tooling, like the built-in AI, for instance, you know, that most tools are oper uh offering now. So, you know, when I'm when I'm evaluating help desks, for instance, and they all say yes, we've got an amazing AI solution. I'm like, Yeah, we can build that, that's fine. Just give me the core thing. Um, and I we we've been talking about you know how the same is true in HR platforms like Bob, they have a HR solution, uh AI solution, and the the next tool on the next tool that what tool doesn't have AI now? And and that they're really a mixed bag, aren't they? What's your experience in terms of buy there?
Alec Moloney: 15:21
I will definitely say they continue to be, but like I think the the greatest way to put it is a mixed bag. It's really coming down from the way I'm seeing it to a mix of how effective the implementation is at a product level. So that's really highlighting you know significant differences. Anyone who's listening out there who has done a comparison of support tools and the AI integrations at those layers would you know have first hand experience where you know each different product, depending on when it was integrated, what the level of maintenance has been, how well integrated it is, is it native itself, is it a bolt-on? Where all of that sits is really influential. Just before we jumped on this, right, though I was sort of waxing lyrical about you know high bob's new interactive chat. And it's mainly it stood out for me because it's actually solved a problem that I've had the past couple of weeks where you know at RMS we use hybob as our PHR platform, we track our one-on-one notes in there, but there's I've had no effective way to actually pull, hey, I want to look at the last eight weeks of my one-on-one notes. Is there anything I've left out? And now what they've done is they've actually gone and you know, nice product implementation that implemented that have integrated that with your one-on-one notes. So you can just ask a question and get the answers, which not every vendor is doing. And I the other call out here as well is I won't delve too deeply into the model competition between you know the two main models, but you know, there's definitely some call-outs there as to what are you trying to achieve at a point in time and what model is best. And I think we're seeing that, you know, selecting the right model, selecting the right implementation for vendors, for ourselves, you know, if we're in the build space, if we're in the buy space, it's understanding what's the nature of the tasks that you want it to address when you're going and buying. And you actually have to be conscious of that and go, am I purchasing the right product that's using the right model with the right training, the right implementation to achieve what I want to achieve in that buy space? So that's probably my my final headline on the build verse buy. I'm I I was build through and through at heart. I will always be a build person. Give me, you know, AWS bedrock any day of the week. Um, but like I've really been sold on buy in the past, you know, sort of couple of months in this role, like especially transitioning to a business where you know it it really is much more of a buy economy because there's so much transformation, you know, how you know our sort of focus is split in 17 different directions at a point in time. And it's can we solve this quicker with a buyer solution than having to afford the time, you know, the people spent to implement the build when we don't really have it.
Charlotte Ward: 18:02
So that's a really yeah, that's a really, really good point, actually. A lot about the a a big factor is the size of the organization and the maturity of the organization, um, in the sense of like uh how mature the operations are, how much transformation you're gonna have to do, take people and systems with you if you swap out a platform. And and build is definitely very iterative because when you have an instinct for build, you typically want it to be built exactly how you want it to function. And so you iterate a lot when you build. And I have I have built um, you know, KPI and one-to-one management um and review management, like feedback management as my own personal management platform. I've built that. I haven't, I'm not using Bob or anything else for all of that. That's that's not entirely my platform. I'm gonna put it.
Alec Moloney: 18:58
Is this a notion cook?
Charlotte Ward: 19:00
Uh actually, no, it's it's mostly uh Google Sheets and and and uh app scripts uh and Slack. I've got a Slack bot as well. I'm very, very pleased with it.
Alec Moloney: 19:10
Uh but it's everyone listening, Notion is what underlies the website. So I was expecting a notion build. Charlotte is like the queen of notion, it's no thing.
Charlotte Ward: 19:20
I am the queen of notion everywhere I go. Uh and and it is the backbone of the customer support leaders website. You're very, very uh right to call that out because I love it. And uh it's simple and it's great. But but um in terms of um some of the some of the surety around um efficiency and uh privacy that I wanted, Google Sheets was a slightly better way to go for this ecosystem for now. Eventually, maybe it'll be a database or something, who knows? But right now it's it's in its early stages, which is which is a big um uh a big um kind of factor in in why it is on such a simple ecosystem as Google Sheets. Um it's now it's only two and a half months old, but first of all, I've built it entirely myself. It solves exactly the problems I want it to solve and connects exactly and how I want it to connect to the systems I use. So it's a Slack bot, which is you know, and then um I have Claude, so that kind of pairing for me works ideally, um, and my team can use it as well. Um, I've I've developed that in two and a half months, and I'm on deployment, I think, 71, which is yeah, so iteration is the name of the game when it comes to this kind of thing, which you just could you can do with a small agile team, and uh is is uh not feasible at the scale you're talking about where buy makes much more sense.
Alec Moloney: 20:50
Yeah, yeah, no, like my this being my biggest transition coming from like the team that we had at Snowflower into the team here where you know it's what about a five times scale of economy globally across like our customer experience support workforce, and that's where exactly to your point, buy just begins to make a lot more sense because you can get enablement, you get the you know, migration and onboarding support from like vendors and partners and consultants. So it's been a um good journey, a lot of learning.
Charlotte Ward: 21:20
Yeah, it's it's it's gonna be build at heart. Yeah, and it naturally comes with compromises because when you're buying, it doesn't quite do that, but you can actually it's in some ways it's easier to change your operations because you can formalize that as part of transformation. Yeah, yeah. Um we are we are straying dangerously into the next topic, which is kind of born of our discussion around. Yeah, but let's let's go with it. Like we we've we've we've touched on in terms of build versus buy the operational stuff quite heavily, and and like this is um this is something that I have definitely noted. Support. Is a very operational function, but it perhaps super perhaps you know supercharged, um, accelerated by the the idea that you can make change much more quickly, both in terms of organizational transformation and tooling, um, and all of the processes and everything contingent around that. Um, the role of a support leader is is changing somewhat. It's very there's a lot of blurring at the boundaries, isn't there? We're not talking just support and support operations anymore.
Alec Moloney: 22:31
No, and I think it's it's worth calling out, it's also not just leaders. Like I've as we're rolling out AI, RMS, what we're seeing is you know, really great engagement from the team where they're going away and they're going, hey, this manual process that I'm doing, practically, you know, there's always those manual processes that sit in the corner where it's living on a spreadsheet, or you know, someone's manually doing an account review of a report from Salesforce every week, right? To go and make sure that, you know, the hyper care list or whatever your organization's calling it, you know, is getting the attention they need and the S lays are set right. And there's always some of that manual sort of reconciliation across the organization, or making sure that if there's an outbound email that needs to get sent for some, you know, license expiry, it's getting sent and this one person's been doing it for 20 years, right? Like there's always that Mr. Crom sitting in the corner. And I think what we're seeing is I'll start as a team level and then you know go to leaders, right? But I think like with especially within my team, what I've seen is I've got you know several team members who really are like that Mr. Chron sitting in the corner on quite a number of fronts. Like we do a lot of sort of back office work in our sort of space as well as sort of the customer-facing work. And that's been really interesting to see the team going and going into Claude and going, hey, how can I automate this? How could I make it work in a better fashion? And we're still betting down the tooling landscape for some of those like, you know, recurring let's check this once-a-day tasks. But it's coming back with really rich solutions and they're getting really sort of into, hey, I've got a proposal, or hey, maybe we can do it this way. And you know, whether it's PowerAutomate, whether it's NAN, whether it's Zapia, whichever the solution they're landing on. But we, you know, so we're kind of we've already started building that foundation. So when we're like, yep, we know which automation tooling we're gonna go with, suddenly here's the proposal, we just need to adjust it for that and then run with it. And I think that's gonna be a really big shift, especially for like the team I'm currently leading. But I think there's gonna be other people out there. I know Snowplow, we started to do that a little bit as well. And I think, you know, it's really giving team members much more I guess ownership over that as well. It's like you don't have to have your support ops team that are exclusively doing that now. Maybe at a certain org size, that's gonna be the way it goes anyway. But I think even for us, we're we're just establishing central CX operations who will sit in the middle of everyone and offer some of that enablement and governance. But really, some of that decision making can actually be driven from the front line now, which I think is you know a real uplift where no, they don't necessarily have to have, you know, a support operations background, but they can drop into Claude and go, hey, this is a manual process I'm doing, how can I automate it? So I think that's really starting to blur boundaries for team members as well, where it's like they're no longer purely unfocused on, you know, my back office work or the tickets in front of me. They do have that option to go, you know, they don't have to come to a manager, they don't have to go to an operations team, they can go, hey, I've got an idea for this, and here's a draft document. What do we all think? And I think it's starting to blur the lines there. Leadership, as we've talked about, right? Like I get to the edge of boundaries and no longer am I like, okay, I'll have to go to like an engineer to write an API script for me so I can pull data. It's going into codecs and going, yep, I just want to pull that up, write it myself, leave it running there on the side of my screen. And I'm finding that really effective, especially in the past couple of weeks. I've probably written three or four scripts that I'm regularly using, at least daily, to go, yep, just run this for me. And then I'll get something else where I'm like, hey, I want it to do this one other thing. And again, I'm not having to go to a central team or you know, talk to an operations person to get it done. I can just go, hey, this little thing that is really just for me in my corner of the world. I just want to run this script, and hey, can you update it to do this? And it does that. So I'm finding that really effective. And I think that's where the boundaries are blurring. Beyond that, I don't know if it's going to continue to drive wider functional change. I think longer term it's going to, right? Like we're in a space now where I don't know if anyone's read too much of the news the past few weeks, but you know, there's now the models that we can't publish to the public because they're so bad that you know they could potentially, you know, be used for like cyber warfare. And I think if the models are getting to the level that they're that capable at development, they're that capable at understanding code bases and synthesizing insights and you know, sort of functional capability at that level, I think we're not far away from once you know we have better safeguards around that. I I think we've you know awfully close to a point where we're going to be able to start, you know, using things and leveraging much more capability. So I think it's going to be exciting, but it's going to be a lot of change as well.
Charlotte Ward: 27:20
It really is. It really is. I want to touch on um an another part of the blurring boundaries, which I think isn't um I I I don't know that I've really seen anyone talk about this. Um we we when we think about AI and like capability, it really does, uh as we've just demonstrated, our our natural inclination is to talk about the things it can automate for us, the things it can accelerate, the things it can do operationally high largely, broadly. Um, or in terms of product development, you know, the delivery aspect, how much faster we can ship boxes, we can ship code, we can, we can uh, you know, file pull requests. Um and uh uh the thing that I I think is also worth calling out on the blurring of the boundaries is actually um how much of an accelerant it can be in terms of building your connective tissue with other functions that isn't operational, that isn't automation, that isn't tooling, but is more along the lines of building common understandings, figuring out how another function might work, what they care about, what visibility they have, how you can actually build uh and use AI to build conversations with your peers in other functions. I think, I think what I've noticed is that figuring out what other functions might care about before I even go and have the conversation has been really helpful in terms of, you know, I I've spotted this problem, how can I engage someone else to help me solve it? Because because particularly at smaller scale, you need often to wear multiple hats, but you also need quick engagement from individuals rather than whole functions, quite possibly. And so understanding what other fun what other people might care about and bringing them along the journey and and like collect using it as a an opener for kind of that collaboration has been something that I found quite useful.
Alec Moloney: 29:22
It's a really interesting use case. And you've you've made me start thinking about probably in ways that I'm underutilizing it at the moment. But I think the the core of it comes probably comes down to how much is centralized, right? Having have had a peer behind the curtain at Snowplow, I know how much is centralized in Notion, right? And we're lucky at RMS, we have a lot in confluence at the moment, but there's still things in disparate places. And I think that's probably something that organizations have to start thinking about more and more is you know, as you scale as an organization, or even if you're just starting, right, it's how do you how do you build that sort of connective knowledge, I guess, in a single place. So it doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, perfectly curated, but at least having it all in one location where you can go, okay, we need to have it connected to you know rovo AI, we need to have it connected to Notion, or it needs to be, you know, plugged into the Zendesk knowledge base, or I guess in GitLab's GitLab's case, right, the GitLab handbook repository, like whatever it is, right? Like the being able to have it plugged into that and have everything in that one place so it's not playing organizational scrabble too much, and you can really synthesize those variable insights. So I think it's something I need to go and experiment with more. I'm keen to see how much I can surface in my world. But yeah, I think you know the the knowledge component of it is interesting too, because it's you know, how do you as an organization make sure that those insights are actually available to people?
Charlotte Ward: 30:52
Yeah, yeah. I um I we had a hackathon recently. Um, well, actually, gosh, not that recently. It's uh where has the year gone? Where has the year gone? I guess that's the point of this this episode. But where has where has the year gone so far? Um yeah, uh we had a hackathon at the end of February, and and those insights are kind of a super interesting um next phase, I think, of development. Uh I I I filed a hackathon project. That's how far things have come.
Alec Moloney: 31:22
Um and uh so the first code that you should probably add some context here if Shal is normally the judge of the hackathon.
Charlotte Ward: 31:29
I was the judge of the hackathon as well, but I didn't judge my own entry.
Alec Moloney: 31:33
So you so your project won then is what I'm hearing.
Charlotte Ward: 31:35
It did, but I didn't I didn't score my own project. It didn't win. It won a prize, it didn't win. Uh it was some sort of participation thing, I think. Um but um but um the uh um the the actually the idea I had was not product focused. It wasn't it wasn't a traditional engineering product uh or or or um project. It was it was much more around kind of that person, people, um contributor leader kind of insights um and decisioning um uh sort of uh focus, I suppose, where I I I experimented a bit with how I could capture how people think. And so my project was kind of around decision heuristics, like how how could I capture uh and the running joke uh uh in my my family here when I was talking about my my project all that week, it got to the end of the week and I I I this the way I simplified it, distilled it for my children was basically that I built a robot Charlotte. Um because I try to capture how I think and and and build a set of heuristics, but create a tool that could capture those on the fly as well. And so actually, out there somewhere on my laptop is um a whole system for capturing how leaders think and what they care about and how they might um action the next decision and making that those insights available to the team when you're not there. And so this is where the idea of a robot Charlotte came in. It was kind of what what would Charlotte do if she was in the room, but she's not in the room? And actually it was fairly capable. Um, and yes, it was backed by Notion and you know, it was a slack bot, of course. But but like the idea that I could build something like that, and actually it does represent a reasonable kind of proportion of my the way I might, you know, handle a customer escalation or something. It was staggeringly good. And that was four months ago, and the whole ecosystem has has uh you know logarithmically improved since then. So I'm kind of interested to go back to that at some point, just getting away from the getting away a little bit from the super operational stuff and into the insights and the decision is kind of interesting.
Alec Moloney: 33:59
I feel like we've strayed far into almost the Westworld territories there.
Charlotte Ward: 34:05
Yeah, yeah, maybe. So, so um, yeah, I'm I'm interested to see, see where we can, where we can move beyond just purely operational stuff. I think the world's gonna get a very interesting place very quickly.
Alec Moloney: 34:17
No, I definitely agree. And like something I use it for, right, is to sanity check sort of like lead, like I'm gonna use the management word rather than leadership, but like management approaches with the team, right? Where I'm like, hey, here's here's the situation, this is what I'm thinking. Go search the best practice of the universe, right? And come back to me and be like, hey, yep, this aligns, or maybe these are other things you should consider. And I use it quite a lot as rubber ducky, and I think I'm assuming, well, I'm assuming most leaders out there are using it as a rubber ducky, but you've obviously got to sanity check it against your own experience and not just you know blindly, you know, follow, follow the, you know, what is it, the the road to hell is paved for good intentions, you know. Don't follow it down the you know garden path. But you know, I I think it's a good way to get broader knowledge, and I know that's kind of where it started, right? And then I feel like you know, everyone's gone very operational because we're like, hey, how do we unlock efficiency? You know, every company is, you know, how do you maintain top line, cut the bottom line, like all of that kind of stuff, right? Like that's obviously always going to drive like the way that we make decisions as organizations. But I think you know, we're we're just seeing like uh a real to your point. Like I think it's a start of how do we use it a responsibly, b in the right way, but then to your point, yeah, like uh what are the ways we're not using it for? Recently I was chatting with my boss and he was describing you know, exercise he was working through with broader leadership, like our senior leadership team, around like you know, uh sort of like personal readmes is the best way I'll summarise it without dredging all the detail. And like it was a really interesting exercise, I think, when you look at it through the lens of what you're discussing, and it's like, okay, uh, I can't remember who uses personal readmes, it's Google or GitHub or one of them, right? But it's like, you know, if everyone in the org had a personal README, exactly to your point, and that was fed into an AI, and you could go like, hey, I'm bouncing this email to Charlotte. Uh, will she receive this the way that I'm intending it to land, right? And it can pull up the personal README, synthesize with insights and go, nope, you need to be shorter with dot points, or you just need to include more numbers, or whatever that kind of insight is based on README's. And I think maybe you know, like flipping it completely, is it a factor of it shouldn't even be the sender that's having to think about that is like into our workflows and our systems. We start, God, I almost feel like I'm saying behavioral data analysis already, but effectively, like, you know, like we we take those sort of synthesized insights, and when you're getting an email, instead of this there's probably a product idea for an email client somewhere in the middle of this, right? Is when you get the email, it actually translates it into your preferred format. So it's not even the sender has to be meeting your needs, it's you're able to sort of synthesize in translate, you know, and transition. Yeah. So you're setting the short chart summary, and then if you want to view the whole thing, you can click it.
Charlotte Ward: 37:08
Yeah, I uh I mean to s the oh man, so Gmail already has that like Gemini summary at the top of almost every email, right? Some of them are hilarious. If you've got a three-line email and then a three-line summary of your three-line email, uh, it tries to there's a or yeah, it does a bit of padding sometimes, which is very funny. Um, but um yeah, I mean, I under I yeah, you you're probably not wrong that we're probably not far away from someone developing that product, but I worry about the ethics of a product like that that is effectively translating all of the humanity out of our communications on the fly. Like it's not actually, to your point, like it's not making me think about how I articulate and and like this is the danger of all AI, and this is why we end up with so many clawed cut and paste emails nowadays, or uh God help us even. I've got an uh do you know what I've actually started sort of virtue signaling sometimes by keeping the M-dashes in to say this this was AI, it's okay, it's okay because we are AI native, but this wasn't, this is really me. Yeah. Um excuse me. Um, but the the kind of yeah, the the idea that I can just write how I want to write, and that my email client or or whatever will translate it however the reader wants to read it, beyond actual, you know, native language translations, you know, English to Spanish or whatever. Like, I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with that, Alec, because I I feel like, you know, I like a long email. Um, but if somebody's sent me three bullet points, there's probably a reason they've sent me three bullet points. And I don't want the AI to kind of pad it into some sort of narrative three-chapter arc that wasn't necessarily how it was intended to be sent. Uh, because you're removing a like by putting AI in the center of your comms that much, I think you you there is the potential to remove a lot of like the intent of the sender anyway. And if somebody sends me three-pointed like sentences or for you know directions or whatever, I better know that's how they were meant to be received.
Alec Moloney: 39:37
Yeah, no, I I definitely think there's like a question of acidists. It's interesting like it's interesting, I think, as a thought experiment where you think about how work has evolved though, right? Like we used to send each other like going back many, many, many, many, many moons, right? Like we were sending each other letters, and then we moved from letters to emails, then we moved from emails to messages, right? And each time they got shorter and shorter and shorter, and you know, if if we're you know, the what what's the current marketing meme where it's like millennials doing a thing and then Janelpha doing a thing, and it's like yeah, you know, like one's got text and the other's got just emojis in it, right? And I'm like, is that the way we're going? And is this, you know, going to be like some form of fit some part of the next the next iteration? It's that's happened in what, 60 years, not even a hundred years.
Charlotte Ward: 40:31
Uh yeah, yeah. Uh less than I would argue. I remember sending letters. With I can with an ink pen.
Alec Moloney: 40:43
I mean, that's commitment.
Charlotte Ward: 40:44
That's commitment, yeah. Uh I I learned calligraphy and everything. I'm I'm a wonderful uh handwriter when I want to. I have two stuff, handwriting for me and handwriting for everyone else. Handwriting for me is an absolute spider crawl across the page. Um, anyway, uh different times, different times. But we we've touched nicely um on we have strayed yet again accidentally.
Alec Moloney: 41:07
We're very good at straying. I mean we strayed in the first one at the start of the year. We have to strain.
Charlotte Ward: 41:12
We yeah, we were inevitably going to bumble unintentionally into the third, into the third topic. Yeah, which is sort of the nature of leadership and and how we how we actually identify in some ways, um, in terms of our role, in terms of what we're doing, in terms of how we relate. And uh that has also been a big theme this year so far on the podcast and generally in the industry. So the nature of leadership is changing, as we've touched on in every part of this discussion so far, but but how we perceive and project ourselves as leaders is changing significantly as well, isn't it?
Alec Moloney: 41:53
Definitely, I definitely think so. I don't want to sound too definitive, but I definitely think so, right? Like we we've talked in the past about, you know, title compression and the you know the the outcomes of that, and uh you know what we're almost seeing sort of what we're traditionally th I'll say three tiers of leadership are becoming one, and uh there's sort of you know mainly a single middle band at the moment and a lot of sort of uh uh cases, I think, and uh you know, at least for like sort of like the B2B SaaS technology space. Um and I think it's really interesting also when we consider how it's shaping, depending on like I'd probably say like organization age as well. Like I think you know, startups are becoming very bleeding edge and uh that identity is changing very rapidly in that space. Whereas I think you know, like the sort of as the company gets older, that identity becomes a bit more closer to the what you know would have been the traditionally established uh identity, but uh it's just behind it. It's kind of you know the classic uh bleeding edge versus you know who's still you know changing over time because of org size, because of uh, you know, like operational sort of density. And I think you know, like what we're uh what we're seeing is uh the startup fiber's changing very, very quickly, right? If we look at uh and especially what I'll say vendors in that space, if you look at like intercom structure I was reading recently where they've got now a head of AI support that sits alongside like a head of human support. I think that's a uh you know, intercom is you know sort of at the you know the bleeding edge in that space as a vendor, but that's a real significance sort of, you know, like I don't want to call it virtue signaling, but it's sort of like you know, it's a real shift in the industry of well, traditionally it would have been, you know, like okay, you know, you've got a VP, you've got a director, and then you know, you've got an operations team. It's like we're now seeing that it's not even operations teams owning AI, it's yeah its own role with its own the mental shift is sort of like yeah, they're practically 30 people sitting in a team. It's just it's one model that's being managed to deliver all of those outcomes. And I think that's that's Been a really interesting shift, and then there's obviously the other side of it, which is where we're seeing you know that your role as a leader isn't as much to carry messages as it is to build operations around your team, and you know, like you're no longer sort of the person going to have a meeting about the meeting, and then you know the follow-up meeting, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Charlotte Ward: 44:21
Right?
Alec Moloney: 44:21
Like it's it's becoming okay, here's the summary of the meeting from the AI, and that's automatically sent to everyone. So you've negated the need for the meeting after the meeting. The meeting before the meeting is hey Claude, what do I need to know going into this meeting, right? And it's it's reducing a lot of that sort of talk time down so that we're very focused now on actually it's probably outcome delivery. But when it's no longer doing the sort of legwork behind delivering those outcomes, it's really becoming okay, I need to engage with the team, and then I need to go into a customer meeting, and I need to try and understand what we need to deliver in that meeting. Are we ready for it or are we not, right? And if we're not ready for it, okay, what do we need to move before we get into that meeting at the top of the day? And I think that's very much, at least, you know, the past couple of weeks, what my role's largely been about. And I think when you look at how that's affecting different roles, it's it's really shifting a lot of that coordination is very much becoming, you know, when we talk about sort of layer compression, right? It's becoming much more compressed at senior leadership levels, where cross-company coordination is seeing much more of that strategic level now, and sort of like the operational level is becoming very much like top of the day, how are we looking? What what are the sort of like the signals that we need to be aware of? But there's much less work now involved in doing that, and there's much more time for either spending time with the team or spending time with customers, at least in the support space.
Charlotte Ward: 45:50
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I and I think to sort of stumble um backwards slightly, I think I think that this is why the boundaries are blurring, isn't it? It's because of that compression. So everything we talked about a moment ago about like how we're having to get and connect better to like we're having to go into the the um you know our peer functions and build new functions like an AI function and things like that, but build better connective tissue across all of those functions as well, operationally and um, you know, in terms of the people and how they relate to each other and how they focus on common outcomes. All of that blurring at the boundaries is is an output. It is an outcome of this career progression and the flat the org flattening and the fact that so much more can be achieved further down, you know, IC level or at you know first tier leadership level, that middle tier compression, the title we're seeing around changes we're seeing contingent around that. The um the fact that um the career ladder isn't as obvious as it used to be. Um, you know, we talk we we use that that phrase title compression so casually, but but what that really means is that actually at any point in whether you're you know in your entry-level support role or you're you know you've been in support for 30 years, like some of us, um the what's next is changing, like it really is. Um there isn't necessarily an obvious step up at any level from any level. And so what you do now to progress with little bunny is around it isn't necessarily take a step up the ladder. It's it's do it's it's own more, it's do broader work, it's do more interesting work, it's have more influence over more outcomes rather than I got a promotion this year. You know, it's kind of it's that. And that's the that's the landscape, I think, which we are now having to navigate as particularly as leaders. It's like what what's next?
Alec Moloney: 48:04
Absolutely, and it's I'll just say 100% agree with all of that, right? Like, you know, the outcome at the end of the year is often now latitude, not verticality. And I think that's really what we're seeing in a lot of I think any leadership role right now, right? It's can I expand out into a bit more space to have a bit more influence? It's you know, have I learned enough? Can I learn a bit more? And can I utilize AI to build better ops to solve more problems than I was solving yesterday for my team? And that's definitely sort of you know the the so I think the common experience we both have in that space is it's you know, we're problem solvers through and through. So it's always, you know, pick up the tools and see can we build more tools. But I think also for team members, uh it's it's interesting, right? Because I think, you know, when when we look at you know progression inside support for team members as well, there's probably a little bit of uh space there where what we're seeing again is it's that same sort of vibe, right? Where it's a lot more latitude growth than it is necessarily verticality as well. And it's you know that there's you know less sort of leadership roles to step up into. So and this was kind of this is coming full circle back to the topics right at the very start of the year. But uh, you know, it's like it's like yeah, it's a lot of latitude expansion and going, okay, well, you've got more tooling now to solve some of these operational problems yourself. And I think you know, leading through that can be very challenging and it not notwithstanding like sort of you know, the the usual suspects, but I think you know, we're seeing teams I don't necessarily think it's operational fatigue in it, just like that direct sense, but I think we are seeing it across some people where you know with we've got team members, especially in like sort of like the support space, right, where they might not necessarily have an interest in that operational space. They really want to own more the the relationship side and that stuff. And it's if you don't have pathways across to those roles, it's like what what can we offer meaningfully as leaders? And I think that's a real tension that we're navigating right now. Whereas like we've got a lot of you know, boundless green fields on operational space, but that focus being so like I guess I'm gonna call it like you know, a primary focus right now for a lot of teams in the industry, I think, you know, it it often leads us to, you know, forget a bit about some of the other stuff that you know different people, you know, sort of are attracted to.
Charlotte Ward: 50:30
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um the other the other thing that I found, and this is just uh yeah, I I agree. Uh the other thing I found, and this is just an interesting aside, um, is it I find that it becomes slightly harder to explain your own progression externally. So, you know, another year goes by um and people say, Hey, how did you oh, how was your review? And uh, you know, my husband, for instance, at the end of the year, hey, how did you do? Um promotion this year. I was like, well, there isn't really such a thing necessarily as promotion in that traditional sense anymore. I kind of got more work though.
Alec Moloney: 51:15
What you've reflected is very much what I was, you know, trying to word around a little bit more eloquently, but I think that's the way it feels for a lot of people, right? And it's yeah, it's a really interesting phenomenon. And I think it's both leaders and team members where it's you're exactly right. People, you know, they're like, Great, I did a really good job this year, and the result was okay, you get a bit more influence in this other area of the business on top of the role you're already doing. Yes. You know, for for I don't know, like you know, for you know, people like ourselves, you know, with ambition, with that drive to go and solve more problems and that's sort of, you know, like the fire that doesn't stop to solve those problems. I think you know, it's it's a really great outcome, right? But not everyone wants that. Some people do just want to go home at the end of the day and not feel like they've just got more and more and more, you know, in their role over time. And I think scope expansion is it's it's not a bad outcome, but I think we need to, you know, be way more mindful as leaders about how we apply it and as we build teams and grow teams, you know, it's something we have to be mindful of.
Charlotte Ward: 52:15
And I do think though that's you know, that that latitude, that latitudinal growth that we're talking about, the scope expansion, the increasing influence, the connective tissue to other functions, the having influence over more and bigger outcomes, um does mean you have to delegate as well. So you do create opportunity in your teams as well, I think. And the same is true for them, you know, as they take on more and different, you have to create the space for that. We have to create the space in our own day-to-day to have that to be able to cope with that expanded scope. Um, and so it does create opportunity, it just means that there isn't necessarily an automatic team lead position created because you're delegating some stuff down, you know. Um, it means that members of your team who have built a certain, you know, experience, who have done enough reps on handling certain types of customer situations or whatever, or um, you know, you trust them more, so you give them slight expansion on that work. So, you know, you hand over escalations to someone, you're not necessarily always the de facto point of escalation. It doesn't always have to go to the manager or the director or whatever. It's like we actually have a layer of people here who are very, very experienced and very capable, and that is our first point of escalation now, for instance, um, even though they are to all intents and purposes still ICs.
Alec Moloney: 53:47
Yeah, and I think that's like it's a valuable call out, right? It's like it's a careful balance creating space and not creating too much space too early and also making sure that it's sustainable. And I think that's that's a key trade-off that you know, I think everyone's working through at the moment, right? Because we've got smaller teams, you know, the the do more with less adages well and truly, you know, in play. And I think, you know, as as exactly to your point, as as we we get that opportunity for us to like as leaders to stretch out more, we do need someone, you know, sort of in the team that's developed to you know take on some extra duty. And I think you know, we've we've got to be responsible in how we do that.
Charlotte Ward: 54:31
Yeah, 100%, 100%. Uh so responsible leadership is uh is the name of the game for the next six months, particularly as we we uh roll with the punches of of like so much change and so much uh like development in the world of AI and development in in our organizations. And uh yeah, yeah. It's gonna be a very interesting uh next almost half of the year. We were hoping to do this chat in in kind of March, but but you know, you got very busy all of a sudden, so here we are.
Alec Moloney: 55:06
Yeah, I mean it's only a couple of months later. It's a couple months later, but yeah. I think six months' time, you know, looking forward to it, right? Like I guess you know, within my organization, we're going through a lot of transformation, and I imagine in six months' time I'll come with some new stories, some new insights. Um, and yeah, looking forward to it as always.
Charlotte Ward: 55:27
Yeah. Let's not leave it six months. We come back in another three and have another chat, which will really be five, but you know, we'll aim for three.
Alec Moloney: 55:35
Say three. It's just look, we're just metering out in manager time, right? It's always like, you know, when someone's waiting for a meeting with you, you're like, I'll just be a minute. You know, that means really three to five minutes. And if you say I'll be five minutes, it's usually ten to fifty.
Charlotte Ward: 55:49
I don't know where you've got this idea from. This is outrageous.
Alec Moloney: 55:52
Um, in the meantime, this is this is every place I've ever worked. It's like myself included, I'm just as bad. I'll be like, I'll be 10 minutes, and 40 minutes later I'm messaging my team member, like, I'm so sorry, can we reschedule one? And it's it's just the reality of it when when you're firefighting.
Charlotte Ward: 56:07
But the difference now I find is that uh, you know, I used to his it used to be, I'm sorry, I'm running late on my last meeting. Can I just be fine? Now I'm just so deeply in the weeds with Claude, I lose track of time. And so I I have like missed the start of meetings because I'm like, I was probably I was deeply in the weeds with something with Claude. It's amazing how you get drawn in. Something I need to adjust definitely.
Alec Moloney: 56:33
Because I know you're on a Mac. There's a fantastic app. I'm pretty sure it's called In Your Face. It is fantastic. It comes up with like a whole screen alert when the meeting starts, and you can like configure it to be like, I want it five minutes before the meeting, and then snooze it until it comes back like when the meeting. Amazing. I stopped missing meetings when I started using that in a previous role, so it was not the snowflower role, but um like fantastic, cannot recommend it highly enough.
Charlotte Ward: 57:01
Oh, might go and look that up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alec Moloney: 57:05
For anyone listening out there who is also prone to missing every meeting, because just uh I miss it like inherently. I'm on a Windows machine now and it doesn't have a Windows service, and I'm just heartbroken, but I'll find something better.
Charlotte Ward: 57:22
I will go and look that up for sure. Um, so I'll see you in three months, as promised. And in the meantime, are you gonna write some stuff on the website for us?
Alec Moloney: 57:30
Yes. Well, uh at chat I can already see there's like six half-started things that I really need to finish writing.
Charlotte Ward: 57:36
Some ideas, some interesting ideas. Yeah, interesting ideas brewing. So yeah, looking forward to those.
Alec Moloney: 57:41
No, definitely. I'm about to go into review season, so I'm sure I'll have some tips and tidbits on that of how to use Claude and AI to help you, you know, synthesize some reviews and help you build them. So, you know, I'll um keep chipping away at a few articles and we'll start publishing soon.
Charlotte Ward: 58:00
Perfect. All right, well, thank you so much for joining me today, and we'll talk again soon.
Alec Moloney: 58:05
Pleasure as always.
Charlotte Ward: 58:08
That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash three zero zero for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.
