63: Onboarding New Hires with Craig Stoss

Charlotte Ward: 0:12

Hello and welcome to episode 63 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is onboarding new hires. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Craig Stoss. And Craig is joining me in a perfect storm of support leaders who have recently onboarded with companies to actually talk about onboarding properly. So let's talk about onboarding staff in support, Craig. Nice to have you back, by the way.

Craig Stoss: 0:54

Thanks, Charlotte. Great to be here. Yeah, onboarding is a mixed bag. I've had a bit of uh turnover in my career in the past few years, and so I've been onboarded in multiple different companies with multiple different uh ways. And I think that it's very interesting to see the different mentalities. You know, you have some companies whose version of onboarding is sit in a room with someone from HR, someone from IT, someone from development, someone from your product team, you know, and they just talk a little bit about themselves, or you set your laptop up or whatever it might be. And then there's then there's my most recent experience where you know the focus was really on providing the full context and perspective around an organization. And I think that it became so useful as we dove into the specifics because understanding why a company exists, understanding what each department and and service line provide to the business, and just the general context about why I would talk to this department about these topics that impact me was very useful. What I really found intriguing was that they really took the time to see how support fit into the flow and the process of the company, why support was important, kind of the the whole flow for the customer experience in the sense of how did a case come in? You know, what are the channels we offer? Um it was really, really that perspective that shone on it rather than, you know, here's a support department and here's the leader of the support department telling you what they do.

Charlotte Ward: 2:24

Do you think that speaks more to the fact that you have recently onboarded a bigger organization, a more established support team? Do you think that there are lessons here for smaller organizations?

Craig Stoss: 2:35

Yeah, I think that's absolutely it. I think that as being in a bigger organization, they've had the practice to know what works and what doesn't. You know, I can think back to a previous onboarding experience where you sat in a meeting room of sorts for eight hours a day and really were just shown slide after slide after slide. This it this onboarding was much different. There was a combination of slides of key important things about the company, the mission statements, the values of the organization. But then there was a go off and watch this video, go off and do this self-uh learning. Um, especially given that this was onboarding was done remotely uh because of our uh current pandemic situation. You know, it was also great to be able to have that break from staring at a video screen. I think they had that luxury being a large organization, but I do think it can be done at a small scale, you know, maybe maybe with less context needed if it's a smaller organization with fewer departments and fewer uh workflows and processes. But certainly uh providing context overall seems to be um you know incredibly important to new employees.

Charlotte Ward: 3:37

I really think you've hit on something important there as well. It that onboarding isn't something that has to happen or intensely for the first four days and then you're set free. It's a longer process and you do need downtime. I mean, in these times, downtime away from a screen because we're all onboarding remotely is helpful anyway to our mental health and our physical health, but actually just having that break away from being expected to absorb stuff and being given time to explore, consolidate, and figure out your place in all of this is um is super important. I went through an onboarding uh roughly 20 years ago, so as an agent, uh, and I was put through the same onboarding program a full-on week, and we were put in a room, a pretty intense room for day after day after day, watching those slides and uh being expected to participate in areas that actually at that stage of my career in the role I was going into had very little bearing on what my role was, what the expectations of that were going to be placed on me were. I I'll tell you now something I've told very few people, which is that I fell asleep. I fell asleep two and a half days into that onboarding in front in the semicircle. Um, uh and that was the point at which I said I I slightly made an excuse. I said I wasn't feeling particularly well, but I think if I'm honest, it was the onboarding that had made me feel a bit ill. And I went back to my desk and I did some useful onboarding, like getting to know the product, getting to know my team, getting to know processes and things that were actually relevant. And it was at my own pace, and it did take place over another week or so, but it was much more relevant and gave me time to process.

Craig Stoss: 5:24

I think getting to know the product is a key part of onboarding too. We actually spent a good part of uh a full day doing the actual workflow that customers would go through. We signed up for an account, we had to use the product in the exact way we were given scenarios that we had to create. And then after one of the best questions I think I've ever been asked in onboarding, where were the pain points? What can you see why our customers are struggling or do they customer struggle? Because you just did it. You know, you know, that feedback was received as like, look, we just had 30 people run through this exact process and then give candid feedback about what they did or didn't like about it. How powerful is that creating empathy for a customer? I think the second part of what you said, which is interesting, is you know, the self-study bit is very useful, being able to kind of learn on your own. But I think that has to also be guided by, especially in a large organization, who you need to work with.

Charlotte Ward: 6:14

That context early on is important, understanding where you fit in terms of the organization, your team, and the impact that you you will have and that your role has is really significant in your early efficacy, I think, in any role. And I I think if there's one thing I want to take away from this conversation, it's it's to build that context in early on rather than expect people to just pick it up is be really intentional about it. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash sixty three for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.