74: Support Contributing to Revenue with Erica Mancuso

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 74 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is support contributing to revenue. So stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome to the podcast today Erica Mancuso. Erica, you've been on one of the panels before, but this is your first outing just chatting to me on the topic for this week, which I'm going to introduce in a second. But first, would you like to introduce yourself?

Erica Mancuso: 0:46

Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me back, Charlotte. My name is Erica Mancuso, and I have had an extensive career working with various different customer-facing leadership roles in the SaaS industry, serving primarily healthcare clients, and I'm really developing a passion for, you know, how can we best serve clients and deliver a great customer experience in the healthcare world. I am currently working as the director of offer management at In Thrive, and in that role, I'm responsible for really bringing premium service offers to market.

Charlotte Ward: 1:23

So as I said, I'd introduce the topic of this week: support contributing to revenue. Support can be a real differentiating factor for revenue generation, right?

Erica Mancuso: 1:32

Absolutely it can. You know, I think as your company grows, your customers' needs continually change and evolve, it really becomes hard to be all things to all clients. And you get to this point where one size does not fit all clients. Not only is it difficult, it's expensive. And so one way that you can really, you know, serve all of your customer needs is by segmenting your client base and figuring out what do customers in in different market segments need from your company?

Charlotte Ward: 2:03

When I think about customer segments in that way and tiering our service, my mind immediately goes to sort of a premium support or an enterprise support level and what that might mean in terms of the decisions we make around the shape of that service, right? Does it always mean just faster support or are there more shades of gray there?

Erica Mancuso: 2:25

I think there's a lot more shades of gray there. Um, you know, faster support could be part of it, but it certainly doesn't stop there. Um, you know, there's a lot of different angles that you could go, perhaps a more technical account manager serving that client. A lot of companies who are developing premium service offers are really focused on maybe adoption services, right? Clients don't come to your company to purchase a technology product. They come to your company because they have a job to do and your product can help them do that job better. So, in a lot of cases, when you combine that product plus, you know, an enhanced level of service or support, you can really help that client achieve the outcome. And that's far more valuable to many clients than the actual tool.

Charlotte Ward: 3:09

So it's really helping a client solve their problems and perhaps doing that maybe in a slightly higher touch way or something that actually really highlights the value of your service offerings.

Erica Mancuso: 3:18

Keep in mind you're not trying to be all things to all people. So it's okay if that offer is not attractive to everybody. And I think it's it becomes a much easier conversation with the customer uh when you shift the conversation away from price and more to toward outcomes. Whenever you're talking about price, services, support, all of that tends to get cut. And then what happens is the client might go live on your technology product, or um, you know, they're they're several months into their journey with you and they realize, oh, yikes, maybe that wasn't the best idea. Maybe I do need more help. Now, I think the the big thing though that you really need to be careful about is make sure that there's uh a quantifiable return on investment for the client. It becomes a lot easier to have that value discussion when you can say, hey, look, we're gonna help you achieve X in three months versus eight or nine months if you try to do this on your own.

Charlotte Ward: 4:11

I mean, this is an act of selling, isn't it, at the end of the day, and it is all about what shape the benefit takes for your client as as it relates to their business? I I don't think any of those conversations, as you said, are we can answer your questions 15 minutes faster? Or or we can you we can take we can take 800 tickets from you this month instead of 500. No, none of those are really that meaningful. Do you think that this is a conversation that has to come from, you know, a sales team or a success team, or can it come from within support? And and and if it does come from within support, is it support leadership or is it something that your frontline can do for you?

Erica Mancuso: 4:49

Yeah, that's a good, good question. And I think it really depends on your company, to be honest. But there's probably multiple on-ramps, right? You know, support might be a great point for those leads. They might identify the clients who need that enhanced level of service and support from the organization. Um they're frontline, they're concerned about solving client problems, they've already got a lot of metrics going on in their head about you know quality and speed and you know resolution and and all of that, that you don't want to, you know, deter them from achieving those objectives by also then saying, hey, we'd also like you to uncover this many leads or generate this this much revenue. And and to be honest, a lot of people go into support because they're not cut out for that sales kind of role. So it doesn't appeal to everybody. And you you want to be sensitive to that, but we want to try to get the support agent out of the actual selling process. It's not a good fit there with all the other things that they have going on, but they can in fact be a really good source of leads.

Charlotte Ward: 5:55

Yeah, yeah. They they are having those conversations all the time, right? And I but I think you're right, there is not necessarily a great fit with support folk, A, because generally, in my experience, they don't want to do it. And B, also I think that there are implications there for the relationship between support and the client. Absolutely.

Erica Mancuso: 6:12

Yeah, you want support needs to be that trusted person for the client, and you don't want the customer calling support wondering what they're going to try to be sold. I mean, don't you hate that when you call up, say, your cable company to have a simple issue resolved and they're trying to upsell you to a better package. You have to walk that line carefully. But, you know, organically in a lot of the discussions that support's having, they can really uncover needs that are real needs and not just, hey, I'm trying to upsell you.

Charlotte Ward: 6:40

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