The office can be a productivity killer or a leadership advantage, and the difference usually comes down to one thing: whether we design the day or let the day design us. I’m joined by Andrew Rios to get real about returning to the office after years of remote work, and what it takes to make that shift sustainable for customer support leaders running busy teams.

We dig into the practical mechanics that decide whether office life works: owning your calendar from day one, carrying over non negotiables like school runs and family time, and factoring in commute time so your week doesn’t silently stretch. Andrew shares how he protects evenings over the long haul even in a role where outages and service interruptions can happen, and why it can take time to build the right rules of engagement.

Then we get into the hard part: getting work done when people can see you. We talk deep work blocks, the hidden cost of context switching, and how “Do you have a minute?” can derail an entire morning. Andrew explains how he sets office norms, sometimes even stepping into a coffee shop to recreate a remote focus setup, and how he turns walk up escalations into coaching moments that build team autonomy over time.

If you’re navigating return to office, hybrid work, or simply trying to protect focus and work life balance in a contact center or support environment, this one is packed with tactics you can use immediately. Subscribe for more practical customer support leadership conversations, share this with a leader who’s struggling with office interruptions, and leave a review with your best calendar boundary.

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AI in customer support gets reduced to one tired idea: ship a chatbot and cut tickets. That mindset misses where the real leverage is. We sit down with Robert Cabral, Head of Customer Experience at Runway, to talk about “AI beyond the queue” and what it looks like when an AI-first company uses automation to scale service while protecting the customer relationship.

We get practical about the messy middle: migrating long-lived support reporting, pulling data from multiple sources, and turning scattered metrics into a clear weekly narrative that product and leadership can actually act on. Robert shares how AI helps teams find the story inside ticket data, platform usage, and escalations, and why reporting is only valuable when it drives a better customer experience, a better product roadmap, and a better day-to-day for the support team.

Then we move past talk and into action. We discuss chatbot foundations for product education, plus higher-impact automations that do real work, like refund handling with strict guardrails and human escalation when context is missing. We also explore how AI enables support teams to build internal tools and repeatable templates, even without traditional engineering backgrounds, and why that capability can become a career accelerator across CX, product, QA, and engineering.

We close on leadership: how to address the fear that AI will replace support roles, how to set customer-focused goals, and how to plan for different outcomes if AI resolves 90% of questions or falls short. If you care about customer support AI, CX automation, AI reporting, and building durable teams in a fast-changing landscape, you’ll want this one. Subscribe, share with a fellow support leader, and leave a review if it helps you rethink your AI roadmap.

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Getting laid off can scramble more than your finances. It can shake your identity, your confidence, and the story you’ve been told about what “success” in customer support leadership is supposed to look like. That’s why this conversation with Jenny Dempsey hit so hard: she went from a clear leadership path in customer experience to two years of uncertainty, experimenting with consulting, and rebuilding from a place that felt anything but predictable.

We talk about the moment she realized a leadership title no longer matched her values. Jenny shares what it was like to apply for individual contributor roles with 20 years of experience, get judged as “overqualified,” and wrestle with the temptation to downplay her background just to get hired. We also unpack a healthier approach: owning the choice, leading without the org-chart label, and focusing on skills that actually create impact like clear communication, customer empathy, and making work easier for the team.

Then we zoom out to the unexpected parallel that ties it all together: her furniture flipping business. The product is different, but the customer journey is the same. Setting expectations, choosing the right channel, giving progress updates, and protecting trust when timelines are long. Charlotte puts it simply: silence kills trust. If you’re navigating layoffs, a career pivot, burnout, or a non-linear support career path, you’ll leave with practical mindset shifts and a better way to tell your story.

Subscribe for more real conversations about customer support careers, share this with a friend who’s rethinking their next move, and leave a review with the title you’re ready to stop chasing.

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Customers are talking about you where your VOC program rarely looks and it’s shaping revenue, retention, and trust. Nate Brown joins me to introduce Fearless CX, a bold and practical way to lead customer experience in a time when fear is high, teams are tempted to retreat into silos, and “insular thinking” makes cross-functional work painfully slow.

We dig into what Fearless CX looks like inside the organization: leaders acting as a beacon, building trust through character and conviction, and creating psychological safety without drifting into comfort or inertia. The goal is healthy tension where people can challenge ideas, learn fast, and collaborate across the enterprise to produce a consistent customer experience outcome.

Then we get tactical about modern voice of customer strategy. Nate explains “wild sentiment” the unstructured feedback living on Reddit, YouTube, third-party communities, and public reviews. We talk about how AI search is changing customer support behavior, why customers often solve problems without ever contacting the brand, and how AI-enabled customer experience management platforms can finally harmonize structured and unstructured feedback into real themes, tags, and actionable insights.

If you want a customer experience strategy that survives uncertainty and actually earns trust, press play. Subscribe, share this with a CX or support leader, and leave a review, then tell me: where do you think your customers are shaping your brand story today?

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AI is starting to take the queue. So what’s left for a customer support team once automation handles triage, repetitive questions, onboarding, and a big chunk of ticket volume? Ryan Klausner joins me to get specific about “life after AI” and why the future of support is bigger than faster replies. We talk about how human-first support can still thrive while using AI in customer service in a way that actually improves the customer experience.

We dig into the real shift: moving from reactive ticket handling to proactive support that prevents issues before they hit. That means treating support as a central intelligence function, using AI to surface friction in the customer journey, spotting trends early, and turning messy contact data into clear insights that product and marketing teams can act on. We also get honest about the cultural and coaching work required to help frontline teams become strategic operators, not just great responders.

Ryan shares what new roles and skills are emerging, from conversational analysis and prompt design to owning knowledge bases, self-service, and customer education. We also unpack trust, why “fake empathy” from bots can backfire, and how to build a better resolution path with smart escalation and truly white glove human help for complex scenarios. If you’re thinking about customer support careers, CX strategy, or AI driven customer experience, this one will sharpen your view of what’s next.

If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with a support leader on your team, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway. What part of support would you automate first, and what would you protect for humans?

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AI is already in your support queue, but the real question is what it’s doing to your career path. I’m joined by Hilary Dudek, Head of Customer Experience at Gamma, to get specific about how AI is reshaping customer support roles and why the “bots are coming for our jobs” narrative misses the most important part: new jobs are being created right now.

We dig into what AI chatbots are genuinely good at, like handling simple requests and searching your help center faster than any human can, and where they still struggle, especially around empathy, reassurance, and messy edge cases. We also talk about the shift away from chatbots masquerading as humans and toward clearer, more transparent bot experiences that set expectations and make handoffs to human support feel natural.

From there we go deep on the emerging roles: AI Support Engineer, support architect, and the growing need for people who can manage connectors across documentation, Slack, email, CRM, and data warehouses. We cover prompt engineering, knowledge management, routing and triage, hallucination risk, and why sensitive areas like billing and legal context still require careful human oversight. Hilary also shares a practical example of rapid experimentation: building a “support psychic” with AI that predicts likely follow-up questions and suggested responses from recent ticket patterns.

If you lead support operations, manage customer experience, or you’re on the frontline wondering how to stay relevant, this conversation is a roadmap for leaning in with confidence. Subscribe, share this with your team, and leave a review, then tell me: what AI-powered support role do you want to see next?

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Growth rarely happens on a straight line, and neither should coaching. We sat down with Andrew Rios, Head of Customer Experience at Cityside Fiber, to explore how leaders can tailor their coaching as people mature—from fresh hires forming their professional identity to seasoned operators who navigate constraints with judgment and calm. Andrew draws on an unexpected source—coaching youth sports—to reveal practical tactics that translate directly to support leadership.

We start with the early-career stage, where strong opinions and limited exposure often collide. Andrew’s approach is simple and effective: observe first, set clear expectations, explain the why, and check for understanding without condescension. He shares how to model the behavior you want, turn feedback into co-created next steps, and transform “I’m right” energy into team-first outcomes. Along the way, we talk about relatable storytelling, sticky lessons, and the value of asking people to reflect back what they heard so alignment sticks beyond the meeting.

As the conversation moves to senior ICs and emerging leaders, we shift to the realities of budgets, staffing, and process limits. Here, coaching is less about task accuracy and more about decision quality, trade-offs, and influence without authority. Andrew explains how transparency builds trust, how to run adult reflection loops (“If you could do it again, what changes?”), and why change usually takes longer than a 90-day plan. We also dig into inheriting teams, decoding norms from past workplaces, and preventing message drift by re-anchoring the why at regular intervals—even with your top performers.

Throughout, vulnerability is the backbone. Andrew talks openly about owning mistakes on the field and at work, thanking the team for the save, and using those moments to strengthen culture. If you’re a support leader, manager, or senior IC looking to evolve your coaching playbook, this conversation offers concrete tools and a mindset shift: meet people where they are, coach for where they want to go, and resist coaching them where they don’t.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a fellow leader, and leave a quick review to help more people find these conversations.

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What happens when AI automates the work that built your career story? We sit down with Lauren Eimers to trace a path from clinical counseling and genetics into customer support leadership and onward to clinical science liaison, then use that journey to unpack a bigger shift: the changing identity of support as AI handles the basics and reshapes teams, metrics, and roles.

Across this candid conversation, we question what “foundations” really mean. If bots resolve simple tickets in seconds, where do managers, directors, and VPs create value? We argue the center of gravity moves toward experience design: setting tone, training AI with the right knowledge, defining escalation paths, and architecting journeys that leave customers feeling seen and confident. That is where human strengths become strategy—storytelling that builds trust, empathy that defuses tense moments, and ethical judgment when answers affect health, money, or safety.

We also get practical about fear and planning. Instead of waiting for clarity, we model scenario thinking: inventory your durable skills, map them to AI-augmented roles like knowledge architecture, prompt strategy, and quality review, and use community to test and refine your plan. Expect a nonlinear path—more lily pads than highways—and treat each step as a chance to strengthen the human elements machines can’t replicate. The pace of change is fast, but the purpose endures: create support that feels simple, respectful, and human, even when the system behind it becomes radically new.

If this resonates, follow the show, share with a teammate, and leave a review telling us which human skill you plan to double down on next.

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Hiring plans look clean on a roadmap until real candidates, real timelines, and real markets show up. We unpack a practical, humane approach to building a support team that can handle peak seasons without sacrificing quality: plan backwards from your busiest dates, define the role around outcomes, and keep a flexible grip on how you staff it.

Charlotte welcomes Matt Dale to dig into the details leaders wrestle with every year. We talk through working from your go-live date to set posting windows, ramp time, and notice periods, then pressure-test those assumptions against service level goals and budget. Matt shares hard-won lessons on when to hire cohorts for frontline coverage and when a so-called “unicorn” role should be split into two focused positions. We get candid about the risks of fear-based hiring, how to establish contingency plans before you need them, and why automation and AI rarely deliver instant headcount relief.

Interviews, we argue, are more first date than crystal ball. Consistent loops and clear rubrics matter, but so does accepting uncertainty and raising the bar for mutual fit. We highlight the power of candidate questions—what they ask reveals how they think—and offer specifics to encourage better two-way conversations. Along the way, you’ll hear strategies for aligning with finance on headcount versus service levels, using contractors to build foundations, and resetting a search when the market tells you your role is mis-scoped.

If you’re hiring for customer support or customer experience this year, this conversation gives you a framework to time your postings, avoid settling, and build a resilient team prepared for the real workload, not the wishful slide. Subscribe, share this with a fellow support leader, and leave a review with your top hiring tip—what’s the question you always ask to gauge fit?

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What if a “ticket” isn’t a ticket at all, but an engagement where both sides own the outcome? We sit down with Greg Skirving to unpack how customer champions transform support from reactive break fix to a partnership that moves faster, learns faster, and pays off across the business.

Greg has lived every stage of the customer journey—sales, implementation, and support—so he brings a pragmatic lens to what works. We dig into the two traits that define a true champion—willingness and capability—and the concrete practices that build both: targeted training, version discipline, spare and hot-swappable parts, and clear runbooks. You’ll hear how Greg’s “Our Most Successful Customers Do This” handoff reframes expectations, sets troubleshooting ground rules early, and empowers customers to handle tier one and two issues confidently.

We also talk about the signals champions surface for customer success and product: emerging use cases, recurring failure modes, and real-world constraints that drive smarter roadmaps. Expect a candid look at metrics, too. When champions grow, ticket volume falls while complexity rises—TTR can increase even as overall outcomes improve. Learn how to tell that story to your leadership and why it matters in an AI-augmented queue.

If you want fewer how-to tickets, faster resolution on the hard stuff, and a stronger renewal story, this conversation is your playbook. Subscribe, share with your team, and leave a review with your best champion win or question—we’ll feature our favorites in a future episode.

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Trust isn’t a slogan when failure has real consequences. Simone Secci joins Charlotte Ward to pull back the curtain on support operations in two intense arenas—concierge‑level luxury tourism and clinical psychology platforms—and find a shared blueprint: protect privacy, reduce friction, and design for reliability before anything else. From coordinating restaurant bookings across phone, SMS, WhatsApp, and email to safeguarding patient pathways where there’s no “fix it later,” the conversation drills into how we plan, measure, and communicate when the stakes are high.

We break down layered SLAs that go far beyond first response time, including vendor response targets and customer wait time, and show how each micro‑commitment ladders up to trust. You’ll hear how we centralize multi‑channel communications for quality review, why “fast” isn’t always smart in healthcare, and how scientific rigor steers product choices—down to naming a feature without triggering clinical confusion. When providers are serving vulnerable people and billionaires are operating on tight schedules, the common reality is that no one has time to give perfect reproduction steps. That puts the burden on support to replicate issues, bridge technical and domain language, and escalate with clean evidence.

What emerges is a practical playbook for high‑trust support: kill silos, share a language with your users, validate terminology, and align support, product, QA, and engineering around proactive reliability. We talk about onboarding that actually reduces effort, concise walkthroughs that save attention, and the humility to slow down early so sessions, trips, and outcomes don’t fail later. If you lead customer support, success, or product in any high‑stakes space, this deep dive will sharpen how you measure, message, and deliver.

If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a teammate, and leave a quick review—what’s one place your team could slow down now to move faster later?

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A quiet Tuesday turns into a leadership stress test. We share the playbook for extreme delegation—those moments when a key lieutenant leaves, the CEO secondments you into a new role, or a surprise launch forces you to hand off mission-critical work fast without dropping standards. Matt Dale joins Charlotte Ward to unpack how to keep people safe, outcomes clear, and momentum steady when the plan changes mid-flight.

We start with the groundwork that makes speed possible: knowing your people, tools, and data; modeling calm, context-rich communication; and showing your work so others can replicate decisions. From there, we move into the safety contract that empowers new owners—explicit boundaries, time-boxed expectations, clear escalation paths, and a promise of advocacy when scope creeps or politics intrude. It’s still your accountability, and staying close with tight check-ins preserves agency while preventing drift.

Then we tackle ruthless prioritization. You can’t hand over your entire mental map and hope for the same outcome. Strip to essentials: customer promises that won’t bend, survival metrics, and the smallest system that delivers them. Pause nice-to-haves, and make smart, short-term investments—like an AI co-pilot or tighter knowledge flows—that shrink ramp time and amplify output. Real stories bring it to life: navigating a six-month secondment during acquisitions, replacing a leader mid-crunch, and accelerating an AI rollout to support hiring and scale.

This conversation is for support and CX leaders who have earned the reputation for getting it done and want a cleaner, calmer way to do it when chaos hits. You’ll leave with scripts, structures, and mindset shifts that turn a blindsiding week into a clear plan with confident owners. If this helped, follow the show, share it with a teammate who’s under pressure, and leave a review with your best extreme delegation tip.

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AI has crossed a threshold in customer support: it no longer just routes and records—it actually does the work. We sat down with Craig Stoss, solutions lead at Codif, to unpack what changes when agents and co-pilots resolve real cases, trigger refunds, detect spam, and personalize replies across channels. The core shift is mindset: once software handles tasks, you need to manage it like a teammate—measure output, audit quality, plan capacity, and set honest expectations about what AI should own versus when a human steps in.

We map the strengths and limits on both sides. AI excels at repeatable workflows, multilingual responses, classification, and fast data gathering across commerce and CRM tools. Humans shine in ambiguity, ethical judgment, and emotional connection. That split demands better metrics: evaluate AI on loop frequency, hallucination rate, accuracy, and handoff health; evaluate humans on sentiment impact, recovery, and resolution quality. We also tackle the messy middle: what counts as “containment,” how AI prework changes case counts and AHT, and why your SLAs must adapt as simple issues disappear and human queues get harder.

Transparency matters for trust and compliance. Customers behave differently when they know they’re speaking with a bot, so make disclosure sensible and escalation simple. Inside your org, put AI into workforce management like a 24/7 agent with forecasted volume, coverage targets, and per-workflow goals—think 90 percent for FAQs, 80 percent for refund screening, and a lower bar for complex warranties. Budgeting evolves too: tokens and compute join salaries, compounding micro-saves into real capacity. The upside is big: more interesting human roles, fewer transfers, and a path to merge support and success so one empowered person, augmented by AI, owns the outcome end to end.

If you care about scaling support without losing humanity—smarter metrics, cleaner handoffs, and a realistic plan for AI and people to thrive together—this conversation is your playbook. Subscribe, share with a support leader who needs it, and leave a review with the one metric you’d change first.

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Superior customer experience isn’t a universal recipe—it’s a promise aligned to what your customers expect from you, in their moment, on their terms. We sit down with CX veteran Ty Givens to unpack why “good” is always relative and how teams can design for consistency without losing the human judgment that creates loyalty.

Ty shares the evolution from rigid scripts to flexible playbooks that teach thinking. We explore the 80/20 guardrails that keep quality high while giving agents room to zigzag across a process, adapt tone, and move at the customer’s pace. From fast, accurate answers in high-urgency scenarios to the warm, predictable greetings that define beloved brands, we examine how context shapes what “excellent” really looks like.

We also get practical about influence. Dashboards rarely win hearts in the boardroom; stories do. You’ll learn how to frame a single experience you want to change, pick the one metric that proves movement, and tie it to outcomes executives already value like CSAT, NPS, retention, and revenue. We cover how to connect first response time to satisfaction, how to separate policy pain from agent performance in CSAT reviews, and how to elevate support insights to product and engineering so fixes actually ship.

For leaders and frontline teams alike, this conversation is a roadmap: define expectations, empower judgment, and communicate impact with clarity. If you’ve been struggling to turn support data into action or to earn trust for your team’s recommendations, this is your playbook for telling better stories and creating better experiences. If this episode resonates, follow the show, share it with a colleague who leads support, and leave a quick review with the one metric that tells your best story.

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Ready for a clean slate and a smarter way to build support in 2026? We kick off a fresh season with a rebuilt website, renewed energy, and a clear map of the big shifts reshaping our work: AI moving from side experiment to operational backbone, the leadership ladder compressing, and the customer journey turning truly dynamic. With Alec back on the mic, we share what sparked our collaboration, why the site overhaul mattered, and how we’re structuring episodes to turn complex trends into practical playbooks.

We dig into the AI arc we’ve watched up close: from generic tools to tailored systems grounded in product context and team workflows. That evolution changes how leaders think about risk, signal quality, and measurement. When each team builds its own AI-enabled flow, the data footprint becomes unique, and so must the metrics. We talk about moving beyond simple taxonomies and into cross-functional signals that reflect real value: reliability, effort reduction, resilience, and trust. It’s not about more dashboards; it’s about clearer decisions and better outcomes.

We also tackle the role overlap between support and customer success. Instead of strict handoffs, many teams are sharing tasks based on customer need, account complexity, and timing. The goal isn’t to blur expertise, but to surface the right context—recent incidents, account health, adoption goals—so the person in the room can help. That leads to our favorite battleground: journey mapping. Static maps that live on slides are fading. Dynamic journeys that adapt to signals are rising, supported by shared definitions, event-level visibility, and orchestration that changes course without creating chaos.

Expect returning guests, a few unfinished arcs finally wrapped, and plenty of new voices pushing us forward on AI maturity, metrics that matter, and the craft of leading modern support teams. If you’ve got a burning topic or a story worth sharing, head to customersupportleaders.com, scroll to the podcast page, and book a call. Subscribe, share with a teammate, and leave a review to help more leaders find the show.

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Forget the glossy strategy deck. We’re digging into the real drivers of customer experience: the values people use to decide, the culture that shows up in daily behavior, and the incentives that shape how work actually gets done. With coach and consultant Conor Pendergrast, we unpack why a perfect plan won’t move the needle without the conditions that make good choices easy under pressure.

We start by drawing a clean line between objectives, strategy, and tactics—then flip the frame. Support is operational, reactive, and fluid, so the experience your customers feel depends less on long-range roadmaps and more on what your team is empowered to do in the moment. We explore how a tight set of actionable values can guide judgment when process hits the edge cases, why culture is simply the sum of visible behaviors, and how to spot “painted-on” culture that reads great but conflicts with what the metrics reward.

Then we get practical. We talk incentives that matter—protected time for knowledge creation, loops from customer pain to product fixes, KPIs that don’t punish improvement work, and recognition that matches how individuals like to be celebrated. We cover Goodhart’s law, double-loop thinking, and the operational rituals that keep teams learning: documenting confusing flows, aligning processes to ownership, and building capacity for continuous improvement. Expect candid examples, clear language, and tools you can use to align values, culture, and incentives so strategy becomes the way your team works, not a slide you forget by July.

If you want support that scales quality—fewer handoffs, clearer answers, and issues that don’t boomerang—start here. Subscribe, share with a fellow support leader, and leave a review to tell us which behavior you’ll reward first.

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Ever faced a customer whose day went off the rails before they reached you? We dive into the emotional mechanics of difficult conversations and show how empathy, clear choices, and a partnership mindset can turn even the messiest moments into momentum. Charlotte sits down with customer and employee experience strategist Marc Haine to unpack a practical toolkit that works across hospitality, retail, government services, and B2B support.

We start with a simple truth: your first customer is your employee. When teams feel supported, they can stay calm under pressure and ask better questions that reveal what customers actually need, not just what they say they want. Marc shares a gripping hotel story that reframes conflict through safety, ownership, and forward-focused language. You’ll hear the exact phrases that de-escalate fast—“I realize how frustrating this is for you,” “In your place, I’d feel the same way,” and “Is it okay if we focus on next steps?”—along with respectful boundaries when calls turn abusive. Then we walk through a three-option framework that returns control to the customer, shifting them from victim to decision-maker.

We also tackle the quieter, colder B2B fury where reputations and revenue are on the line. The method holds: empathize, name the impact, and become a partner in the solution. Great service isn’t perfection; it’s recovery done right. By preparing employees with language, rehearsal, and permission to set boundaries, teams can guide customers from lizard brain to logic, from blame to progress. If you lead support, CX, or customer success, you’ll leave with a repeatable playbook to calm chaos and build trust that lasts.

If this episode helps, follow the show, share it with a teammate, and leave a quick review—what de-escalation line works best for you?

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What if the fastest path to trustworthy AI starts with a better knowledge base? 

David Kay is Principal at DB Kay & Associates, a consultancy focused on knowledge management and self-service for support. He was recognized as an Innovator by the Consortium for Service Innovation, and has been KCS v6 Certified as a Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS) practitioner, coach, and trainer. He held leadership roles at an innovative knowledge management technology provider from early 1998 to the end of 2002, and has been granted five patents for his work in knowledge management technology. His current work leverages thirty-five years of experience in envisioning, developing, marketing, and rolling out technology to aid knowledge-intensive businesses. David is co-author of Collective Wisdom: Transforming Support with Knowledge, and instructor of Customer Service: Knowledge Management and Customer Service with AI and Machine Learning on LinkedIn Learning.

I sit down with David to test a bold claim: you don’t do AI to get a knowledge base—you build a knowledge base to get good AI. Together we unpack what customers and agents actually need from information: it must be findable, usable, and accurate. Generative tools already deliver speed and clarity, but accuracy is where the stakes rise, especially in complex, safety‑critical domains where a confident wrong answer can do real harm.

We explain hallucinations in plain language and why persuasive, well‑phrased but incorrect outputs are harder to spot than sloppy forum posts. Then we explore retrieval augmented generation, a practical way to ground answers in trusted sources and expose citations for verification. That’s where a governed knowledge base becomes essential. KCS offers a proven way to capture knowledge in the flow of work, use the customer’s words, and evolve articles through real‑world reuse—exactly the structured, current content an AI pipeline needs to stay reliable.

The conversation turns tactical: how to start or reboot your KB, which KCS practices matter most, and why teams see faster AI wins when they invest in knowledge quality first. We also dig into the elusive aha moment in troubleshooting. AI can summarize long case histories, but spotting the hypothesis that changes the outcome still leans on human meaning making. The exciting frontier is assistive AI that recognizes patterns across cases, nudges better questions, and shortens time to insight without sacrificing judgment.

If you’re being pitched quick fixes that “solve knowledge with AI,” this episode offers a saner roadmap: build a resilient knowledge base, ground your models with RAG, and keep humans in the loop for accuracy and nuance. Subscribe, share with your support and product teams, and leave a review telling us: are you building your KB to make your AI better?

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Outages test more than systems—they test culture. We dig into what “calm under pressure” actually looks like, from the first hint of trouble to the final post‑incident review. Together with guest Kat Gaines of PagerDuty, we explore why support must be a core stakeholder, how trust and blamelessness turn heat into focus, and the small operational moves that make the next incident smoother than the last.

We start with the why: customers feel the wobble first, and support carries that weight. Clear roles, fast approvals for updates, and a cadence everyone understands protect users and the team. Kat shares how to make calm a measurable goal, not a motivational poster—think time‑boxed check‑ins, explicit ownership, and language that separates immediate action from root cause. We unpack retrospectives that actually change behavior, documenting principles so they hold during the toughest minutes, not just the easy ones.

We also talk about people. Training newcomers requires more than docs; it needs pairing, gentle course correction, and real reps in safe situations. The signal of maturity is when veterans guide first‑timers in the moment without chaos. Kat offers a powerful lens for jobseekers and leaders alike: watch a real incident to learn a company’s values. Healthy teams honor roles, communicate clearly, and iterate with intent. Finally, we map incident skills to career growth—cross‑functional coordination, high‑stakes comms, and judgment under pressure—showing how support pros earn visibility and create paths into leadership or adjacent teams.

If you want fewer escalations, faster updates, and a team that stays steady when it counts, this conversation gives you the frameworks and the human skills to build it. Subscribe, share with a teammate who handles the heat, and leave a review telling us the one change you’ll make before your next incident.

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Sauce jokes aside, we get real about AI in customer support: why it’s tempting to chase the trend, how early demos can mislead, and what actually works once you bring models into day-to-day operations. Rob Dwyer joins us to unpack the difference between toy and tool, sharing lessons from building conversational analytics and automated QA across diverse industries.

We dig into the myth of “one model to rule them all” and get specific about task fit. Generative models shine at qualitative judgments like tone, professionalism, and focus in short, discrete interactions. They stumble with counting, sequence checks, and multi‑step logic—especially across long, technical threads. That gap matters when you’re grading complex troubleshooting or evaluating revenue potential. We talk about the demo effect, why a few promising outputs aren’t proof, and how to set up meaningful evaluations with enough data to avoid false confidence.

If your world is regulated or highly technical, retrieval‑augmented generation (RAG) becomes essential. Grounding model answers in a current, curated knowledge base cuts hallucinations and keeps responses aligned with policy. But RAG is only as good as your content ops, which means version control, ownership, and clear guardrails. We also challenge the monolith instinct: mega‑suites promise simplicity yet often deliver stitched‑together mediocrity. A best‑of‑breed stack with clean integrations and strong observability gives you better performance and control.

You’ll leave with a practical framing: good use cases (assisted QA for tone and policy, summarization, intent clustering), maybe use cases (autonomy on complex workflows), and “oh hell no” zones (high‑stakes decisions without grounding or oversight). The throughline is patience—define the problem, validate with real samples, measure cost per correct outcome, and keep humans in the loop where it counts. Subscribe for more clear-eyed conversations on building support that’s fast, human, and genuinely smarter with AI.

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The alarms stop, but the real work is just getting started. Charlotte Ward and Kat Gaines pull back the curtain on what effective teams do after an incident is resolved—how to pause, learn, and communicate in a way that actually strengthens trust.

We explore why a short breather prevents knee‑jerk conclusions, how to balance pressure for instant answers with thoughtful analysis, and what belongs in a preliminary update versus a full review. Kat explains how to structure a live, blameless postmortem, why support must be in the room as a source of customer signal, and the right ownership model for running the review. You’ll hear a practical flow for the meeting—shared timeline, missed details, what’s been done, and what’s next—plus how to use Five Whys to move beyond “who messed up” and into “what systems allowed this.”

Communication takes center stage. We get specific about writing external reports that avoid clichés, match tone to impact, and clearly state what will change to prevent a repeat. We dig into accessible language for differently skilled audiences, personal follow‑ups for key accounts, and how to invite customer questions as a final step in closing the loop. The mantra running through it all: fix systems, not people. By treating incident reviews as a chance to improve detection, playbooks, tooling, and ownership, teams turn a rough day into durable resilience.

If you care about incident management, customer trust, and making your next outage less painful than the last, this conversation packs a complete framework you can put into practice. Subscribe, share with your on‑call crew, and leave a review to tell us your top rule for a great post‑incident report.

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Ever wondered what distinguishes a true leader from the rest? Join me, Charlotte Ward, as I unlock the secrets of leadership potential within customer support teams alongside Meredith Malloy. Discover how to identify the "unicorns" among your team—those rare individuals who possess the natural empathy and connection skills that are foundational to effective leadership. Meredith sheds light on how these talents can transform into impactful leadership roles, enhancing both employee and customer satisfaction.

Meredith also offers invaluable guidance for those aspiring to lead, stressing the importance of proactive engagement and a genuine passion for growth. She emphasizes the need for continual learning and curiosity, advocating for leadership driven by authentic motivation rather than mere title or salary allure. Together, we explore the journey of nurturing future leaders, providing them with the necessary resources and support to thrive. Tune in to learn how spotting and cultivating leadership talent can bring about positive, far-reaching changes within your organization.

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Unlock the secrets to mastering technical support as we, Robert Cabral and I, guide you through the art of enlisting engineering support for complex inquiries. You'll discover how data-driven strategies can transform your support processes, leading to a drastic reduction in ticket escalations. Robert shares his expertise on creating a robust taxonomy for categorizing issues, ensuring clarity and efficiency in resolving them. We promise you'll leave with actionable insights into improving collaboration between support and engineering—essential knowledge for anyone navigating the SaaS landscape of platforms like DataCamp.

Robert and I also delve into the power of empathy and continuous improvement in fostering a proactive support environment. By embedding support team members within engineering, we’ve not only improved communication but also decreased escalations from 40% to under 10%. Our conversation sheds light on the importance of strategic conversations, empathy-building, and securing engineering buy-in. Join us as we unravel the gradual journey of transforming support teams with small wins and iterative progress—your roadmap to a more efficient, less reactive customer service experience.

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Unlock the secrets to building a standout customer support team by tuning into our captivating conversation with Alyssa Purcell, a seasoned manager from New York City. Alyssa brings her expertise to the table, offering strategies for crafting precise job descriptions that attract the right candidates. She shares the nuanced art of balancing skills assessment with cultural fit, and the importance of having a diverse interview panel featuring both leadership and peers for a comprehensive evaluation process. You'll leave understanding how to identify the strengths and qualities necessary for each role, paving the way for effective hiring.

Alyssa also unveils her unique approach to interviews, providing real-time feedback to candidates as a means of gauging their potential for growth. Her insights on coaching peers for interviews, maintaining consistency, and reducing unconscious bias with quality feedback are invaluable for anyone in a hiring position. Whether you're bringing in newcomers for entry-level roles or seeking seasoned professionals, Alyssa's proven strategies will equip you with the knowledge to enhance your hiring process and improve candidate outcomes. Listen and transform your approach to hiring in customer support.

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Unlock the secrets to mastering incident management with our latest episode featuring the insightful Kat Gaines. Discover how to transform your customer support strategy by crafting effective incident communications and building strong interdepartmental relationships. Learn from Kat as she delves into the complexities of maintaining a unified communication strategy amidst a sea of different tools and remote work challenges. We'll walk you through the importance of clearly defined roles and well-documented processes, ensuring that your team's internal coordination translates into seamless external updates that keep your customers informed and confident.

Join us as we unravel the roles of incident commanders and customer liaisons, and explore how small businesses can evolve from an all-hands approach to more streamlined responses using tools like PagerDuty. We'll highlight the delicate art of balancing technical details with brand perception in customer communications, and how your customer-facing teams can lead the charge in crafting messages that resonate. With practical advice, such as utilizing system maps to bridge the gap between technical jargon and customer understanding, this episode promises to equip you with the knowledge to enhance your customer experience during incident management.

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Kristina King returns to the spotlight, sharing her remarkable pivot from finance and teaching to becoming a technical support engineer, all without a formal CS degree. Kristina's narrative underscores the power of varied backgrounds in tech, illustrating her philosophy of hiring for culture "add" rather than culture "fit." She emphasizes the need to extend opportunities to those who might not traditionally find their way into tech, particularly through her role on hiring committees. Kristina's hiring philosophy is about finding those "weirdos" who bring a distinct passion and personality to the team, making the workplace not only diverse but vibrant.

This episode also highlights Kristina's innovative approach with a business support specialist internship aimed at non-traditional candidates, facilitated through a collaboration with WorkSource Oregon. Notable successes include interns like Dana, an Army vet and former bricklayer, who transitioned into valuable technical roles. This initiative highlights how skills like customer experience from the service sector can be effectively channeled into tech support positions. Join us as Kristina unpacks these transformative hiring strategies that are broadening the talent pool and reshaping tech support teams for the future.

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Ever wondered how startups can access top-tier leadership without bringing on full-time executives? Brian Levine, joins me to share his journey and unpacks the innovative concept of fractional leadership in customer support. 

Brian has been in tech support, in one capacity or another, for 15 years. He's been VP of Support at GitHub and Head of Support at Plaid, among others. These days he's the co-founder of Yetto, a help desk for modern support teams. Brian lives in Rome and drinks far too much coffee.

From his experiences at those industry giants like GitHub and Plaid to founding his own help desk company, Brian reveals how part-time expert guidance can be a game-changer for startups. Discover how companies can skillfully manage transitions and foster a robust support culture with the expertise of seasoned leaders even when they're not ready for a full-time role.
 
 Curious about the impact of fractional leadership on early-stage companies? We tackle strategies for startups lacking a dedicated support head, where initial consulting can highlight system gaps and pave the way for longer-term partnerships. Brian discusses how identifying potential failures in support processes can compel businesses to seek further expert involvement, ultimately helping them scale successfully. Whether you're exploring support leadership careers or intrigued by the challenges and triumphs of being a founder in this space, this episode is packed with insights that promise both inspiration and actionable advice for navigating the dynamic world of customer support.

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From The Archives: Careers in Support

Discover the secrets of building a thriving career in the customer support industry as Matt Dale joins me to unravel the multitude of paths available for support team members. From nurturing the journey of an individual contributor to embracing leadership roles or exploring new arenas like QA and customer satisfaction, this episode promises to equip you with the insights to chart your career course. Matt shares an inspiring story of a team member's dream of becoming a developer and how the support culture facilitated their transition to QA, highlighting the importance of fostering a supportive environment for growth and transformation.
 
 Join us as we tackle the challenges of retaining skilled individuals and nurturing talent, viewing support teams as a valuable "farm team" for the organization. Matt emphasizes the significance of open communication and personalized development plans during one-on-one sessions, providing listeners with actionable strategies to manage career trajectories effectively. Whether you're a leader seeking to retain talent or a professional aiming to grow within your support role, this episode offers a treasure trove of insights that you won't want to miss.

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What happens when the adrenaline rush of an incident meets the need for effective communication? Join us as we chat with Kat Gaines, the leader of PagerDuty’s developer advocacy and community team, who brings her expertise to the table. You’ll walk away with a clear understanding of how maintaining transparent communication not only soothes nerves during crises but also keeps customer expectations in check. Gain insights into how developing empathy between engineering teams and customers transforms the user experience, all while fulfilling our innate craving for solutions through timely updates.

Imagine engineers and customer support colliding in a world where Pokémon and bunnies serve as perfect analogies. Kat helps us explore this fascinating intersection, revealing the challenges engineers face in making their technical know-how understandable to the average person. Learn how empathetic customer support representatives become the unsung heroes, bridging this gap and ensuring that customer anxieties are kept at bay through consistent terminology and clear definitions. It’s a lesson in how collaboration between engineers and support teams ensures that even the most complex technical concepts can be translated into relatable terms, easing the often tense atmosphere of an incident.

We also unravel the intricacies of internal communication, stressing the importance of proactive practices that go beyond routine operations. From the use of codified channels and platforms to striking the right balance between internal transparency and external caution, we cover it all. Gain tips on fostering trust during incidents, creating templates for updates, and ensuring your team is equipped to handle external inquiries with confidence. Whether you're managing incidents or fine-tuning communication strategies, this episode promises to arm you with the tools you need for success.

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Mike Redbord, a seasoned veteran from HubSpot with over a decade of experience, joins us to unravel the mysteries of managing customer support beyond mere numbers. Discover why Michael believes that looking past the spreadsheets can uncover stories of exceptional customer service, and how these anecdotes can act as guiding beacons for your team. He shares valuable insights on balancing data-driven management with the art of storytelling, ensuring that as teams grow, the human element isn't lost amidst the metrics. Prepare to learn how maintaining simplicity in data allows room for the stories that truly highlight world-class customer service.

Join us for a thought-provoking conversation exploring the delicate dance between numbers and narratives in the realm of customer support. Michael dives into the significance of anecdotes in celebrating moments of outstanding customer interaction and how these stories can inspire and instruct within your teams. He passionately argues for keeping metrics simple, allowing the truly impactful stories to shine. Listen in as we discuss how to foster a culture that cherishes these narratives, providing the perfect blend of quantitative and qualitative insights to elevate your customer support strategy.

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Discover how to master the delicate art of balancing automation with human interaction in customer support, as Corey Brown and Elliot Fox share their expert insights. Facing the pressure to adopt AI while keeping a personal touch can be challenging for businesses. This episode uncovers the potential pitfalls of over-relying on AI, such as generic responses, and emphasizes the importance of human intervention to ensure customer satisfaction. Listen as we explore how AI can serve as a co-pilot, boosting efficiency and enhancing customer experiences without sacrificing the essential human connection.

Join us as we dive into the practical application of AI in customer service, especially for high-volume, low-complexity tasks and round-the-clock availability. Corey and Elliot discuss the challenges AI faces in nuanced environments and highlight the benefits of data-driven insights like sentiment analysis. By examining both the strengths and limitations of AI, this episode offers a thoughtful approach to integrating technology in a way that elevates both customer satisfaction and team morale. Tune in to learn strategies that create win-win scenarios in the ever-evolving landscape of customer support.

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Unlock the secrets behind the spreadsheets and discover the hidden complexities of customer support with me and my special guest Ash Rhodes. Ash brings his seasoned perspective on the pitfalls of reducing support staff to mere numbers, reminding us of the importance of understanding the real-time dedication required to resolve customer issues. Together, we explore the nuances of ticket handling and the dangers of setting unrealistic performance goals. Ash sheds light on the often-undocumented tasks like research and troubleshooting that contribute to the intricate web of support functions. This episode promises to transform how you view your support team and their invaluable human contributions.

Ash also introduces us to the intriguing concept of "social complexity" in the world of remote work. We discuss the critical role of team dynamics and the challenges of maintaining authentic, empathic communication in virtual environments. Learn why allowing time for social bonds to form can lead to a cohesive and productive team, and how unstructured moments of chatter are not just fluff but fundamental to effective collaboration. Whether you're a support leader or part of a remote team, these insights offer a fresh perspective on fostering a more human-centric and effective work environment.

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Ever wondered how a support desk manager transforms the reputation of their team from the "black sheep" to a pivotal player in brand development and customer interaction? Join me, Charlotte Ward, as I sit down with Steve Tondé from PayShepherd, a Canadian fintech company, who shares his transformative leadership journey and the evolving role of support teams in today's tech-driven landscape. With the rise of SaaS, support teams are stepping into the spotlight, and Steve shares how engaging with critical departments like finance and product development can prioritize customer feedback and drive impactful change. Through his personal experiences, Steve offers valuable insights into the power of transparency and communication across teams, providing a treasure trove of advice for new leaders eager to understand their company and its stakeholders from the start.

Explore the intricate web of interdepartmental dynamics as Steve and I discuss the importance of understanding key performance indicators (KPIs) across different functions to foster successful collaboration. I recount a personal experience where misalignment with another department's KPIs led to a roadblock, highlighting the necessity of building honest relationships to bridge these gaps. We'll delve into the art of finding parallel goals for shared success and the value of stepping out of comfort zones to engage with colleagues across the organization. This episode is a humbling reminder that sometimes our priorities need reevaluation to align with broader organizational needs, underscoring the essential role of relationship-building in nurturing growth and improvement.

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What if handling awkward workplace conversations could be less daunting and more compassionate? Join us as we sit down with Hilary Dudek from Gluco, who shares her expert strategies for navigating these challenging discussions with grace and empathy. With five years of tech support experience under her belt, Hilary emphasizes the importance of putting yourself in the other person's shoes and maintaining a balance between professionalism and warmth. She explains how intentional language and face-to-face communication, even via Zoom, can transform a difficult conversation into a constructive dialogue. 

Listen to Hilary's heartfelt recounts of empathy, from shedding sympathy tears to offering team members the space they need to process difficult news. She candidly discusses her own struggles with maintaining a poker face and the emotional complexities of delivering tough feedback. Learn practical advice on allowing employees to revisit conversations after some time, providing a thoughtful approach to difficult workplace interactions. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to master the art of compassionate communication in the workplace.

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What makes a Customer Liaison Officer indispensable during incident management? Join us as we tap into the expertise of Kat Gaines, who shares her invaluable experience and detailed examples to illuminate the crucial responsibilities of this role. Discover how effectively bridging the communication gap between incident response teams and customer-facing staff can transform your incident response strategy. Kat delves into the art of aggregating customer-reported issues and managing internal expectations, revealing why sticking to standard processes just won't cut it during high-stress incidents.

Beyond the basics, we explore the nuanced tasks of real-time decision documentation and post-incident action auditing, essential for thorough reviews and continuous improvement. Kat also brings to light the often-overlooked mental health challenges in customer support roles, the pitfalls of heroism culture, and the necessity of setting clear boundaries to prevent burnout. Tune in for leadership strategies that foster a supportive and effective environment, catering to diverse work styles and ensuring your team remains resilient in the face of stress. Whether you're a seasoned professional or new to incident management, this episode promises to enhance your understanding and capability in handling high-pressure situations.

I'd love your thoughts on this episode! Comment below, and like/love/share/support if you found this inspiring, thought-provoking, or useful!

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Mastering Leadership Communication in Startup Support; with Andrew Rios

How do you transform data into compelling business narratives? Join us in Episode 270 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast, where Andrew Rios returns to share his invaluable insights on building a robust communications plan for new roles. Andrew explains the power of a "support report" and how starting with basic data points can evolve into a comprehensive tool that enhances decision-making and staffing forecasts. Discover why placeholders and "coming soon" metrics can be your best allies in gradually painting a complete picture for your organization.

Ensuring that your reports are not just created but also read and understood is a different challenge altogether. Listen as we discuss strategies to make these reports engaging and accessible. From brief summaries to personalized content, we delve into techniques to capture your audience's attention and build a culture where these reports are anticipated and valued. Andrew shares how finding allies and leveraging social proof can significantly boost the engagement and impact of your communications.

Wrapping up, we explore the art of effective leadership communication, especially in the fast-paced world of startups. Transparency, tactful feedback, and regular reporting are just some of the strategies we discuss for building trust within your team. Andrew and I also touch on the importance of quickly understanding historical decisions and spotting potential frictions between teams early on. This episode is packed with practical advice and actionable insights for support leaders looking to make a real impact in their new roles. Join us for a conversation that promises to leave you inspired and equipped to handle your next big step.

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Ever wondered what it takes to build a high-performing contact center from scratch? Join us as we uncover the secrets with Joe DiNatale. Joe is a contact center executive with extensive experience across operations, strategy, customer experience, and vendor management. Over his career he has held most leadership positions within the contact center space including building call centers from the ground floor.  Spending the past 10 years working in the telecommunications industry for some of the largest cable operators where Joe has led transformational change in the contact center. 

In this episode, learn the significance of location, university access, and mass transit for efficient hiring, as well as the benefits of leveraging local economic environments and tax incentives. Joe shares his firsthand experiences, challenges, and the immense satisfaction of creating sustainable contact centers that continue to thrive years later.

But the journey doesn’t stop at mere infrastructure. Discover the essential strategies for building a strong team culture and managing call center growth. We delve into the qualities that make up a stellar team, such as coachability and strong work ethic, and the importance of a phased approach to onboarding and training. Joe highlights the value of a comprehensive resource repository and recognition initiatives like "employee spotlight" to foster engagement and motivation. Tune in for practical insights that will guide you in setting up and nurturing a successful contact center.

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Nurturing Empathy in Customer Support with Natalie Ruhl

How can you genuinely connect with your customers and create a more harmonious workplace? Join me in this enlightening episode from the archives of the Customer Support Leaders podcast, first broadcast in January 2020, where I sit down with Natalie Ruhl, Director of Community Operations at SoundCloud. Natalie delves into the core of empathy, revealing how it serves as a fundamental pillar not just in customer interactions but also in effective teamwork. Whether you believe empathy can only be inherent or think it can be coached, this conversation will challenge and expand your understanding. Natalie shares the innovative methods her team employs, from role-playing scenarios to reading emails aloud, to nurture and enhance empathetic skills.

Discover the delicate balance between empathizing with customers and maintaining objective judgment, a skill crucial in avoiding potential pitfalls. Natalie emphasizes the importance of empathy in career progression within customer support and beyond, offering practical tips to integrate empathy into daily practices. This episode is a goldmine for anyone eager to refine their empathetic approach and improve their professional relationships. Don’t miss out on these transformative insights that promise to elevate both your personal and professional growth.

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Mastering Incident Management - Part 2 of 6; with Kat Gaines

Embark on an insightful expedition into the nerve center of incident management with Kat Gaines and myself, as we unravel the essentials of tailoring an effective process for your organization. We're not just bystanders in the realm of crisis resolution; we're the architects designing the blueprint. This episode promises to hand you the reins of your own incident management strategy, urging you to define incidents and their severities in a way that resonates with your business's unique pulse. As Kat shares her wisdom on building from the ground up, I draw from both our experiences and the well-oiled machine that is PagerDuty, ensuring you leave with a toolkit brimming with proactive solutions.

Commanding the spotlight, the role of the Incident Commander is dissected to reveal the mastery behind maintaining clarity amidst chaos. Supported by an ensemble cast of deputies, scribes, and liaisons, we discuss the art of orchestrating an efficient resolution process. Discover how integrating tools like Slack's canvas feature can transform your documentation and communication strategies, enabling your team to make swift decisions and remain in control. It's about more than just the technicalities—it's about empowering your support leaders to assert their expertise without the looming shadow of repercussions.

Finally, we emphasize the symphony of soft skills that harmonize with technical know-how to form the crescendo of incident resolution. Personal anecdotes underscore the delicate dance between listening and projecting confidence, especially when the stakes are high. We challenge the preconceived notions about non-technical roles, advocating for their technical savvy and pivotal role in customer communications. Tune in for a paradigm shift that will equip you to conduct a well-orchestrated incident process where clear roles and effective communication are the keystones to success.

As part of this episode, Kat shares some awesome PagerDuty resources showing the structure of an Major Incident Response Team and the roles we discuss over this and the coming episodes:

Different Roles - PagerDuty Incident Response Documentation
and
Complex Incidents - PagerDuty Incident Response Documentation

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Finding the Balance Between Product and Functional Expertise; with Colin Flanigan

Unlock the secrets of superior product support with Charlotte Ward and special guest Colin Flanigan, Director of Customer Experience at Sage, in a conversation that promises to elevate your understanding of customer experience leadership. If you've ever pondered the perfect balance of product and role knowledge for leaders, our discussion serves as a treasure map to the middle ground where understanding meets practical leadership. We confront the challenges head-on as we scale the heights of team expansion, navigate the technical complexities, and traverse the industry specificities. With sage insights, Colin and I dissect the evolution of responsibilities and the bedrock of product know-how that supports teams from scrappy startups to towering corporate entities.

Embark on a journey through the crucial first 90 days of a customer's path, where the art of crafting and refining journey maps becomes a compass for navigating potential pitfalls and streamlining experiences. Learn from our strategies how to weave the frontline team's invaluable narratives into these maps, crafting a tapestry that captures the true spirit of customer interactions. As we wade through the shared waters of employee and customer experiences, we reveal how an in-depth understanding can act as a catalyst for organizational growth. By uniting customer-centric insights with a broad business perspective, leaders can cast ripples across diverse business segments, charting a course for professional development and operational excellence. Join us for this enlightening exploration and discover how to steer your team toward uncharted waters of success.

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Prepare to be enlightened as we sit down with the incomparable Nick Zeisler, or Zee as we fondly call him, for a riveting discussion on the essential role of Voice of the Customer (VOC) programs. This episode promises to transform your approach to customer feedback, from mere data points to actionable insights that can prevent your company from breaking its brand promise. Zee passionately dissects the futility of feedback collection without intent, emphasizing the profound power of VOC when it's used to cultivate genuine customer relationships and improve response rates to surveys.

Together, we unravel the intricacies of leveraging customer insights to elevate your offerings, steering clear of the notorious 'faster horse' pitfalls. We'll reflect on how visionaries like Steve Jobs and Henry Ford navigated customer needs, exploring the delicate art of crafting survey questions that resonate with your brand's core values. The conversation doesn't stop there—we also examine cultural nuances in satisfaction scoring and the strategic use of targeted questions. Join me, Charlotte Ward, and Zee for an episode that will not only challenge your perceptions but equip you with the expertise to refine your brand through the eyes of those who matter most—your customers.

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Nurturing Your Professional Network: Authentic Strategies for Support Folk; with Jason Yun

Have you ever felt like a solitary island in the vast ocean of your professional life? This sensation is all too familiar for support professionals, like me, Charlotte Ward, and my esteemed guest Jason Yun.

Jason has been in the support leadership space for a decade+. Focusing on hypergrowth early stage startups such as Lyft and Instacart, he has been figuring out how to build consumer trust in a diverse array of industries - on-demand services, self-driving cars, telemedicine, and more. He's currently a CX consultant for healthtech companies looking to bridge the gap in healthcare. 

Together, Jason and I tackle the imperative yet often overlooked art of networking within our niche. It's not merely a tool for job seekers or the entrepreneurial spirited; it's the lifeblood of personal and community advancement. Throughout our conversation, we debunk the notion that networking is equivalent to self-promotion, and instead, we celebrate it as a celebration of camaraderie and mutual support.

This episode unfolds the subtleties of fostering long-lasting professional connections, and I share an intimate narrative that sheds light on the far-reaching impact of maintaining your network through warm introductions. We offer insights on how to keep your contacts apprised of your evolving career journey, ensuring they remain relevant and beneficial. The dialogue further delves into the strategies for broadening your professional circle, starting with those you trust on platforms like LinkedIn. By the end of our chat, you'll be equipped with the inspiration and tactics to not just grow your network, but to nourish it with authenticity, reciprocity, and a forward-thinking mindset.

I'd love your thoughts on this episode! Comment below, and like/love/share/support if you found this inspiring, thought-provoking, or useful!

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Mastering Incident Management - Part 1 of 6; with Kat Gaines

Unlock the secrets to seamless service as we navigate the critical world of incident management with the expertise of Kat Gaines from PagerDuty. Prepare to be armed with a deeper understanding of the complexities that define an incident, and why this knowledge is a game-changer for teams committed to providing uninterrupted excellence. Kat's seasoned perspective will guide you through the layers of incident severity and the essential preparedness for the unexpected. This episode isn't just a conversation; it's a toolkit for anyone in the support and development trenches, laying the foundational strategies for robust incident response.
 
Embark on a journey through the collaborative core of incident management, where the role of support engineers is reimagined as a pathway to career growth and the position of an incident commander becomes the linchpin of crisis resolution. With a focus on the symbiosis between structured protocols and the agility to adapt, we dissect how cross-functional cooperation and continuous process refinement are the cornerstones of an organization's resilience. From prioritizing responses to managing bugs, this dialogue with Kat is more than just an exploration—it's an invitation to evolve your practices and prioritize your customers in the face of adversity. Join us for an eye-opening series that promises to redefine your approach to incident management and elevate your team's capabilities.

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Connecting Actions to Customer Outcomes; with Sarah Caminiti

Unlock the secrets of truly impactful leadership and customer support with our special guest, Sarah Caminiti, a seasoned expert in the field. Together, we dissect the profound implications of aligning our deeds with our pledges, both in steering teams and nurturing customer relationships. Discover how the subtleties of what isn't done can be as telling as the actions we take, casting long shadows on how customers and colleagues perceive their value within an organization. 
 
 Venture into the realm of strategic communication, where Sarah and I examine the delicate art of sharing key information without inundating our teams. Our conversation reveals how a well-honed communication strategy within a company serves as the cornerstone for trust, transparency, and loyalty—qualities that not only elevate employee morale but also resonate deeply with customers, cementing a brand's promise and integrity. Join us for an enlightening journey through the dynamics of words, actions, and the silent echoes that shape the heart of a business.

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Empathy isn't just a buzzword—it's the cornerstone of exceptional customer support. Discover the transformative power of understanding and walking a mile in your customer's shoes with Matt Dale, a consummate expert in the field. We peel back the layers of customer interactions and examine how empathy can be more than a trait; it's a skill that, with the right training and mindset, can be honed to perfection. Whether you're born with a natural inclination to empathize or find it more challenging, this episode promises actionable insights to elevate your support game to new empathetic heights.

Matt not only sheds light on the parallels between physical and emotional skills, but also provides a practical framework for integrating empathy into your team's DNA from day one. Drawing from his rich experience with educators, he illustrates how context and understanding are instrumental in transforming potentially frustrating support scenarios into opportunities for connection and resolution. As you tune in, prepare to be armed with the strategies that can turn any support team into an empathetic powerhouse, making every customer interaction not just a transaction but a genuine human connection.

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Enhancing Everyone's Experience with Exceptional Supportability; with Alexis Grant

Unlock the secrets to crafting a B2B SaaS experience that customers love and support teams can rally behind. That's what we're bringing to the table with Alexis Grant. 

Alexis is a seasoned expert in B2B SaaS support, primarily as a support engineer for developer tools and tech products such as New Relic, HashiCorp, and Zapier, and is currently at Semgrep. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her cat and claims to only truly love two pieces of software: cURL and jq.

Together, we go diving headfirst into the concept of “supportability”. We chart the course for designing products that are not just powerful but also a breeze to support. Alexis imparts wisdom on how meticulously engineered reliability, predictability, scalability, and usability form the bedrock of products that practically support themselves. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone keen on elevating their SaaS customer experience to new heights.
 
 Steering the conversation towards the empowerment of support teams, we dissect how vital knowledge sharing and the right tech stack can be in bolstering a team's capabilities. The introduction of a supportability checklist and the role of a 'support champion' come to light, detailing how they prepare new releases to face the frontline, fully equipped. We also stress the magic that happens when teams across the board—from support to product development—align their efforts. By embedding supportability into the DNA of every product cycle, we share how organizations can ensure operational success and deliver an unmatched customer experience. Tune in and transform your tech support experience!

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Building a Truly Customer Centric Culture; with Michael Hinshaw 

Embark on a transformative journey with Michael Hinshaw of McorpCX, a beacon in customer and employee experience, as we unlock the secrets to fostering a customer-centric culture in support scenarios. Michael bestows his expertise on the intricacies of nurturing an environment where support staff thrives and customer interactions flourish. We dissect the sobering reality of how internal practices can inadvertently lead to employee burnout and compromised service, emphasizing the necessity for a supportive ecosystem that empowers workers to embody their company's values and ethos with every customer exchange.
 
Drawing on the profound insights of Brené Brown, our episode delves into the pivotal role of empathy and empowerment in customer support. Discover how cognitive empathy becomes a lifeline for maintaining sincere connections amidst a myriad of communication styles, and how the dexterity of support teams in adapting their approach can lead to resolutions that resonate with customers. We also unravel the delicate balance between autonomy and accountability, illustrating how giving support teams the latitude to creatively solve problems within a guiding framework can translate into extraordinary customer experiences and, in turn, bolster business success. Join us for this enlightening episode as we explore these critical dimensions of customer support with Michael Hinshaw, and learn how to elevate service to an art form.

Michael has recently written a book on his “Experience Operating System”. Check it out!

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Revolutionizing Customer Support: All-Hands Support Delivery from across the Organisation; with Sarah Caminiti 

Get ready to revolutionize your perspective on customer support as Sarah Caminiti joins me, Charlotte Ward, to unveil the power of all-hands support. Imagine a workplace where the CEO and the newest developer alike roll up their sleeves to tackle daily customer queries. This is the reality at Sarah's company,  DNSimple, where fostering a deep understanding of customer needs across all team levels has led to a transformative support experience. We delve into the nuances of creating a knowledge-rich environment that empowers both customers and engineers, ensuring the latter aren't swamped by trivial issues. Sarah's approach has not only streamlined support but has also cultivated an atmosphere where engineers embrace customer interaction with confidence and stress-free ease.

In our second chapter, the art of managing a remote support team takes center stage. Striking the perfect balance between responsiveness and team cohesion in a virtual environment is no small feat. I open up about the meticulous orchestration behind our 24-hour response policy, highlighting the vital role of documentation and transparent communication in keeping our remote wheels turning smoothly. Through mentorships and performance reviews, I strive to spotlight process optimization over finger-pointing, fostering a culture where feedback leads to growth. We share our strategies for keeping dialogue channels open, ensuring that our team feels supported in voicing any concerns. Join us for this compelling exploration of cultivating trust and efficiency in the ever-evolving realm of customer support.

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Steer your team through the rollercoaster of change with wisdom from Neal Travis, Support & Admissions Manager at the Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR) and host of the Growth Support podcast. Neal is a seasoned leader in customer support, who joins me, Charlotte Ward, in unpacking the secrets of adaptive leadership. Discover how to not only navigate but also communicate the often turbulent waters of change, ensuring your team remains unified and forward-moving. Neal's expertise shines as we explore the different needs of team members and the importance of learning from each twist and turn. Uncover the delicate art of timing in information sharing and how transparency can transform uncertainty into a powerful team-building tool.

As we dissect the journey towards embracing paradigms like Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS), we shed light on the essential role of evolving together. This conversation is a trove of insights for any leader aiming to guide their team to new heights of achievement amidst the ever-changing landscape of team management. Tune in for a thought-provoking dialogue that promises not only to enlighten but also to prepare you for future goal-setting and the consequences of standing still. Join Neal and I as we lay down the roadmap for leading with clarity and adaptability in an era where change is the only constant.

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Have you ever wondered what sets exceptional customer support apart? Join me in a thought-provoking conversation with Sarah Caminiti, the Vice President of Customer Success at DNSimple. Together, they dissect the subtle yet pivotal practice of shedding assumptions to enhance customer interactions. Sarah, with her extensive background in support, illuminates the path to nurturing customer relationships with patience and empathy. We venture into the delicate balance of communication, refining the art of crafting email responses that empower rather than overwhelm. This dialogue promises to equip you with the strategies to elevate your customer's confidence and transform them into staunch advocates for your brand.
 
We also tackle the nuances that can make or break the support experience. Sarah shares cautionary tales and the wisdom gained from years of ensuring technical staff connect with customers on a human level. By rejecting the convenience of assumptions, we uncover the power of personalized service that resonates with the individual needs of each customer. Whether you're on the front lines or orchestrating the strategy behind them, this episode is an enlightening guide to fostering a culture of thoroughness and understanding that will redefine the way you perceive and execute customer success.

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Debunking Benchmarks and the Real Power of Customer Feedback; with Ty Givens 

Join me and the insightful Ty Givens from CX Collective as we confront the common myths of benchmarking in customer support. Get ready to discover why pursuing industry standards might not be the golden ticket to enhancing your customer service game. With Ty's extensive experience, we delve into the importance of customizing your customer support to outshine the competition. We dissect examples such as response times and satisfaction scores to show that the benchmarks which work for some companies can be utterly irrelevant for others. By the end of our chat, you'll understand why creating internal goals based on your company's unique data and customer interactions is the key to delivering excellence in service.
 
As we continue our enlightening conversation, we switch gears to the power of feedback – the kind that numbers alone can't capture. Prepare to see the value in the stories and detailed experiences shared by customers, which often hold more weight than any statistic. We discuss how these narrative reviews can influence everything from recruiting to purchasing decisions, driving home the point that businesses need to listen intently to their audience. We explore how to harness this feedback to refine strategies, adapt to customer expectations, and truly embrace a customer-first approach. By the time you're done listening, you'll be equipped to shift your focus from chasing numbers to building a brand that resonates with people on a personal level.

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The Hidden Advantages of Less Local Remote Teams (or “Get Good at Calendars!”); with Alec Moloney

Unlock the secrets of thriving within a globally distributed team as Alec Moloney and I, Charlotte Ward, reveal the unexpected benefits and strategies for success from our experiences at Snowplow. Imagine the energy and innovation that stems from a melting pot of cultural backgrounds and time zones – that's what you'll discover in our latest podcast. Alec, all the way from Australia, joins me to share the vibrant mix of perspectives that fuel creativity and problem-solving in a remote work setting. We confront the complexities of communication across continents and discuss whether having fewer local teammates could actually be a hidden advantage.
 
 Navigating the remote work landscape requires more than just good WiFi – it demands smart, adaptive strategies to keep everyone connected and informed. Tune in as Alec and I tackle the art of flexible scheduling, rotating meeting times for fairness, and the crucial task of intellectual capital management, ensuring that no valuable insight or experience gets lost in the digital ether. Learn about the importance of establishing knowledge-sharing systems from the start, as we reflect on how to better navigate the shifting sands of roles and responsibilities. Join us for a discussion that's as diverse and dynamic as the distributed teams we're a part of.

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Mastering Outage Management; with Lauren Rose Eimers

Imagine being at the helm of customer support when technology fails us—navigating the stormy seas of software outages is no small feat. That's why this episode has us sitting down with Lauren Rose Eimers, a sage in the art of crisis management, to share the secrets and strategies for thriving amidst system instabilities. We'll guide you through the nuances of pinpointing and recreating issues, equipping our development comrades with the essential intel to combat bugs and breakdowns. But it's not all tech talk; we also address the human element, acknowledging the strain on customer emotions and how to manage expectations when the digital world falters. 

As the dust settles on a system outage, the true work begins. Lauren and I traverse the less-charted territories of post-crisis communication—revealing how to nurture customer relationships and express gratitude to those unsung heroes in the frontline trenches. Discover the 'growth edges' that each challenge offers, enabling us to bolster our processes, procedures, and training. We moreover delve into the critical adjustments that fortify our defenses against future failures, touching upon the importance of code reviews and quality checks. And let's not forget the heart of our operations—the support team. Learn why their well-being post-crisis is paramount and how acknowledging their dedication can reinvigorate the entire crew. Join us for a candid conversation that's essential for every customer support leader.

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Hilary Dudek: Finding Your Footing: Navigating the Emotional Journey of Career Transition

Both Hilary and I have been laid off multiple times. Here, we compare notes on how to handle those first few hours and days, before you even begin looking for your next role.

When the rug is pulled out from under you, where do you land? In this episode, Hilary unravels the emotional tapestry of unemployment, weaving through her personal narrative with honesty and vulnerability. This episode isn't just about the nuts and bolts of job hunting; it's a deep dive into the heart and soul of career transitions. Hilary opens up about the labyrinth of feelings that surface when you're laid off—the unexpected relief, the creeping panic, and the eventual steadying breath as you take stock of your resources. She underscores the importance of maintaining a perspective that is rooted in gratitude and self-assessment, rather than falling prey to the scarcity mindset that can so easily ensnare us during times of change.
 
 As we turn the page, I reflect on the transformative power of such career-defining moments, sharing my own journey of self-discovery and realignment. This part of our conversation is an invitation to listeners to pause and ponder their career aspirations, to write them down, and to resist the knee-jerk reaction to scramble for the next opportunity. Instead, we explore how aligning with our true self can illuminate the path forward. Even after you land a job, the journey isn't over. We talk about the importance of ongoing self-evaluation to ensure that personal and professional growth continue to go hand in hand. If you're looking for a companion through your own career upheaval, let this episode be your guide to finding your footing with grace and intention.

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Ryan Klausner: The Difference Between What Customers Say And What Customers Do

Ryan returns to talk about understanding customer feedback in the context of (and often the contrast to!) how customers actually behave!

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Andrew Rios: The Support Report

Andrew Rios is a Global Customer Support Leader.  He combines an energetic leadership style with a strong technical foundation and a deep understanding of Customer Experience/ Support and Engineering Operations.       

Andrew believes every Support leaders should develop their own “Support Report”. Have a listen to understand what this is, and how to get started. It all begins with an email!

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Matt Dale: Support Data

Matt Dale joins me today to talk about Support Data: when to get started (clue: now!), and how to make it understandable - and therefore useful - for the rest of the business.

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Panel: Welcome back for 2024!

Welcome back to the podcast! After a full year off, we're all raring to kick off 2024 with a bunch of ideas and reflections. 
 
 Here, we get a bit meta at the start of the year. This panel brings back four of my favourite guests to talk about the podcast itself. What did they love about the first 249 shows? What would they like to see this year? How can we make this even more helpful for all the support folks listening - you!

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Specials: Fireside 49

Mike Redbord tells me how to show the actual value to the business in providing support to those users of your product or service who are on free or unpaid plans.

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Specials: Fireside 48

Jason Yun, co-founder of Relay, returns to talk about the support that Support folk might need in the light of the recent spate of layoffs, at the worst time of year to be suddenly back on the job market.

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From The Archives: Week 7 Topic: Managing Performance Issues

Hilary Dudek tells me how she likes to coach for positive behaviours, rather than rely on metrics to measure performance.

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From The Archives: Week 6 Topic: Metrics

Craig Stoss talks about stories, and the Source of All Truth.

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From The Archives: Week 5 Topic: Moving from Doing to Leading the Work

Matt Dale returns to talk about why you can’t expect to successfully do two jobs at once.

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From The Archives: Week 4 Topic: Personal Stories of Transitioning to Leadership

Natalie Ruhl had a dream….

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From The Archives: Week 3 Topic: Awkward Conversations

Hilary Dudek needs to practice her poker face. (Also, although the title is “Awkward Conversations with Hilary Dudek”, this most definitely was not one.)

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Specials: Fireside 47

Austin Emser, CEO of Stylo, joins me for the first time to discuss the art of prioritising those tickets! We compare whether FIFO is enough, or whether you need to bring other factors and practices in to what tickets get worked on first, and how fast.

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From The Archives: Week 1 Topic: Empathy in Support
 
 We round out this week’s topic with Ash Rhodes. How much weight should we place on empathy when we’re hiring for support? And Ash pulls some very funny faces (entirely for my benefit).

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From The Archives: Week 79 Topic: Building a Team from Scratch

When is a full-time job not a full-time job? When it’s a two-person job! It’s been a while since Matt Dale built a team from scratch, but nonetheless, he returns to round out this week with his own wisdom and perspectives from further on in the journey.

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From The Archives: Week 79 Topic: Building a Team from Scratch

Ashley returns to tell us how she prioritised early definition of ‘Operating Principles’ for her nascent team, and how they’re essentially still holding strong 4 years on.

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From The Archives: Week 78 Topic: Knowledge Management

Simone Secci rebuilt a knowledge base from scratch, banking on being able to show its value much further down the road. It worked! From zero to knowledge hero, Simone talks about his journey.

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Specials: Fireside 46

Ethan and I discuss the relative merits of our favourite approaches to tagging support conversations. Neither of us is a fan of fluidity when it comes to this opportunity to carry Voice of Customer through into our organisations. Structure all the way!

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From The Archives: Week 78 Topic: Knowledge Management

Cynthia Ng describes how GitLab approach all their knowledge with a ‘Handbook First’ ethos, and how their value of Transparency informs everything they do. 

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From The Archives: Week 78 Topic: Knowledge Management

Aprill Allen, a Knowledge Management Consultant & KCS Specialist at Knowledge Bird, helps support teams stop being so overloaded with solving the same problems over and over, and start using their knowledge as the lever it really is. How do we even get started on our Knowledge Management journey in Support?

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From The Archives: Specials: Fireside 26

According to “Zee” (if I could only say it), we’re doing CX wrong! Nicholas Zeisler joins again to tell us why we’re doing it wrong, and how to get it right. A man after my own heart, he says it hinges on the process! But how do you leverage process, prove ROI for your Customer Office, and truly develop a customer-centric culture? 

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From The Archives: Specials: Fireside 25

What a conversation! Ash comes on the podcast to talk about job hunting in Customer Support Leadership, but we only get there via comparing consulting notes and his insulting the average British meat pie. Honestly.

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From The Archives: Specials: Fireside 17

Ethan explains how we can apply a scientific approach - semiotic theory - when trying to understand our customers context, and therefore meet them where they are.

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From The Archives: Week 67 Topic: Managing Change

Lauren joins me for two milestones: the 200th episode of the podcast, and my birthday! It’s always an interesting chat with Lauren, and her academic background in human genetics and social behaviours.  Here, she brings her expertise to bear in helping us manage change. Always hard, Lauren brings advice on making it easier.

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From The Archives: Week 67 Topic: Managing Change

Lauren, a previous panelist, returns to the podcast for our first one-to-one chat, where we pick up our conversation on managing change. Lauren believes that providing training on this difficult aspect of leadership shouldn’t be a single course or workshop. 

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From The Archives: Week 66 Topic: The Perfect Support Email

Ethan Walfish is a former panelist (take a listen to our discussion on Support Leadership 2.0 back in episode 105), and joins me today to discuss that most convenient and most misused communication - email! How do we approach getting this ‘just right’. Ethan believes there are 6 distinct elements to the perfect email, and takes me through them step-by-step.

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Specials: Fireside 45

Val discusses using a personality type such as Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies  to help you pull a team together, and work with each other. Also, here’s 101 things you didn’t know about Val!

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From The Archives: Specials: Fireside 16

Valentina Thoerner is a Empress in the support world, and, having moved from a support lead role at Automattic, now heads up Product at Klaus. Her official title is "Empress of Product", hence the tiara (though she assures me the truth is the other way round). 

She describes herself thus: “At Klaus, I am the Empress of Product, moonlighting as Guardian of Remote. I am fascinated by the intersection between Product Strategy and Customer Conversation and how a close connection between Product, CX and the customers themselves can level up the entire culture of how these teams work together.”

Here, she and I spend some time chatting about the differences between Support and Product, and how we might bridge the gap.

Valentina joins me also in a love of remote work, so much that she even wrote a book!

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Specials: Fireside 44

Matt and I have no complaints. Plenty of other people do, though: customers! How do we deal with those complaining customers, whether we agree with them or not?

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From The Archives: Specials: Fireside 13

Tadas Labudis comes on the show to talk about ticket tagging taxonomies and tactics! Then we wrap up the show but the conversation continued - so I’ve included the bonus tip, too!

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Specials: Fireside 43

Vaishali Dialani is Head of Customer Experience at NOW Money, a fintech company with a unique customer base and on a mission to ensure everyone has instant access to financial services they can, and want, to use - no matter who they are, where they are from, or how much they earn.

Vaishali and I talk about the specific challenges in supporting these customers, and the most important commodity: trust.

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Two guests for the price of one today as Whitney Brittingham and Aakrit Prasad join me to discuss the relationship between Product Led Growth and Support Driven Growth.

Whitney has been in Support for over 8 years, and is currently the Director of Customer Success and Support at AptEdge, an enterprise software company backed by top VCs on a mission to transform customer support into a revenue driver for companies

Aakrit is the Co-Founder & CEO of AptEdge. Prior to that Aakrit was a product executive who previously led products & teams at early stage, growth stage, and public technology companies.

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Specials: Fireside 41

Andrew Ou is a UX Strategist/Designer and joins me to discuss the role UX plays in CX, and specifically in Customer Support. He also has a free guide for listeners, giving you 5 ways UX can help SaaS companies can increase revenue and profitability, which is something we all want to know!

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Specials: Fireside 40

Reagan Helms and I discuss what when you have experienced folks who do not want to step into leadership. How do you develop them in other ways once they bump up against the proverbial glass ceiling?

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From The Archives: Specials: Fireside 11

Sandra Thompson comes to share her significant expertise on Emotional Intelligence and its importance in our ability to serve customers.

We break EI away from Empathy, and talk about some of the elements of EI. After we finished recording, Sandra also mentioned a workshop she runs using Riders and Elephants, a brilliant resource to help businesses build emotional intelligence. Sandra also mentioned Dr. Daniel Goleman and his insights on the topic of EI, which I highly recommend you check out. 

In passing, I also talked briefly about a notion of walking alongside our emotions that I'd heard in a TEDTalk, but couldn't recall this one. I found it. It is Susan David talking about Emotional Courage. 

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Specials: Fireside 39

Craig and I share similarly long tenures in Support - and may even have encountered each other in the wild at one point in the early 2000s! Today, we talk about the evolution of support channels.

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Specials: Fireside 38

Sam Semuhin returns today to talk about how we can empower our teams to achieve their best selves, deliver their best work, and hire the best!

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Specials: Fireside 37

Sophie Heller joins me from Outschool, which, as you might expect, experienced serious hypergrowth in the wake of COVID-19!  Sophie explores how those first days and months unfolded, and reflects on her feelings about the experience now.

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Specials: Fireside 36

Sam Semuhin is Customer Care Manager at Upflow. Today, she wanted to talk tools! We cover the pain, the overthinking, the money, the user experience… and everything!

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Specials: Fireside 35

Jason Yun, co-founder of Relay, has a background in the medical profession, and had his interest piqued by my chat with Ethan a couple of weeks ago. Here, we move away from Emergency Care and into the comparison with Community Care. How do we set up our customers for success? 

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Specials: Fireside 34

Empress Val has led Product, and led Support. How should these teams work together? We talk about Product accessing Support data, and meander around tagging, customer verbatim and all other related things.

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Specials: Fireside 33

I hooked Craig back, as we kick off 2022 (!), to talk about what is probably top of mind for a lot of us: goals and OKRs.

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Specials: Fireside 32

Ethan Walfish believes there are a lot of things we can learn in Support from the medical profession. Also: when is an Operating Room not an Operating Room? When it’s an Operating Theatre.

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Specials: Fireside 31

Ash returns to tell me I’m wrong. I tell him he’s wrong. And then we have a very civilised discussion about the double-edged sword of getting your team to track their time. Should you or shouldn’t you?

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Specials: Fireside 30

Simone returned for a chat in mid-December ’21, to talk about building careers in Support, and specifically helping people in your team transition to leadership.

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Specials: Fireside 29

Matt joined me in the run-up to Christmas, and in the wake of The Great Resignation, to talk about: what happens when good people leave?

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Specials: Fireside 28

Craig joins me to talk about one of my passions - data! In this case, what’s useful for your Support team to know, right where they are: talking to customers?

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Specials: Fireside 27

Here, 100 weeks into the podcast, we ask: ‘How does your CX match up to your company values, mission and ideals?’ Join me in conversation with Nate Brown as we talk about his idea of “Mission-Driven CX”!

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Week 99 Topic: Reflecting 

Looking back over some of the best advice, and a couple of bonus outtakes from the last 99 weeks of the podcast! 

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Looking forward to 100+ weeks!

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From The Archives: Fireside with Mo McKibbin

Mo McKibbin talks about the challenges of screening for those magical unicorns: technical, customer success-support hybrids, remote, in Europe, ideally with specific industry experience. And we excitedly steal each others' favourite interview questions.

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From The Archives: Fireside with Tue Søttrup

Tue Søttrup helps me kick off this new Fireside season with a conversation about Product-Led Customer Success, and how Dixa have used this approach to drive product engagement and business improvements for the customers at the same time.

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From The Archives: Diversity and Inclusion

Antonio King joins me to talk about the importance of keeping the conversations going, no matter how uncomfortable it feels..

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From The Archives: Scary Support Stories

Todd Curtis tells the scary story that inspired this whole week of terrible tales. I heard this at a conference two years ago and it still gives me chills. 

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From The Archives: Scary Support Stories

Matt Dale joins me to tell the story of a possessed laptop. And I have rather too much fun with sound effects. 

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From The Archives:: Support’s Relationship to Sales

Nicholas Zeisler (“Zee” to his friends, and “Zed” to his British friend over here) returns to talk about how CX can minimise friction in this less-obvious relationship. He’s at the end of the phone if you need him!

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From The Archives: Support’s Relationship to Product

Andrea Saez joins me for the first time, where we talk about capturing all customer conversations and using that feedback to validate the product roadmap.

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From The Archives: Freelancing in Support

Andrei Kamarouski joins me from Belarus, to talk about freelancing as a Zendesk consultant, primarily using Upwork.

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From The Archives: CSAT

Mo and I spend quite a significant amount of time talking about the value of those smiley faces. And we take an unexpected hypothetical trip to the airport.

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From The Archives: Support Scope

Mike Redbord believes you can build the scope of Support by saying “Yes” as much as possible!

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Week 87 Topic: “In Support, I Believe…”

Simone Secci shares his Support Belief: It’s not always about giving the customer exactly what they expect.

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Week 86 Topic: “In Support, I Believe…”

Matt Dale shares his Support Belief: It’s all about making a human connection.

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Week 85 Topic: “In Support, I Believe…”

Craig Stoss shares his foremost Support Belief: The Customer Experience is the most import consideration

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Week 84 Topic: “In Support, I Believe…”

Ryan Klausner returns, this time from a new role, to share his most fundamental Support Belief: Agent Experience is as important as Customer Experience.

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Week 83 Topic: “In Support, I Believe…”

Your very host, Charlotte Ward, tells of her most fundamental Support Belief: Metrics should measure, not rule.

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Announcing a new format, based on “This, I Believe…”

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Week 81 Throwback: Panel 10

Five leaders join me to talk about the wonderful, frustrating and elusive nature of hindsight. If only we’d know then, what we know now.

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Week 81 Throwback: Panel 7

Six leaders join me to talk about managing change. We come to the conclusion it involves data, a 4-type taxonomy, a workshop, and a lot of cheese.

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Week 81 Throwback: Process Improvement

Ash and I talk about how a culture willing to accept feedback and examination is best placed to improve on the status quo.

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Week 81 Throwback: First 30 Days in a New Role

Alyssa Percell and I start talking about ‘new to us’ roles, but unexpectedly dwell more on the plans we’re forming before we even get in the door.

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Week 81 Throwback: Remote Work

Ash Rhodes pitched this topic to me with one phrase, and I took him up on his offer.

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Week 80 Throwback: Forecasting in Support

Matt Dale tells how he’s been refining his model for seven years, so don’t go looking for any quick and accurate answers in your first forecasting efforts.

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Week 80 Throwback: Support Contributing to Revenue

This is such an interesting topic for most of us, that we’re visiting it twice this Throwback Week!  In this episode from the archives, Mo McKibbin joins me for the first time to talk about the topic that has defined such a huge part of her CS leadership career: Support Driven Growth

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Week 80 Throwback: Support Contributing to Revenue

Mike Redbord talks about the invaluable information and data your support team is already gathering, that might very well generate revenue.

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Week 80 Throwback: Onboarding New Hires

Ash Rhodes isn’t a List Person, but he knows they’re useful for onboarding. We also find a name for that spyglass thing you do with your hands.

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Week 80 Throwback: Building Leaders in Your Team
 
 Meredith Molloy returns to talk about how you spot, and care for a unicorn!

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Week 79 Topic: Building a Team from Scratch

When is a full-time job not a full-time job? When it’s a two-person job! It’s been a while since Matt Dale built a team from scratch, but nonetheless, he returns to round out this week with his own wisdom and perspectives from further on in the journey.

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Week 79 Topic: Building a Team from Scratch

In Kat Olsheske’s first outing on the podcast, she talks about the transferrable skills and knowledge every support leader brings to a new team, and what might be different between each team building experience. 

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Week 79 Topic: Building a Team from Scratch

Adela Bodor returns to talk about building a support team from scratch: which she has done multiple times and has down to a fine art now!

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Week 79 Topic: Building a Team from Scratch

Hilary Dudek and I haven’t talked in soooo long! She “recently” started a new role at Sana Benefits and joins me to talk about what she did first, and what she wishes she had invested in earlier.

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Week 79 Topic: Building a Team from Scratch

Ashley returns to tell us how she prioritised early definition of ‘Operating Principles’ for her nascent team, and how they’re essentially still holding strong 4 years on.

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Week 78 Topic: Knowledge Management

Craig Stoss and I muse about the validity of some of the metrics often applied to Knowledge Centred Support, and talk about the types of knowledge that apply in different situations. He resurfaces one of my favourite analogies for the difference between a KB and docs, too.

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Week 78 Topic: Knowledge Management

Tadas Labudis is the CEO and Founder of Prodsight. Today he returns to tell me about Prodsight’s own knowledge journey: from not believing he needed to document a product to embedding documentation in the product! 

Check out Tadas' previous fireside, where he talks about tagging taxonomies for Support! 

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Week 78 Topic: Knowledge Management

Simone Secci rebuilt a knowledge base from scratch, banking on being able to show its value much further down the road. It worked! From zero to knowledge hero, Simone talks about his journey.

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Week 78 Topic: Knowledge Management

Cynthia Ng describes how GitLab approach all their knowledge with a ‘Handbook First’ ethos, and how their value of Transparency informs everything they do. 

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Week 78 Topic: Knowledge Management

Aprill Allen, a Knowledge Management Consultant & KCS Specialist at Knowledge Bird, helps support teams stop being so overloaded with solving the same problems over and over, and start using their knowledge as the lever it really is. How do we even get started on our Knowledge Management journey in Support?

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Specials: Fireside 26

According to “Zee” (if I could only say it), we’re doing CX wrong! Nicholas Zeisler joins again to tell us why we’re doing it wrong, and how to get it right. A man after my own heart, he says it hinges on the process! But how do you leverage process, prove ROI for your Customer Office, and truly develop a customer-centric culture? 

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Specials: Fireside 25

What a conversation! Ash comes on the podcast to talk about job hunting in Customer Support Leadership, but we only get there via comparing consulting notes and his insulting the average British meat pie. Honestly.

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Specials: Fireside 24

Doug and I talked quite some time ago about “All-Hands Support”, which becomes a mini fireside episode today. We talk about the type of industries where this is an appropriate paradigm, and when and how it might be useful.

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Specials: Fireside 23

Josh brings a really interesting topic to the fireside today: specialisms in Customer Support and Service. We talk about everything from expertise to trusted advice.

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Specials: Fireside 22

Jim Israel talks about the dangers of developing a culture of heroism in our teams, despite being the type of folks who always want to help.

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Specials: Fireside 21

Vlad Shlosberg is building a business that enables organisations to better connect with their customers. As a creator of a support/success tool like Foqal.io, how does he connect with his own customers?

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Specials: Fireside 20

Lauren Fearn comes to chat about creating growth opportunities and pathways in Support, so that you can continue to challenge, develop, and ultimately retain your staff.

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Specials: Fireside 19

Hannah Steiman, from Peak Support, joins me today, to talk about how we even begin to consider finding the right outsourcing partner in support, and how we overcome the fear of what might be a strange new world for many fast-growing teams out there.

Hannah Steiman is Chief Operating Officer of Peak Support, which provides exceptional customer service outsourcing to high-growth companies. Hannah oversees sales, marketing, HR, and administration for the company. Peak Support specialises in building and managing dedicated teams of customer service agents. Its clients operate in a wide variety of industries, including SaaS, eCommerce, social media, transportation, financial services, business services, and more.

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Specials: Fireside 18

Sharad Khandelwal, co-founder and CEO of Sentisum, joins the podcast today, to talk about accessing valuable insights in all those communications support teams have with their customers. Can AI ultimately solve this by doing the heavy lifting?

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Specials: Fireside 17

Ethan explains how we can apply a scientific approach - semiotic theory - when trying to understand our customers context, and therefore meet them where they are.

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Week 67 Topic: Managing Change

Lauren joins me for two milestones: the 200th episode of the podcast, and my birthday! It’s always an interesting chat with Lauren, and her academic background in human genetics and social behaviours.  Here, she brings her expertise to bear in helping us manage change. Always hard, Lauren brings advice on making it easier.

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Week 67 Topic: Managing Change

Josh talks about thee easy bits and the challenges in dealing with any change, and how sometimes, the key is in a team that trusts and supports each other.

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Week 67 Topic: Managing Change

Adela Bodor joins me for the first time, and from a space I’ve never ventured into beyond the building site: cement! Her organisation has undergone significant transformation over the last few years, and here she talks to me about the changing shape of support and different demands placed on her team. 

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Week 67 Topic: Managing Change

Natalie and I are both of the similar mindset that sometimes you just have to ‘do’ the change, rather than get caught up in it too much, and thereby risk being stuck.

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Week 67 Topic: Managing Change

Lauren, a previous panelist, returns to the podcast for our first one-to-one chat, where we pick up our conversation on managing change. Lauren believes that providing training on this difficult aspect of leadership shouldn’t be a single course or workshop. 

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Week 66 Topic: The Perfect Support Email

Leslie O’Flahavan is a get-to-the point writer and an experienced, versatile writing instructor. E-WRITE owner since 1996, Leslie has been writing content and teaching customised writing courses for Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and non-profit organisations. Leslie helps the most stubborn, inexperienced, or word-phobic employees at your organisation improve their writing skills, so they can do their jobs better. As a result of her work, Leslie’s clients improve their customer satisfaction ratings, reduce training cycles, improve productivity, and limit legal risk.

Leslie is a LinkedIn Learning author of six writing courses on topics including writing for social media; live chat and text; plain language; and technical writing.

We cover everything from hiring for good written communication skills, to coaching for them in our team. 

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Week 66 Topic: The Perfect Support Email

Craig and I wonder whether the perfect email exists, or whether we are just at the whim of the mood of the recipient. How close to ‘perfect’ can we get without knowing the customer context?

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Week 66 Topic: The Perfect Support Email

Nick Zeisler believes we should take on the stress of our customers, in all our communications. Everything is recovery, down to the micro communications that are happening every day in Support.

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Week 66 Topic: The Perfect Support Email

Stacy believes that the key to the Perfect Support Email is the ‘hook’ that engenders the trust of the customer. It’s about understanding the customer and building their belief that you can solve their problem.

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Week 66 Topic: The Perfect Support Email

Ethan Walfish is a former panelist (take a listen to our discussion on Support Leadership 2.0 back in episode 105), and joins me today to discuss that most convenient and most misused communication - email! How do we approach getting this ‘just right’. Ethan believes there are 6 distinct elements to the perfect email, and takes me through them step-by-step.

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Week 65 Topic: Support in the Business

Josh and I settle on the idea that a Support team that generates revenue is effectively another product, and deserves similar investment and approach.

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Week 65 Topic: Support in the Business

Craig returns to reinforce the idea that "Customer Experience is a mindset, not a department".  We talk about how Support relates to all parts of the business with that in mind.

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Week 65 Topic: Support in the Business

Natalie leads a team that has been everywhere in the business! Here, we talk about the relative merits of each placement, but also the advantages and problems inherent in those moves.

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Week 65 Topic: Support in the Business

Doug Akers joins me for the first time today, to talk about Support in the Business. Doug is a strategic technology leader who firmly believes in the mantra of customer, company, team, self. He believes that only when this order is respected can you unlock the true potential of each situation and individual. Over his career Doug has lead technology support, success, product, engineering and sales teams to both personal and professional success within the health, education, ecommerce, and manufacturing industries. His strong focus on the customer allows him to break through the noise and focus himself and his teams on what matters - solving customer’s problems and providing them with opportunity for movement and growth.

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Week 65 Topic: Support in the Business

Greg joins me to talk about the role of Support in the business, and reminds me that a user guide is another form of support! 

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Week 64 Topic: Startup Support

Diane Garcia debuts on the podcast to talk about the freedoms that come with working in a startup, and nice it would be to have a bottomless budget. 

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Week 64 Topic: Startup Support

Nicole Jackson found that many startup founders cared a lot about their customers, and hit a lot of the same problems when it came to scaling. What experiences did they all have in common?

Once you’ve listened to this episode, head over to her new podcast – Support Night School, and read up on her consultancy practice at Solid Support Strategy.

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Week 64 Topic: Startup Support

Aurore Lanchart comes back after a long break, to talk about the importance of establishing tone in a startup.

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Craig believes one of the challenges with support in a startup environment is that it often begins with people who have never done support before. Here we discuss stepping into that environment as the first support leader.

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Week 64 Topic: Startup Support

Zeni Bandy returns to the podcast this week, to talk about tackling support in a startup environment. Her biggest piece of advice: “Get help!”

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Specials: Fireside 16

Valentina Thoerner is a Empress in the support world, and, having moved from a support lead role at Automattic, now heads up Product at Klaus. Her official title is "Empress of Product", hence the tiara (though she assures me the truth is the other way round). 

She describes herself thus: “At Klaus, I am the Empress of Product, moonlighting as Guardian of Remote. I am fascinated by the intersection between Product Strategy and Customer Conversation and how a close connection between Product, CX and the customers themselves can level up the entire culture of how these teams work together.”

Here, she and I spend some time chatting about the differences between Support and Product, and how we might bridge the gap.

Valentina joins me also in a love of remote work, so much that she even wrote a book!

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Specials: Fireside 15

Eric Kades joins me to talk about saving our team’s time, and saving our customers’ time.

Eric is the Founder of TextChat, a highly personalized live chat tool that brings the timelessness touch of human connection to the sophistication of AI technology. TextChat makes website live chat as sociable and easy as texting with a friend, so you can stop missing messages and start closing sales. To date Eric, and his team of 75, have raised 1.6M and have accrued over 100 customers. TextChat launched on Shopify and the App Store in November 2020.

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Specials: You’re the Host! #4

Craig questions me on collaboration with other teams! We cover everything from Product to BPO, and everything in between. I also tell an overly long story from overly long ago.

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Specials: Fireside 14

Chris Taylor returns today, having recently taken on a new business function - Customer Success - and then we fangirl/fanboy on Jira a little!

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Specials: You’re the Host! #3

Matt takes the mic from me today, and interviews me about starting in a new role.

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Specials: Fireside 13

Tadas Labudis is the CEO and Founder of Prodsight - a customer feedback intelligence platform. Tadas founded Prodsight in 2018 to help companies understand their customers and developed an AI-enabled platform that automatically tags support tickets, reviews, and other feedback. Along this journey, Tadas has helped hundreds of companies get insights from their support tickets, tagged thousands of tickets himself, and built systems to automate this laborious process.

Tadas comes on the show to talk about ticket tagging taxonomies and tactics! Then we wrap up the show but the conversation continued - so I’ve included the bonus tip, too!

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Specials: You’re the Host! #2

Recorded the week after I spoke to five leaders about Slack as a support channel, Vlad grills me on how much I learned from those conversations.

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Craig Stoss joins me again to talk about providing support through social media channels, and some of our common frustrations as customers who also happen to be support leaders..

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Specials: You’re the Host! #1

Natalie Ruhl returns to flip the table and take over hosting an episode. She brings quite a collection of questions about challenges and seeking help. 

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Specials: Fireside 11

Sandra Thompson comes to share her significant expertise on Emotional Intelligence and its importance in our ability to serve customers.

We break EI away from Empathy, and talk about some of the elements of EI. After we finished recording, Sandra also mentioned a workshop she runs using Riders and Elephants, a brilliant resource to help businesses build emotional intelligence. Sandra also mentioned Dr. Daniel Goleman and his insights on the topic of EI, which I highly recommend you check out. 

In passing, I also talked briefly about a notion of walking alongside our emotions that I'd heard in a TEDTalk, but couldn't recall this one. I found it. It is Susan David talking about Emotional Courage. 

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Week 53: Slack Support
 
Mo McKibbin returns to compare the three occasions when she’s inherited Slack support and what she’s loved and hated about it each time.

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Week 53: Slack Support
 
 Chris Jewitt tells how Klaus used to support customers through Slack, but made the decision to move away from it. 

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Week 53: Slack Support
 
 Sean Tanos takes us from supporting humans to support robots through Slack! 

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Week 53: Slack Support

Fletcher Richman joins me to talk about 'decreasing the distance' to your customers with Slack, and how it gives support some personality.

Fletcher was the CEO & Cofounder of Halp, acquired by Atlassian (NASDAQ:$TEAM) in May 2020. He is currently a Sr. Manager, Product for Halp at Atlassian.  

Fletcher received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical & Computer Engineering, Cum Laude, from The University of Colorado. As a student, Fletcher co-founded Spark Boulder, a co-working space for student entrepreneurs, which was supported by many community leaders including Brad Feld and David Cohen, the Co-Founders of Techstars. Fletcher spent several years working as the Growth Engineer for PivotDesk, a Techstars Boulder graduate, and as the Platform Manager for Galvanize Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital fund. 

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Week 53: Slack Support

Vlad Shlosberg shares what support and success can look like on Slack.

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Looking forward to 2021!

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Week 52: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! It’s the first day of 2021, so to conclude our review of 2020 on the podcast, let’s talk about satisfaction in an otherwise unsatisfying year. 

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Week 52: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! How do we ensure our processes are the best they can be, and that they stick?

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Week 52: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! This time we look at forecasting fur the future, however uncertain it may be.

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Week 52: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! Growing pains again, or opportunities. This time, we explore how to leverage Support in revenue generation.

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Week 52: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! Today, I look back on some of the pains of growing teams. 

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Week 51: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! As we spend time with family and friends, I look back at when I brought podcast guests together.

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Week 51: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! Looking at building a career in Support next year? This episode is for you!

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Week 51: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! As we approach a big number, I revisit the week where we looked beyond the numbers.

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Week 51: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! A year in review deserves a look back at other reviews.

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Week 51: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! So many leaders, so many lenses on support metrics!

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Week 50: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! In a year where I started a new role, it’s also been interesting to explore careers in Support, and other folks’ leadership experiences.

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Week 50: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! I look back at my own awkward conversations, and wonder why the world isn’t changing faster.

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Week 50: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! I look back over the first week’s topic: Empathy in Customer Support

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Week 50: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! How remote work and the podcast have intertwined.

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Week 50: Year in Review

Just Charlotte this week! Here I tell a little about where it all began….

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Specials: Fireside 10

Mo McKibbin talks about the challenges of screening for those magical unicorns: technical, customer success-support hybrids, remote, in Europe, ideally with specific industry experience. And we excitedly steal each others' favourite interview questions.

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Specials: Fireside 9

Steve Bederman joins me to talk about omni-channel support, and managing big tool and process changes for larger teams.

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Specials: Fireside 8

Greg Skirving describes how the scope of support can creep through the ease of access to a support team.

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Specials: Fireside 7

Kaylin Bailey returns to talk about productivity in support at all levels - personally, across the organisation, and on the front line.

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