#157 – The Future of Customer Support

We’re at our final episode, the ultimate episode if you will. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been collecting your questions for this rapid fire episode. So grab a coffee and listen as we dive into very important questions like “Is it better to be a dragon or have a pet dragon?”. Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | Overcast Notes and Links Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories I Am Pilgrim The Martian An Unfinished Life Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind The Five Dysfunctions of a Team Support Driven HelpU Support Breakfast We Support Elevate Summit The Helpful Newsletter Carolyn from Buffer – Twitter | Website Chase L. from Automattic – Twitter | Website Jeff from Wistia – Twitter | Website Chase C. from Basecamp – Twitter | Website Intro Music – “Happy Rock” from Bensound If you enjoyed this episode, Tweet about it or share some love with a review.

We’re down to our final two episodes! With our penultimate episode, we’re chatting about supporting your team both at work and in life. As a manager, it can be tough supporting a teammate going through something big outside of work, especially if you’re a newer manager. From happy moments like a new baby or a more sorrowful moment like a death in their family, it’s your job to support the team member as well as the rest of the team. Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | Overcast Notes and Links Option B Intro Music – “Happy Rock” from Bensound If you enjoyed this episode, Tweet about it or share some love with a review.

With only three episodes left, we wanted to take a look into the future of customer support. Are the bots coming for our jobs? Will you be doing the same job in ten years? Let’s take a look into that crystal ball and talk through what we expect to happen. Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | Overcast Notes and Links The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence That Time 2 Bots Were Talking, and Bank of America Butted In Intro Music – “Happy Rock” from Bensound If you enjoyed this episode, Tweet about it or share some love with a review.

This week, we’re talking about customer support career paths. We all agree that a career in customer support is worthwhile. But what does that look like? Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | Overcast Notes and Links How to prepare for a one-on-one meeting as an employee Intro Music – “Happy Rock” from Bensound If you enjoyed this episode, Tweet about it or share some love with a review.

We’ve seen more and more companies set up support as a reactive, first line of defence. Meanwhile, success teams don’t handle cases like that and focus instead on helping the customer achieve their goals by using your product. Is that a smart way to split up your team when it comes to onboarding new customers? Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | Overcast Notes and Links Breaking Our Addiction to the Queue Troubles and Triumphs When Re-Building Our Customer Onboarding Process at WordPress.com Intro Music – “Happy Rock” from Bensound If you enjoyed this episode, Tweet about it or share some love with a review.

When it comes to customer onboarding, we’ve seen a growing trend of the white glove approach. Dedicated account managers, personalized training, and anything else that you can tailor to that one customer in hopes of convincing them to buy. On this episode, we’ll look at how successful the white glove approach really is. Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | Overcast Notes and Links Chelsea Stroh – Twitter | Medium SUPCONF Fall 2017 Intro Music – “Happy Rock” from Bensound If you enjoyed this episode, Tweet about it or share some love with a review.

Customers love online classes and demos that help get them up-to-speed on a new product. From the team side, it’s often easier to host weekly trainings like this rather than individual ones for everyone. With today’s episode, we’ll take a look at how effective those classes are and if your team should be offering them. Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | Overcast Notes and Links Alison Groves – Twitter | Instagram Highrise Soapbox by Wistia Badass: Making Users Awesome Intro Music – “Happy Rock” from Bensound If you enjoyed this episode, Tweet about it or share some love with a review.

Up to this point in the series, we’ve talked about how onboarding works when it’s a single person signing up to try your product. If you’re in the B2B business though, it’s often a group of people that need to both try your product and decide if they’re going to buy. How does that shift from a person to a group change your onboarding process? Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | Overcast Notes and Links Chelsea Stroh – Twitter | Medium Mercer Smith-Looper – Twitter | Website Intro Music – “Happy Rock” from Bensound If you enjoyed this episode, Tweet about it or share some love with a review.

Remember Clippy – the fun yet kinda irritating assistant from Microsoft? Onboarding tools have come a long way since then. There are all sorts of guided setups, wizards, tours, and more that companies use to make sure new customers are set up for success. But how effective are those guided setup tools? Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | Overcast Notes and Links Chris Bowler – Website | Twitter Wildbit Google Equates “Design” With Endless Testing. They’re Wrong Why Google has 200m reasons to put engineers over designers Intro Music – “Happy Rock” from Bensound If you enjoyed this episode, Tweet about it or share some love with a review.

We touched on a few manual options for contacting customers in the earlier episodes of this series. That made us wonder – if you notice a certain company signs up for your product, does that prompt you to reach out to them? Subscribe: iTunes | Android | RSS | Overcast Notes and Links Mo McKibbin – Twitter Help Scout Support Driven Bank of America Advertisement “Portraits” Intro Music – “Happy Rock” from Bensound If you enjoyed this episode, Tweet about it or share some love with a review.