Happy to Help | A Customer Support Podcast
If you work in customer support, if you lead a support team, or if you are looking to better the customer experience for your company, then this podcast is for you!
Happy to Help is a podcast about all things customer support brought to you by the people at Buzzsprout. Join us, every other Tuesday as Buzzsprout's Head of Podcaster Success, Priscilla Brooke, dives into the world of customer support to make remarkable support the standard, not the exception!
Happy to Help | A Customer Support Podcast
The Art of Training New Hires Efficiently
Brian Johnson joins Happy to Help for the second time! In this episode, we discuss training new hires! Brian and Priscilla dive into prioritizing new hire training, a recent training project, and tips for developing your own training program!
They touch on training in small teams, the importance of flexibility and adaptability in training, hands-on inbox training, personalized self-study topics, and fostering an environment where questions are celebrated!
We want to hear from you! Share your support stories and questions with us at happytohelp@buzzsprout.com!
To learn more about Buzzsprout visit Buzzsprout.com
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer support from the people at Buzzsprout. I'm your host, Priscilla Brooke. Today we're talking about training new support specialists. We'll discuss what the Buzzsprout support training process has looked like in the past. Look at a new training project we just finished up and talk about some tips for training your team to offer remarkable support. Thanks for joining us, let's get into it. Training your team to offer remarkable support. Thanks for joining us, let's get into it. We are joined as always by Jordan, our producer. Hi, Jordan. Hey there. We also have a very special guest on the show today. Brian Johnson is here. If you remember from our Empathy episode way back, Brian was in that conversation with us and so he's our first repeat guest. Hi, Brian. Hello, Thank you, it's an. So he's our first repeat guest, Hi, Brian.
Brian:Hello, thank you. It's an honor to be the first repeat guest.
Priscilla:It's so fun to have a podcast long enough that needs a repeat guest, so this is really exciting. That's so true, brian, as you probably know, because I'm sure you listen to every single episode of this show. Absolutely, it is an ever evolving show, and one of the things that has kind of changed since you were on was I've started asking our guests who has made your day recently, or how has someone made your day recently. You know I think I've said this a couple of times episodes off with something encouraging and uplifting and a story where someone has impacted another person, whether they meant to or not, because we as support specialists are in such a great position to do that and to make someone else's day better. So, brian, how has someone made your day recently?
Brian:I love this question. Can I give two examples, because I've had an awesome 24 hours.
Priscilla:Yeah, since you didn't get to give one during the empathy episode, you can give two.
Brian:Perfect. So last night after work my wife came home and said that her car was not working very well and we both drive old SUVs and so I'm kind of used to that. So I took it to the mechanic and this guy that I've kind of built a relationship with he took a look at it and ran his little scanner like trying to figure out what was wrong. And then it turns out it was just one little spark plug that had gone bad. And so he goes here and then just opens up the package, puts it in.
Brian:He's like you're good to go, and I was like, oh, thank you, like I was I was expecting the worst, like ready for a complete engine rehaul or something so well, with cars, you never know. A to have the relief of it only being a spark plug, and then B the guy just gave it to me. It was like so wonderful, I loved it.
Priscilla:That's so great. That's such a good example because it's so simple and for him it was not a hard thing to do any major day.
Brian:Well, because he knows I'm driving a 20 year old truck, so he knows I'll be back pretty soon.
Priscilla:Yeah, he knows, you're a repeat customer.
Brian:And then driving into the office today I stopped and got some lunch at McDonald's because I'm a health nut and the lady was like it is really hot out here, would you like some ice cream? And I'm like sure. And she just handed me a hot fudge sundae to go with my meal and I was like what a great day.
Jordan:I love that. I think you need to get a lottery ticket, man.
Brian:I know this has been a day I love it.
Jordan:Today's the day.
Priscilla:Okay, I love that ice cream example so much. One thing that we haven't talked about really on this pod yet, but that I have talked about a lot in support with our support team over the years, is this idea of proactive generosity, like being generous to someone before they ask for anything, like going out of your way and being proactive about your generosity. I feel like we could do a whole episode on it, but that ice cream example is such a good example. You didn't ask for the ice cream, you weren't expecting it, and not only was she generous, but it was her idea for her to be generous. I just love that so much.
Brian:I love it. It's such a small thing, but it really made me smile the whole way down here.
Priscilla:Yeah, and think about like last week we talked all about kindness and she was kind to you in that moment, which made her feel good, which made you feel good, and now you shared it with us. It's made us feel good. We're putting it on the podcast and hopefully it will make people listening to this feel good and maybe they'll go and they'll do something similar to someone in their life. I just love it. So today what we're going to talk about is training, new support hires. This is something top of mind for Brian and I right now, because we just wrapped up a work cycle for Buzzsprout in which he really worked most of his time on creating a training process for the Buzzsprout support teams. So let's go back to the beginning.
Priscilla:When I first started Buzzsprout, it was about eight years ago and we definitely didn't have a training program. There wasn't anyone specifically doing support, so my training was very much on the job. We had someone who was doing marketing and support, but there wasn't like a support team for me to join, and you know that's pretty expected when you have a small team that you might bring someone on to do a role that someone is not currently doing, and so it wasn't completely out of the ordinary for me to join this smaller team and figure it out as I go, but the process or lack of process that we had at the time can be really good for some types of people because it's very on the job Figure it out as you go, ask questions as you go, but no one's going to tell you everything. So you just got to like own your knowledge and that worked. But it can also be really hard on someone, especially if they're not the kind of person who thrives under that kind of a sink or swim mentality.
Jordan:Yeah, it takes a special person.
Priscilla:It does, and it's scary and it can be very stressful too. So if you have someone come on your team and you don't have a training system in place for them, if they're not the right kind of person to like, jump in and train themselves. In that way, you might lose a really good candidate who just can't handle that kind of thing, and so it's really good to have some kind of training process in place for your new hires, whether it be a fully fledged out program or just you know a list of things to focus on. I will also recognize that it can be really daunting if you're on a small team or if you're one person, to try to put together some kind of training program for a new person coming on your team, especially if you're in a situation where you're underwater and you're bringing someone on and now you're like wait, I have to take time out to train you so that you can succeed, but we've still got an inbox full of emails that we have to stay on top of.
Priscilla:So I kind of want to talk about a couple of things that I did over the years as people were coming on the team. I think we added seven people to the Buzzsprout support team in just a handful of years, and so each time someone came on the team I feel like I got better at training them and better at training them. So by the time Brian came on the team, I feel like I had a pretty good plan in place. So I kind of wanted to talk through some of the things that I did, especially when the team was young and we were bringing people on the team to give myself the ability to train someone new so that they felt supported and confident in the inbox, but also to stay on top of the inbox and emails coming in and make sure to continue to give our customers really great support.
Priscilla:So the first thing that I will say, which is the biggest one and probably was the hardest for me to learn, was don't be afraid to let some of the emails sit while you're focused on training. Especially in those early years when it was just me on the team and we were bringing the second person on, or when there were two of us and we were bringing the third person on, it was really really hard to step out of the inbox even for just a couple of hours and focus on this new person coming in and give them the attention that they needed. But I think it's really important, especially if you're growing a really small team, to be OK with letting a customer sit for a little bit longer, because ultimately, your goal is to have a second person who can come and provide amazing support, and then it's going to be even faster for those customers. But in order to get to that place when you only have one or two people on the team, it is OK to let some email sit and to focus on that new training.
Brian:You can kind of think of it as a long term investment.
Jordan:Exactly.
Brian:That little amount of time that you're taking to really focus and give them good training will pay off huge dividends.
Priscilla:Exactly, and, as someone who might be the only person doing support on your team, it can feel like, oh my goodness, I'm being pulled in two different directions. I have to stay on top of the inbox because it's growing and it's overflowing, and but I've got this new person and they don't know how to reset a password. But I have to take the time to sit with them and do that.
Priscilla:It can be really really hard to leave an inbox busy. The emails will get answered. It's OK to let them sit a little bit longer. So that's my like. First overarching thing that I learned as I was bringing new people on is that it's much more important to focus your time on the new person and getting them trained to where they're comfortable and confident than staying in the inbox and just letting them figure it out on their own.
Jordan:It's almost like when you buy a new puzzle and you know when you like take it out and you put all the colored pieces together and then you create like the outline of the puzzle. So it all stays like organized and neat and it's not going to be as complicated, whereas if you just like start grabbing random pieces, it's going to take a lot longer in the long run to put that puzzle together. But if you just take like 10-15 minutes to organize it, it's going to save you hours.
Priscilla:It's like the act, my least favorite part of a puzzle, which is the flipping them over so that they're all facing up. Yes, it's that part. It's taking the puzzle. You have to take the time to flip all the pieces up and then you're set up so much better to put it together. But if you don't flip all the pieces up and then you're set up so much better to put it together, but if you don't flip all the pieces over, you're going to be flipping them over the entire time you're doing the puzzle and it's going to slow the entire process down.
Jordan:That's a great analogy Jordan.
Priscilla:I love it.
Jordan:Thank you, I came up with that myself, good job.
Priscilla:So another tip I have is to lean on your team. You know, not everyone on your team is gonna know how to offer remarkable support experiences, but they're gonna know the product that you're supporting. And so if you need to find time in your day to go clear out the inbox, but you've got this new hire that needs to learn how to use the software. It doesn't have to be you that trains them on that technical side of things. You could send them over to a developer and ask for a developer to help you with two hours of training on a specific feature. Or maybe you send them to the marketing team so that they can learn from the marketing team about how we communicate via email. Those kind of things are really important to learn and they don't have to be taught by you. And so when you're on a small team or when you're the only person in a support team bringing on a second person, just remember you can lean on your team. It doesn't have to just be you that does all of the training.
Brian:That can have an added benefit too of building relationships for the new team member with other people around the team too, that they may not interact with a ton moving forward, but at least they got that little bit of time at the beginning.
Priscilla:Exactly.
Priscilla:That's a great point, and really the third thing that I learned going through this so many times with new people coming on the team, is that is really helpful to develop a process as quickly as you can. So the first person we brought on, we really had no process for training them and so it was very fly by the seat of your pants for me. I was learning how to train Addie and she was learning how to be trained, and we figured it out as we went. But when Megan came on, who was the second person who came on the team, that is when we started to really look at a process and put it down and communicate it to the whole team. And so that is another really important thing is to start working on a process as soon as you can, as soon as you're able to take that time out of your day to start putting together a training process. Do it, and do it before you have a new hire. When things are slow and you're looking for ways to fill your margin, go ahead and start working on a training process. Start putting that together, even if it's something really simple like a four week. You know, here's what we do week one. Here's what we do week two, week three and week four. That can be really helpful so that when you're actually in the process of hiring you have kind of a guideline to go by.
Priscilla:Speaking of bringing Megan on the team, when Megan joined we had a team of two people and she was the third person coming on and she happened to start literally the week of lockdown, at least here in Florida. So it was like we'd been on lockdown for a week and then she came on, and so we very quickly had to figure out how we were going to train her, virtually because all of our training experience had been in person up until then, and so it was really I think that's really what pushed us to come up with a training process. And so for us at that time our training was like two to four weeks, and you know we wanted to keep the training process concise. We didn't want it to take a long time because we needed her to be ready and up and running and helping people quickly because we were growing so much, but we wanted to make sure she had time to feel comfortable.
Priscilla:So we kind of had two to four weeks of training for her, had two to four weeks of training for her and during that training we did things like shadowing existing specialists. So she would shadow me answering emails, she would shadow Addie and she would eventually kind of grew into buddy work and so she would then take lead on answering the questions in the inbox. As she got comfortable with that with us as like a safety net with her, and then once she kind of graduated into working on her own in the inbox, we kind of had what we called on-call hours, which just meant that she could at any point she would know who was her go-to during that shift to ask questions, so that she never felt like she was on her own and she always knew that she had people to back her up. But that it kind of was a little bit of a sink or swim kind of process because we had to go really quickly.
Brian:But it's amazing how much their confidence grows if they do have that on-call person like just as that safety net. They just double their confidence because they're like, well, I can probably get this, but if not, I know I have this person over here, exactly.
Jordan:Yeah, mm-, yeah, I have a question. So Megan started like right at the pandemic. Yeah, how did she shadow?
Priscilla:remotely. How did that work? That's a great question. Yeah, it actually worked really well, and I think maybe it worked better than doing it in person. Oh, but what we did was we would get on a zoom call and I would share my screen, or Addie would share her screen and Megan would watch and she would ask questions as we did things, and we would just sit on a Zoom call. And it was nice because we got to know her that way too, because we were working remotely, so we didn't see each other in person, but it was, you know, we'd spend a couple hours in the inbox together with her shadowing, literally just watching me share my screen as I worked through the inbox, and then, as she got more comfortable, then she would take over and she would share her screen and I would be there with her to walk her through things. So that's kind of how we did it at that time, which worked really well, and part of that process is still how we do training to this day and is part of the program that Brian put together, because it really works so well. Virtually training that way. That's cool, yeah.
Priscilla:And so just a quick breakdown. You know, when we first brought Megan on. Like I said, that was the first time that we really put together a training program. I don't even want to call it a program like it was a guideline, a training guideline. And so week one we would have kind of a bunch of introduction meetings where she would meet people and she would understand the product, she would learn the product, she would learn how we do support, our philosophy behind support. All of that would happen in that first week and then she would be given a lot of time to process everything she'd learned to study our help articles, to study our canned responses within our email software, and a lot of that happened in that first week. And then, toward the very end of the first week, we'd start pushing her to answer a question or two, not because we wanted her to feel uncomfortable or rushed, but we wanted to start getting her acclimated to what it feels like to be answering emails.
Priscilla:If you're coming into a support job from a non-support role, it can be really scary to start answering emails, and what I never wanted was for people to feel like they had been here for a couple of weeks before they started answering emails. When I started, I came in to the team and was answering emails the same day that I started and I barely knew what I was talking about if I knew what I was talking about at all. But I think it was really beneficial for me because then you get over that fear of answering questions really really quickly. And so whenever I bring anyone new on the team, I always try to get them answering emails as soon as I can so that they can start getting acclimated to that, and obviously someone's with them to make sure their content is correct, but they're the ones sending the emails so that they start to get comfortable with that. And then week two, at this time during this training guideline, we did a lot of shadowing, a lot of time for the new hire to study and then some guided answering questions. So more of that kind of hand-holding, but letting them kind of be the one who's doing the writing, who's doing the communicating.
Priscilla:Week three was more of that buddy work that I was talking about, where they're leading it. We're there with them as a quick answer to a question, guidance, that kind of a thing, but they're taking the lead. And then week four is when they'd get into that more independent work, knowing that we're on call and available for them if they need us. But then it becomes much more independent work and less, you know, handholding. So that was kind of our guideline before really the team grew. But now here we are four years since Megan came on. Four years, it's only been four years. It feels like longer than that, but it's been four years since Megan came on and our training process has solidified more and more each time someone new came on. Brian, you started about two years ago listening to how I just explained what it was with Megan, what was different about your training process when you came on.
Brian:It was interesting to hear those early days because I feel like by the time I was a new team member, you had everything super organized and it was a system that we just knocked out every single day and I felt by the end of our four weeks we felt ready to go. So I thought whatever you had in place was awesome and I even told you just the one-on-one. Well, for us it was one-on-two training because you were training both Blake and I at the same time.
Jordan:Yeah.
Brian:And just that detail of training that you put in each day was just so impressive and, like the details that you would cover with us during that shadow time, during our buddy time or even guiding us through our self-study time, you had it down. So that's interesting to hear how you were kind of just winging it at the beginning.
Priscilla:Well, it's funny because you know you do in the beginning. You kind of figure it out as you go and then I never took the time to really solidify it. It just got a little bit better each time I brought in a new person. So it's nice to hear that by the time I got to training you and Blake, it felt like it was really structured. I don't know if I felt like it was very structured on my side.
Priscilla:I remember you giving me a compliment about the training right after we had like moved. I think you were maybe two months in and I remember being so like feeling so good about your compliment because I thought, oh good, I finally feel like I have a grasp on how to train efficiently and well. And now I have, like this plan in place, which is really good. And so it's cool now because here we are two years later and now you're going to kind of take over our training process a little bit, which is really really beneficial.
Priscilla:One of the things that we were kind of running into recently as we brought new people on the team is that it just became a very time intensive process for me to train every new person that came on the team. So a couple months ago I had a conversation with Brian about training and figuring out what we could do to kind of take some of that load off of me and figure out how to make that process something that Brian can own, and so that's where the training project came from. And then Brian was able to go and create a process that we now have for when we get our next hire on the team. And so, yeah, let's talk about that project a little bit.
Brian:Absolutely. That'd be great.
Priscilla:Yeah. So, brian, can you first give me a little bit of a glimpse into your history with training? Because, if you don't remember, listeners, we mentioned this on Brian's Empathy episode, but Brian used to work with Chick-fil-A and you did training at Chick-fil-A, right?
Brian:I was a certified trainer, and so not only would I do the training at my kind of home store, but I would go to grand openings all over the country and train team members there as well when they're opening up a new Chick-fil-A.
Priscilla:Nice, I don't think I knew that. Oh yeah, that's awesome.
Brian:I actually just had a Facebook memory pop up. I spent six weeks in Des Moines about 10 years ago, and so I was just like, oh man, I had forgotten all about that. That was six weeks in Des Moines.
Priscilla:No, no shade to any of our Des Moines listeners out there.
Brian:I'm sure it's a great place.
Priscilla:I've never been there, but Brian's had some good time there.
Brian:But no, I always kind of find myself, no matter what role I'm in, I kind of find my way to training eventually because I just love it. I'm a big sports guy, so I kind of view training as kind of like coaching, and so at Chick-fil-A it was so different when I first came on as a team member. A lot of the training was based on watching a bunch of videos that corporate had made and then a little bit of shadow time, and then you're out there, you're ready to go, and over the years it kind of changed, where it was a lot less videos and supposedly more shadow time, but our Chick-fil-A had just gotten so busy. There was never great time for training because it's either just absolutely dead slow in between breakfast, lunch and dinner or it's just crazy chaos, and neither one of those is great time to train. And so there were difficulties because we're trying to train.
Brian:My team at Chick-fil-A was 200 people, and so we would constantly just have a rotation of new people all the time, and so we're trying to train these people a lot of them younger kids, like teenagers, working during the evening, and so that meant that I was basically training the younger leaders that work at night to train these other new team members, and then so I'm kind of doing two levels of training there while trying to keep up with my stuff during the day. And so it just got to be very difficult. All these balls in the air and you get feedback from the new team members like well, I was supposed to be partnered up with this person, but they were running around, I couldn't keep up with them, so I kind of just stood in the corner. I'm like great, so with the best intentions, like we had awesome training plans put together, but just the chaos would take over and they wouldn't get it. And so really we ended up implementing something that they are going to master one position during their training time.
Brian:So they weren't technically training very long, but then we would say the training never stops. And so basically I'm working with the leaders on the team to always be looking for opportunities to train the new team members and help them grow in being able to do multiple positions and then eventually train them to become the next wave of leaders. And so with a large team like that, it really was difficult to get that specific training time in, and I think that's why I liked Buzzsprout's training so much is because it was just so much one-on-one time with you and I, and then obviously Blake as well, and I just felt so prepared. After our training was done, it was like oh, this is a good feeling, like this is what training should be.
Priscilla:Yeah, well, and it's funny, you know, you say you have 200 people and you're training them and everything's chaos and there are people coming through the drive-thru and all of that. And I think it's way easier to say, hey, let an email sit for a few minutes, that's okay, than to say let this person sit for a few minutes, who's at the window?
Priscilla:and who's expecting their chicken nuggets, you know. So, depending on the industry you're in, it might be easier to kind of, you know, slow down and focus on the training. So yeah, I can see how Chick-fil-A would definitely be a whirlwind of a training experience.
Brian:But, like you said, no matter what industry or what your business is like. It's about and we'll talk about this more later flexibility, like as long as you're not so strict on I have to do it this way and you're flexible, then you can get great training, no matter what the business is like.
Priscilla:Absolutely so. Can you tell me a little bit about your strategy that you used when you were creating the training program and kind of you know where it came from and all of that?
Brian:Yeah. So my strategy going in and I told you this as well is I didn't want to reinvent the wheel because I thought your training and what you had set up was great.
Brian:So I didn't think there was any reason to change everything, and so really what I wanted to do was just get everything in documents and really just have something that we can share with the trainee that's not just our one-on-one times like spoken training. And so I kind of went into it thinking, oh, this is going to be the greatest resource in the world, like it's going to have all the information they need, one-stop shop, like it's going to train them. And then throughout the process, I realized that really wasn't a great path to head down and I kind of I give you credit to this because I feel like you changed my mindset into changing the program to where it's not only going to be beneficial for the trainee of how it ended up, but also five trainees from now. It's going to have that flex. You're going to hear me say flexibility so many times flexibility to change and evolve, to just keep getting better and better and better.
Brian:And so, where I wanted it to be the greatest resource in the world, it actually ended up being very simplistic, but more of a guide that's going to help them have a great base of knowledge when we finish our four weeks with them. They're going to be comfortable with the systems that we have in place to find answers that they don't know, and they're going to be comfortable with the processes and our team effort as far as, like, we can rely on each other. You don't have to know everything, and so the program as it sits now, has very minimal documents that have a ton of information on them, but a big part of our training is the time that you and I spend with them in the inbox and they're going to get to learn from real emails, and this will help guide them during their self-study time.
Brian:But I think you kind of talked about this in the episode with Marshall when you're looking for people to join our team, we want people to be comfortable researching and discovering answers and not be afraid that they don't know something, and so this will help guide them in that process where they're not going to know everything, but we have a ton of resources to help them find the answer. And then if they find something brand new that we've never researched before, it's going to go in the training program and the next person is going to learn and the rest of the team is going to learn from them too. So it's an ever evolving process that is flexible.
Priscilla:Yeah, flexibility is really good. I mean, it allows you to grow over time and you learn new things as you train new people and you have different personality types that are coming on the team, and so maybe then you go oh man, I really want to adjust this for the next person who's super outgoing, and so they really benefit from having that one-on-one training. But maybe the next person really is more of a knowledge seeker and they really like that independence more, and so maybe they need less Q&A sessions and more independent study time. And so being able to adapt to the different people that come on your team I think is really important when you're doing any kind of training and making sure it's efficient, because it's not going to be efficient to teach someone who's really introverted one-on-one. It's going to be more efficient for them to learn it on their own and to trust them to do that kind of self-directed study.
Priscilla:It kind of goes back to what we talked about with Sarah Caminiti last week about knowing the context around the people that you have on your team, knowing them, where they come from, what motivates them. All of that information can help you be a better leader, and so having a training program or guideline or framework, however you want to refer to it that's flexible, that allows you to adjust for new people that are coming on your team is really, really important and, I think, gives you a ultimately a better process than having something that's so rigid that it doesn't change and everyone who comes in needs to fit that mold in order to be successful. All right, brian, so can you give us a little bit more kind of insight into where the project landed and what are the biggest changes you made from the guidelines we had originally and the framework you ended up with at?
Brian:so we are going to have a meeting before the next new team member starts their training and we'll kind of set the guideline for what we're hoping this program will look like for them. But, as you mentioned, we're going to be flexible because they may have a different learning style. They may really pick up on some items better than some people in the past. Just because one item the last four trainees picked up instantly in day one does not mean this new fifth trainee is going to pick up on it quickly too. So we are going to have flexibility where you and I are going to meet and before each week we'll set their training program to match what they need that week and what would best suit them moving forward.
Brian:And so I love that we kept the inbox time as far as shadow time, buddy time and then kind of like on-call time, as you mentioned, and I think that time is really important because they get to see actual emails that come in and actual problems that we get to help solve every single day.
Brian:Now we also kept it's a nice balance we kept the self-study time because there's a lot of information that we're throwing at them and we want them to be able to learn in whatever way they feel is best all the subjects, and so one of the big change is we actually give them one to two study topics per day.
Brian:Now when Blake and I trained, you would guide us on some days and then other days we would have really the freedom to study whatever we wanted, and I guess I didn't know what I didn't know, and so I don't feel like I use that time efficiently, where I would just read a bunch of articles or I would watch a bunch of videos and I wasn't really focused on one topic. And the more I've talked to the team, it seems like if we get them to focus in on one topic per day and really kind of get a mastery of that topic, It'll really build their foundation that they're comfortable with when certain emails come in. And so we're starting with nice simple topics that they're going to get their confidence up and they'll be able to pick up pretty quickly hopefully, and then we'll get into more difficult, more top tier emails and topics as they go throughout the four weeks.
Priscilla:Yeah, and one thing you mentioned I think is really good to point out is that you don't know what. You don't know when you're a new trainee in any kind of role. You don't know what information is most important. Someone has to tell you that. So when you trained, brian, part of the reason that you had so much self-directed study was because I could not walk you through everything, because I just didn't have the time to do that. And so if you have a smaller team, you don't have the time to be with someone 24 seven, because you're not going to get anything else done, you're not going to get any of the work done. And so part of that self-directed study idea came out of this need for me to be able to get other work done, and so you guys had self-directed study. But in doing that we've learned, and through this project I think you have pointed out that having the structure there to kind of guide, the self-directed study is really really helpful because it helps the new person, the new trainee, know where to go and so their time is efficient because you really you got four weeks to train for this new job and you know it's a lot of on the job training and so taking that self-directed study time. So let's say you have four hours in a day. That is self-directed study.
Priscilla:It can feel daunting as a new person on the team to not know what am I supposed to study today.
Priscilla:Like what should I focus my time on today?
Priscilla:In the case of Buzzsprout, you're learning a product, you're learning an industry, you're learning the technical aspects of podcasting, which can be overwhelming, and so giving someone the direction and saying, ok, the first week we're focusing on moving to and from Buzzsprout and we're focusing on logging in issues and and we're focusing on this kind of basic thing and then moving up and up and up.
Priscilla:So by the time they're finished in their four-week training, that's when they're learning these more niche features that we have or these workarounds that we have in place that might not be necessary for them to learn week one, but they don't know what's more important. So I think what you did really the biggest change in this project is that you took all of that information and you put it in the right order and then you developed this plan, this four week day breakdown for the next person to come on to know exactly what they need to study, so that by the end of the four weeks they can feel really confident and really comfortable in the inbox with all that knowledge, because it's a lot to learn.
Brian:It is.
Priscilla:It's a lot to learn when you're coming into a support team.
Brian:And a big part of that is going to be our coaching time with you and I, either in the inbox or we have some meetings set with them as well, and a big part of it is just encouraging them, because I think I was stubborn, thinking like, oh, I'm going to come in, I'm going to learn everything and this is going to be easy. And then I think you probably saw me get discouraged when I was just like, oh, my goodness, this is a lot. And so you got to, you got to keep their head up and be like, hey, this seems like a lot now, but, trust me, you're going to keep doing it. Repetition, you're going to gain all this knowledge and we're going to teach you how to find answers too, so you don't need to know everything, like you can find the answers when you need to.
Priscilla:Yeah, it's funny because when you think about training for a new job, you're like, oh man, I have to learn this new company, I have to learn this new role. But it's unique in support that you're coming into a job and you are becoming the expert in the product that you're using Like. It's not like joining a marketing team. You already have marketing knowledge and that's pretty applicable into your new role and, yes, you learn the company, but you're not learning a completely new, foreign thing that now you're expected to be the expert on and, with support, you are expected to come into a new team and become the expert on whatever it is you're supporting, whether it be a product or a service or whatever it is.
Jordan:Well, and all of the overarching stuff as well, because if someone comes in and they've got a question that's not necessarily related to your product or service, but it affects it service but it affects it you have to have the knowledge to say like, okay, that's happening, because this thing that you're trying to do, it's just, it's a lot.
Priscilla:Yeah, it's so much, which is why I think what you were saying is so good, Brian to be encouraging to that person, as they're coming on the team and reminding them that you don't have to know everything today. It's going to be a process In six months you're going to look back and you're going to be blown away by how much knowledge you have on whatever product it is that you're supporting.
Brian:Because we're Buzzsprout. I tried to make it a little bit fun and personable on their little daily link that they're going to receive from me every day. It has a little blurb on there and I just tried to keep it light with either encouragement or jokes or little funny gifts and stuff like that, like just get their day started off like in a positive manner.
Priscilla:I love that. Yeah, we're a big fan of dad jokes over here, at Buzzsprout. So Brian threw a couple of dad jokes in there, which is always fun and it's good because it communicates the personality of the company to a new hire. Because you know, everyone knows, those first few weeks at a new job are like a blur and it's hard to get to know everyone there and the product.
Brian:So having that kind of personality is really good well, not only that, but we're in an industry that's constantly changing, so when you feel like you've mastered it, then something new comes along and totally changes everything, like that's a big difference from Chick-fil-A that chicken sandwich hasn't changed in 60 years, and that's such a good point. Yeah, so it's a constant. Like we can go back to that phrase. Like the training is never done, like we're always learning new things. Yeah, even if we've been here for eight years, two years, like it doesn't matter.
Priscilla:So and that's why, again, I'm going to go back to that self-directed study is so helpful when you're learning, when you're coming into a support team because one that's putting the ownership of the knowledge on you it is your job to make sure you know this information. We're here to help you, but we're not going to sit in a room with you for eight hours every day and teach you one-on-one. Some of this is going to be your responsibility to really solidify it, and so you know yourself best. It's kind of like being in college Go read the chapter and come back to me with questions that you have. You know it's very self-directed, but that also builds the muscle of doing that as you continue learning, or as you continue working, because you're not going to hit the top of the knowledge.
Priscilla:Great, I've got it all and I don't have to learn anything more, because something in the industry is going to change, or something with your product is going to change, or we're going to roll out a feature update and you're going to need to stay on top of that. As a person in the support team, you'll have help, hopefully you'll have guidance from your leader, but ultimately at least the way we do it in Buzzsprout, that knowledge is your own responsibility to stay on top of, and so building that during the training process is really beneficial to us and to you as the new trainee. Okay, so, for anyone who might be listening, who is in the process of developing their own training program, what does it look like like a typical day, brian, with this new program you've put together, what does that look like for the trainee, and how are you going to be communicating with the trainee so that they know what to do in that day?
Brian:So we went back and forth on that a few times and we ended up deciding that we were going to keep the template in a folder for Priscilla and I and then, before the trainee starts, we're going to copy that template into a personalized folder for the trainee and we'll be able to really add details and give us that flexibility in that personalized folder for that trainee but still have our template available for the future. And so we will manually give them their daily topic and the schedule for that day. But they will have access to that folder, let's say during their self-study time. If they want to maybe look and see what the topics for the next day or next week were, they can look ahead and work ahead if they're Mr Go-Getter.
Brian:So, we did decide to do it manually, but automation might be something that we look at in the future.
Priscilla:The nice thing about doing it in a way that you have the structure templated and then being able to personalize it to the person is what we were talking about before is that each new person that comes in, they're gonna have different motivations they're gonna have.
Priscilla:Maybe they're in a different time zone, and so you wanna take that into account, because the meeting structure for the first week that worked for your last hire might not work for your next hire, and so having a template of that framework and then taking that template and applying it specifically to your new hire really allows you to tailor that really, really well.
Priscilla:It could be that if you hire someone in June, it's going to be a slightly different process than if you hire someone in January, because it's summer and maybe people have more vacation and so it doesn't become a four week training.
Priscilla:Maybe now it's a five week training because there's a week in the middle there where they're out for a week or for a few days.
Priscilla:It's a five week training because there's a week in the middle there where they're out for a week or for a few days, and so I think having the template was a really good plan for us to give us the ability to set this up ahead of time and to let it still be highly personal to each new trainee that comes in.
Priscilla:And it's also really great just to brag on Brian for a little bit. It's really great for me to be able to give this over to Brian and let him take ownership of this and run with it, because now I am, for the most part, out of the day-to-day training aspect. There's still going to be times when I come in and I do some training with the new hires, but it's so great to have someone specifically on the team who is going to focus on the training and sharpen it as we hire new people and new people, and it will get even more and more tailored, which is really nice, and it's never going to be a situation where it's so structured and so tailored that it can't change for the next person that comes on.
Brian:Absolutely. There's nothing that the new trainee can throw at us that's going to mess up the program Like we're going to be able to really accomplish anything we want in any timeframe that we want.
Brian:I'll hit it right back at you. I think, looking back on it, it was just so impressive the fact that you were able to train Blake and I at the same time and do your full-time job while training us, and who knows how many hours you were putting in during that time. But looking back on it, I can't believe you did it.
Priscilla:Well, it can be really difficult, and I will say again to anyone who's listening, who is in a leadership role on a team it is really important to have a training process in place, because what will happen is you will get to a point where you can't do both things and so you are working way more hours than you should be, and that's really not a healthy way for you as a leader to handle the training. But also it doesn't teach new people on your team how to handle your time management. If you're working 70 hour weeks because you're training in that time, it's not a good role model for the new person yeah, it's not a good example for the new person that's joining your team, and so I think having this in place to give yourself the ability to be more efficient with training, or designating someone on your team to be the person who trains new hires, that can be really, really beneficial for you as a lead, but also for your team, and getting people to a place where they're comfortable and confident in the inbox and working with customers.
Priscilla:Absolutely confident in the inbox and working with customers, Absolutely so.
Priscilla:Before we wrap it up, I kind of want to talk about just a couple actionable tips that people can take when they're trying to think through this training process and when they're building it for themselves. So I just jotted down a couple of things. The first is being intentional about how quickly you transfer knowledge and in what order you're transferring knowledge. I mean, you did it so much in the training process, really breaking down all the information that we think is important for someone to learn before they're a fully trained support specialist in Buzzsprout. But sitting down and looking at that information and being really careful about how you kind of dole that out can be really, really helpful. What you don't want to do is dump it all on them day one and have them feel so overwhelmed. So if you're kind of slow about how you present that to your new trainee, it can be really really beneficial and it also can avoid them getting overly stressed out or, you know, having regret about taking a job where they're learning so much so fast.
Brian:Absolutely, because, I think you said it earlier, the worst thing in the world would be to find a trainee that you absolutely love and then you burn them out too fast and they end up looking for something else because they decide this is not for me.
Priscilla:They're like three days in. They're like this is way too much information, so you've got to be careful about how you give that information. Another actionable tip that we have that we've been talking about is giving your new hires time to process and study on your own or on their own. We build a lot of study time into that first week. One because we don't want to overload you with information, but two because you have to have time to study what you've been taught or else it's not going to stick.
Priscilla:And so I always tried I don't know if this is in your training program, brian, but I always tried to give at least one full day of like study and processing time to a new hire in that first week. So you might have four days of meeting with people and learning our process and learning our support tone and how the company works and, oh, pto and insurance and all of that stuff that you also have to learn when you come into a new job. And I always tried to make sure that their Friday was hey, you're on your own. Today you can go back and review your notes. This is a time for you to get everything set up that you need to get it set up. You have lots of time for that self-directed study so that by the time you start week two you feel really good about week one.
Brian:I think that's smart. Let them take a breath and just kind of review everything, because it's a lot.
Priscilla:Yeah it can be a lot to learn right off the beginning. Okay, the third thing I had is to trust your new hires right from the start and encourage them to take ownership, which is in line with that self-directed study. It starts getting them to flex the muscle of ownership over their knowledge and I'm going to trust you to be on top of your knowledge, like right off the bat.
Brian:Hopefully your hiring process is long enough where you can build up that trust with the new hire Absolutely and you're not in such a rush to hire just somebody that you're hoping to build that trust once they come on. Hopefully you've already kind of built up that trust during the interview process.
Priscilla:The flip side of that is you have someone new on the team and you micromanage every little thing that they're doing. Well, then you're building this expectation that everything is going to be micromanaged, and so they don't take ownership of any of their own work because, well, it hasn't been told exactly how to do it yet, so I can't do it at all. And so if you kind of lead with that trust, then you're going to get better results. You're going to have people that are more open to finding things out on their own, to troubleshooting on their own, which is such an important quality when you're in support, and you have to be able to figure out these things on your own in order to be a really good support specialist.
Priscilla:Another thing that we really really push is to welcome questions. I will never have an issue with someone asking a question. We talked about it a little bit with Sarah last week. But this idea that with support, you know, sometimes people might feel like embarrassed to ask a question I am always going to welcome questions. We have specific time built into the training program, that is, q&a meetings, right? So when they've done two hours of researching on this certain topic and they have a list of questions. We have time specifically set aside for them to come and ask us questions and we also make it really clear in the support team that anyone can ask a question at any time to anyone in the support team and we will all be there to help answer those questions. And especially during that training time questions are encouraged and celebrated and beyond the training time they're always welcome.
Brian:Oh, absolutely. I feel like we ask each other questions all the time and it just it helps us all learn something new that maybe we just assumed everybody else knew and none of us knew it, and so now this group discussion helps us all get better.
Priscilla:Yep, absolutely. And then the last thing is just to celebrate and encourage your new hires. I mean, when you are new to a team, it can be very overwhelming, it can be embarrassing, it can be, you know, just really hard to get integrated into a new team of people who are already doing this job that you've been brought in to also do, and so celebrating their wins, celebrating the first email they send or the first great rating that they get if you have like a rating system in your email or the first time someone said, oh, you just made my day today, like celebrating that feels so good.
Brian:I agree Like that's. A big part of what you and I are going to try and accomplish during those four weeks is keeping their confidence up, because we know they're going to get it. We have the process in place where they're going to learn it, but we just don't want them to feel overwhelmed. We want them to feel confident, like their confidence is going to grow throughout the whole process, and we're going to make sure of that, whether it's through silly dad jokes or just like little pep talks.
Priscilla:Yeah Well, I think confidence is a huge part of customer support. It really is what takes your support experiences from OK to really good. If you are confident in your knowledge, then all of that is set and now you can take a step above and provide a really great experience. But if you don't get to the confidence in your knowledge and the product, that's where you're going to feel like everything is difficult and it's hard to be empathetic and it's hard to have patience because you aren't even fully understanding the product yet. So that comfortable confidence is such an important part and celebrating those wins and encouraging as a team, encouraging the new hire, is such a good way to build that right from the start.
Brian:Yeah, if you don't have that confidence and you're dreading each email that comes in because you're afraid that you're not going to know the answer, then you're not going to last long in a support role, because it's just going to be too hard. Exactly.
Priscilla:So bringing new people on your team can be really overwhelming, and if you have a small team, developing a training process can be really daunting.
Priscilla:I hope that this conversation at least gives you a little bit of a direction to start working in if you're thinking about creating a process like this. You know we figured it out trial and error, but we certainly aren't the end all be all when it comes to training. There are lots of ways to go about this, and so I hope that this conversation has at least given you some inspiration or some direction on where to go with your training process. But a big thing to remember is what's the outcome that you want? You want to make sure that your new hire is equipped and excited and confident to work with your customers and they're comfortable in that role so that they can go above and beyond and offer those remarkable experiences. So having a strong training process is going to be really beneficial for your support team. Absolutely, it's time for Support in Real Life, our segment where we discuss real life support experiences and questions. Jordan, what do you got for us today?
Jordan:All right. So I've got a message from Riley says I've noticed that one of my colleagues often struggles with handling difficult customers and it's affecting team morale. How can I provide constructive feedback without coming off as critical or unsupportive?
Priscilla:I would say you know, go back and listen to our episode we did a couple of weeks ago about angry customers, because I think that will hopefully give that person some tips on dealing and working with angry customers.
Priscilla:Yeah, but I think the biggest thing to keep in mind is that it's hard to work with a difficult customer. I mean it's difficult and some people are better at it than other people. So if you are feeling this kind of frustration with someone on your team that they're not doing a very good job at it, just have as much grace for them as possible, because it might be something that you are just naturally better at than they are, and holding them to the standard you have might not be feasible and it might be really overwhelming for them. So I would start with that in mind. You know it's hard, it's a difficult thing to do, and if you can do it well, kudos to you. But not everyone can, and so you know you want to have as much grace with this person as possible when you are going to approach them about that.
Brian:Yeah, I agree, I think it is very difficult and it can be more so for others. Let's say, if it was something in Buzzsprout and we were the inbox with someone and we saw a super difficult email come in and someone was in there and then they hopped out, then maybe that's a good moment for just in the moment coaching, and you can send them a little message and be like hey, I saw you look at that one, but then you hopped out. Was there? Was there anything that you weren't comfortable answering? Or was there a reason why you didn't want to answer that one?
Brian:Um, because in the moment it's not a big deal. You're just kind of coaching, yeah, and you don't have to be like make a note and be like, oh, I need to schedule a meeting with that person and it's going to be this big thing, like it's just like, hey, tell me what's going on, like what's what's going on there, because you don't want your support team any members, let alone the whole team, to start avoiding difficult conversations, because you can never do that in support, and so maybe it's just something that we like hey, what's going on? It just may be an off day, and that's fine, because everybody has those, but if it's something that they're starting to become afraid to do because they got a bad rating one time or I don't know, it could be a million different things but like trying to help them get over that hump and just encourage and be like I've seen you take on difficult questions before you do just fine, like it doesn't have to be a big thing.
Priscilla:Right and, like you're saying, you know, if they're avoiding those, it becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. And so, just in the moment, saying hey, let's jump in a conference room and talk through this one, or let's get on a phone call, if you're working remotely, and talk through this one in the moment, without making it a big issue, I think that can be a really good strategy and it doesn't have to be a hey, you're bad at this, I'm good at this, so I'm going to show you how to do it. It can be. Hey, this is a hard thing. I would be happy to walk alongside you and work with you on getting this done.
Jordan:You know, I think of some jobs that I've had where I had a coworker that complained a lot, and I think that that can really hurt company morale. Like the coworkers, they can just get kind of like annoyed by it or something like that. And so I wonder if this is sort of a company culture question as well, or, you know, just hiring the right kind of people or maintaining the right kind of people on the team.
Priscilla:Yeah, I was going to say, you know, with this affecting company morale or affecting team morale, they said in the question that this can affect, or is affecting, the team.
Priscilla:I think at that point, if you are not the head of the team, then the right step to take is to go to your team lead and let them know that this is affecting you and this is affecting the rest of the team, because once it gets to a team morale issue or you start to see that effect, then it's much bigger than not being able to work with a difficult customer, and so you really want to make sure you're bringing that to your team lead, who may not be noticing something like that or how it's affecting the team.
Priscilla:And so I think it's really important that when you see it start to affect the team in that way, take it to your team lead and let them handle it from that point of view, because that's going to be ultimately healthier for the team, and what you don't want is the team to get so frustrated with this one person who keeps avoiding difficult customers, so much so that people start to become resentful and frustrated. Yes, and then you have a team that's fractured in so many ways because the team lead either wasn't aware of it or didn't take action on it, and so if you're seeing it from your point of view, taking that to your team lead and encouraging them to handle it from that point of view, I think is really really important. It doesn't always need to be a peer review type of a situation.
Brian:Yes, the longer you wait, the harder it gets.
Priscilla:Absolutely, but it's important to remember that working with difficult people is really hard. So have grace for each other, because everyone knows it's hard. It's really difficult and if you're struggling with that, then go back and listen to that episode from a couple of weeks ago about working with angry people, because it will give you some actionable tips to take into your next email interaction. So remember that you can share your stories or questions with us for our support in real life segment by emailing us at happy to help at buzzsproutcom, and you can text the show. There's a text the show link in the description right now that you can use to text us any questions or stories you have, or you can let us know how someone made your day recently. We would love to hear that We'll pick one question or story each week to discuss at the end of the show, and so you might hear your story or question talked about on a future episode. Well, that's it for today. I hope you have enjoyed this episode. Thank you, brian, for being here with us today.
Brian:Thanks for having me.
Priscilla:If you liked the episode, go, leave a review or rating on Apple Podcasts and follow us on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. Now go and make someone's day.
