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
Tips and Strategies for Getting Out Of the Support Queue
Balancing inbox coverage with important outbox tasks can be challenging, but it's the key to improving your customer experience!
In this episode, we give tips for the best ways to schedule support coverage while allowing margin for other projects and development. We highlight the significance of allowing for deep work, taking intentional breaks from the inbox, and setting clear expectations to foster a productive, yet flexible, support environment. These dynamic approaches will create a more efficient and enjoyable support experience for both your team and your customers!
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 schedules, specifically the best way to schedule coverage of your support inbox. We'll discuss how our coverage strategies have changed over the years, how to prioritize time in and out of the inbox and some tips on getting out of the queue. Thanks for joining us. Let's get into it. Okay, jordan, it's just you and me. How are you doing today?
Jordan:I'm good.
Priscilla:How are you? I'm good. I just got back from a vacation in South Georgia, which isn't that far from where we are and where I am in Jacksonville, but it was nice to get away and we kind of hung out on the lake and it was just a really nice time with family. So I'm like back into it, excited to talk about support schedules. Yes, but before we get there, since we don't have a guest today, I thought you and I could answer our question of who has made your day this week. Do you have an answer for me?
Jordan:this week. Do you have an answer for me? Absolutely I do. We decided to transfer my daughter, isley, to public school, and the school district shut down a bunch of schools this year and didn't put down the new boundary lines until like a couple of weeks before school started. Yeah. So I had to fill out paperwork, making an educated guess about where the boundary line was, and the school that's like technically closest to us is like brand new, super fancy. And so my daughter was stoked, like she was like yes, I cannot wait to go to school. This is going to be amazing, it's so nice.
Jordan:So a month goes by and I finally get a registration email, but it's from the wrong school. Oh no, and it's a school that's like literally across town. Oh no, yeah. And so I was thinking like there's gotta be some sort of like mix up. And so I write the secretary and I'm like, oh no, she's, she's not going to your school, like she's registered for this one and there's been a mistake. She replies and she's like no, you're in our boundary and you can apply for like open enrollment, but the schools are full up. So basically, you know, it's probably not likely, yeah.
Jordan:And so I was like all right, thinking like great, now I have to talk to my daughter and she was so excited I have to tell her no, you're going to this different school. And so I talked to her and she looks at the school. She gives it like a goog and she's like oh, she gives it a quick goog, she's like, oh, like, these school colors are so much better and I like these sports uniforms better. And so she was cool with it, it wasn't a big deal, and I was like great. So then, like a few minutes later, I get another phone call and it's a secretary for the school I originally had applied for, and apparently the secretary at the school that I was like hey, this has been a mix up shot, an email to her just to check to see if we could get in at the school that I was like, hey, this has been a mix-up shot, an email to her just to check to see if we could get in at the school.
Jordan:She didn't have to do that because I was like, okay, that makes sense. And she's like hey, I just wanted to like clear things up for you. I know you applied for our school, but like the boundary lines you're in this one and you know I'm so sorry that we couldn't make it work and and I was like no, no, it's okay, like my daughter's all on board for like black and green for her school. So you know it's not a big deal. And she was like.
Jordan:Oh, I'm so happy to hear that Like, oh, she has a wonderful school year. And I was just thinking like man, half the school district is in absolute disarray. They're all new students because they shut down so many schools that it's all getting like shifted around and we're like a couple of weeks before school starts and I was like these ladies did not need to give me the time of day.
Priscilla:That's a great example of someone going out of their way in a customer service role to make the customer I guess for you know, for lack of a better word, but like you are the customer there to make you feel better about the situation, and so, yeah, that's great. Shout out to them for handling that well, even though the situation itself had potential to be very frustrating.
Priscilla:Oh absolutely so what's yours? So, like I mentioned, last week I was on a vacation, a family vacation, and I had the task of going and getting all the groceries for our trip, which is a large task. When you're buying groceries for a week for 15 people, oh my gosh.
Priscilla:And so I had gone to Costco earlier in the day, I had driven to where we were, where we were staying, which was like five hour drive, and the last thing I had to do was go to the Publix and get some more things and for anyone not in the South, publix is our like grocery store. You know, it's the end of the day, I'm tired, I'm ready to be done shopping for food and I needed some like sandwich meat at the deli counter and so I went to the deli counter to get this food. I was exhausted but the woman behind the counter had so much energy and she was so kind and she was just like, had a very personable personality and she was so like friendly and in some situations I feel like it could have come off like whoa, take a step back, this is too much. But she did it in a way that like energized me and it really made that last bit groceries to get.
Priscilla:That was kind of like I was dreading a little bit. That whole trip was made better because she was just positive and encouraging and kind and it was so simple. But I feel like it changed that grocery store run. But it's infectious and it was, and I felt like my energy got boosted because of her energy, and so I don't know her name, but she was the woman behind the counter at the Publix Deli and she is clearly in the right role because she really just made my day and it kicked the evening off and I had a lot more energy and it was wonderful.
Jordan:So those are the types of people that you see all the time on. I think of, like TikTok or Instagram reels, you know, when people make, like ice cream cones, but they make it fun and I mean there's just, it's so funny because it's a simple thing, like they're making cotton candy, they're making ice cream, they're they're building sandwiches, they're making pizzas, but they're doing it in such a fun and infectious way that, like, brings joy to people. You can make it magical.
Priscilla:Yeah, you can, and it's just like with support. Like if you're working in a support inbox, you have the ability to make something magical for someone else. Yes, so why not do that? And so you're right, you're not doing a job. That's like changing the world and you have to have a crazy amount of experience in order to do it. You're not running a country, but you're running a deli counter or you're handling an email in an inbox and you have the ability to make the person's day better on the other side of that, and so shout out to her for doing a great job. That's awesome.
Priscilla:For the last couple of episodes, we have been kind of encouraging people to text the show and to let us know what they think about the show and what we could be doing better, and so I thought I'd take a minute on this episode, since it's just the two of us, to read through a couple of our we call them fan mail messages. But from some of our listeners oh, I can't wait. Yeah, I'm excited. So we have a listener in Colorado who wrote in and they said these episodes just keep getting better and better. I love hearing the values behind your support interactions. Looking forward to the next episode. That's awesome, which is so kind. And we had another listener from Australia who said loved the episode with Kevin Finn and Jordan. Of course, every Buzzsprout support I've used has been 100%. Thank you, david John Clark. Aka the Late Bloomer Actor Podcast, which I am guessing that he wrote in because he is a listener of Buzzcast. Yes, aka the Late Bloomer Actor Podcast, which I am guessing that he wrote in because he is a listener of Buzzcast.
Jordan:Yes, yeah.
Priscilla:And Kevin did a nice little plug on an episode of Buzzcast for Happy to Help, and so I would guess he came over from that plug. Yeah, and that's why he was saying he enjoyed the episode with Kevin and with Jordan. Thanks, david, for listening.
Jordan:Yes, david's awesome. He writes in to Buzzcast all the time too, so I always look forward to hearing from him.
Priscilla:Well, we can plug his podcast. It's called the Late Bloomer Actor Podcast, so if that sounds interesting to you, go check it out. Yeah, and then we had Walter from Florida write in. They said I'm really loving this podcast. I feel inspired to be more intentional about having empathy, patience and being a manager of one throughout my workday Cool.
Priscilla:Which is so like, it's so nice to hear that from someone, because that is the goal with this podcast is to encourage people to want to do better and be better when it comes to having empathy and patience and working well with customers and striving toward that remarkable experience.
Jordan:So when someone writes in and they basically repeat your mission statement back to you like this is how this has made me feel, like that's success.
Priscilla:It's so nice. Yeah, I love it. So thank you to these three people for writing in and being so encouraging. It really makes us feel so great to hear this and if you're listening, you can write into us. Let us know what you think.
Priscilla:It doesn't have to be positive, it can be. You know a note of. You know a request if you want us to focus on something more, or you can let us know what we're doing right or what you'd like to hear more of, and we would love to hear that. So you can just click the text, the show link in the description if you want to send that in. So today we're going to talk through scheduling coverage of your inbox. This isn't the most glamorous topic, but I think it's really important, especially if you want to have a team that's balanced and healthy. Yeah, but I want to kind of define what I mean by inbox time, because for some people, an inbox is not going to be like an email inbox like we have. An inbox is not going to be like an email inbox like we have.
Priscilla:You might have a support system where you offer chat support or phone support or in-person support yeah, so when I say inbox time, I'm really referring to that customer facing experience that you are giving as a support specialist. So back in 2017, before we had dedicated support, the inbox wasn't a sole focus for anyone. There were some people who spent dedicated support. The inbox wasn't a sole focus for anyone. There were some people who spent more time in the inbox than others, but it wasn't someone's main priority. But when I came on the team, it started to become a little bit more consistent because I was hired as the sole support person. So in the early years, when it was just me in the inbox, I would spend all of my time in the inbox queue. I was answering emails all day, and if I got to the end of the queue if not always when, but if I got to the end of the queue by the end of the day then I would have some time to work on other things. Afterthought, it was not a situation where I would leave the inbox with emails to go work on something else and then come back to them. It was if I got through all of the emails, then I would go and do some kind of like proactive work, and so that was really the process there for a while. And then, when we hired more people onto the team and we grew by a couple people the reason we were hiring people is because our traffic in the inbox was growing and we needed to make sure to have coverage. So even in those situations, it was still that same process of working through all the emails and once you got to the clear inbox, then you had the ability to go do things outside of the inbox. But you really didn't have a lot of time because the inbox would fill up pretty quickly and you'd have to jump back in and keep working on it, would fill up pretty quickly and you'd have to jump back in and keep working on it, and so it really made it difficult for us as a small team to focus on anything other than that direct customer communication. Yeah, and so that's where we started to notice I don't want to say it was an issue, but it definitely was something that was blocking us from growing as a team and from improving the quality of our work, because we were so down in the weeds all day that we had a hard time getting out of that.
Priscilla:So I remember having conversations with one of the Buzzsprout co-founders, tom Rossi, who you might remember from the Perfection episode that we had a while ago. I remember having this conversation and he was encouraging me to schedule an hour a day to leave the inbox and to focus on something else. Wow, I remember pushing back it's crazy to think like one hour but I remember pushing back and saying Tom, like I can't leave emails in the inbox and not work on them. I need to get those out and once they're out, then I can focus on other things. And he was like, let's just try it, let's see how it goes.
Priscilla:And that was one of the biggest improvements, when I look back of like times that our support really jumped and became better was when we started prioritizing breaks from the inbox, regardless of what the inbox looked like, and so what we would do for a while there was we would schedule an hour a day at the beginning of the day and say, ok, this is the hour that I'm going to take out of the inbox and I'm going to go work on something outside of the inbox. I'm not going to let the number of emails in the inbox stop me from doing that, because I'm going to recognize the importance of being out of the inbox and working on something other than direct client facing emails or phone calls. And when we started prioritizing that, we started realizing that that hour that we were spending outside of the inbox was bringing so much benefit to the team and it was bringing so much benefit to the product and it was giving us the ability to step back and look at things from just a different angle, instead of being right down in it with the customer in the trenches and working through problems and not following up on them and things like that. Yeah, but one of the things I realized was that the inbox is going to take the time you give it. So let's say you have an hour to work in the inbox and you have five emails. You can spend an hour working on five emails. You can research them, you can shape your writing, you can try to perfect the email, each email, and send it out and send out five really fantastic emails.
Priscilla:But if you have 20 emails in an inbox and an hour to clear them, you can also send 20 emails that are pretty good and may be remarkable support, but they're taking less time because the inbox will take the time that you give it? Yeah, and you know, I recently found out there's a name for this, which I've been saying this now for years and didn't know this was like a real thing, but it's called Parkinson's law, which is basically that work expands to fill your available time. Oh my gosh. Yes, and I mean I think you know I think, jordan, we've mentioned this before but you have several podcasts that you edit every week. Yeah, this before, but you have several podcasts that you edit every week. Yeah, do you feel like this applies to?
Jordan:editing too. I feel like this definitely would apply to editing no joke the weeks that we record early. I will spend that many extra days editing this episode that we recorded early. But sometimes we have to record late and so it's under like a lot more um right Pressure and I only have like one day instead of three to edit it. Does it get done? Yes, does it sound exactly the same to the listener? Probably, it probably sounds exactly the same.
Jordan:Yeah, I only spent one day instead of three days on this episode, and it's so funny because I try to trick myself into like achieving these deadlines. But for whatever reason, I just sometimes slip into that again where I'm like, well, I have the time to spend on cleaning up every tiny thing.
Priscilla:So why not? So why not spend it? Yeah, well, and I think it's important to like find a balance there. Yeah, and you know we'll talk about this a little bit more later, but it's important to find that balance, because what you don't want to do is wait until the very last minute and rush your work and squeeze it in and burn yourself out yes, but you also don't want to give yourself so much time that you're almost wasting time perfecting things that you don't need to perfect, or that where your time could be more valuable in other places. And so, yeah, I think it's just interesting to think about it in the world of support when we're talking about finding time outside of the inbox and inside of the inbox. If you focus on time, I'm going to spend an hour in the inbox and I'm going to answer as many emails as I can, as remarkably as I can, and at the end of the hour, whatever the inbox looks like, I'm going to jump out and focus on this other priority instead of letting the inbox dictate my priorities.
Jordan:And it takes a bit of self-discipline to be able to do that. Definitely, yeah, just a lot of like self-talk, like this is what I'm giving myself and you know what it is, what it is, and I think a lot of people struggle with that.
Priscilla:Yeah, definitely, and that's why you, as a leader of a team, want to make sure you're setting up the expectations and making it very clear what is expected of the people on your team, so that they don't feel like they're doing something wrong when they leave an inbox that has 50 emails in it to go and do something that might feel less urgent, but the reality is, it might be more important than having X amount of people covering an inbox at one time. When we started adding those hour breaks into our days intentionally, that's when we were really seeing that like benefit brought to the team. Like I was saying, we were spending time working through difficult problems or analyzing customer feedback or brushing up on industry knowledge all of these things that you don't do if you don't make intentional time for it. And so you know, if you think back to some of the episodes we've done in the past here, we've talked about developing a support tone for your team or setting those communication goals. All of those things don't happen if you're constantly in the inbox and you're never getting time out of it, and so if you're on a small team, especially with like one or two people, it can be really hard to do that, but the benefit that your team will get from having that time outside of the inbox is really, really, really good, and it allows you time to make your support better, which ultimately is going to make things more enjoyable and more remarkable for your customers.
Priscilla:And so at that point we started thinking, as we were hiring people, it kind of changed how we were hiring, because now we weren't hiring people just for inbox coverage, we're hiring people so that we had more than enough coverage to give people the ability to have margin in their day. Wow, and so it changed the way we hired people and how quickly we brought people on the team, because now we weren't just hiring because we needed more people to answer emails, we wanted to make sure everyone had time in their days to do other things. Yeah, and so now our current kind of setup is that everyone on the team kind of has two hour inbox shifts broken up throughout the day with one or two hour outbox shifts, and so it allows us the ability to, in one eight hour day, have about 75% in the inbox, because that's still like the priority right is customers.
Priscilla:And so we still want to spend the most of our time in the inbox working with customers, but it also sets apart these dedicated chunks of time for us to get deep work into things to help make our work better, yeah, and so that's really, really important, and so we've set up our schedule specifically to do that, so that we're not in a place where we're just constantly in the inbox without being able to get out of the inbox throughout the day, throughout the week, throughout the month and so on. So maybe the biggest benefit to working breaks into your schedule or outbox time into your day is that it gives your team time to switch gears. I think we have established on this podcast that it can be difficult to work with customers all day, every day, and to constantly give out patience and empathy and understanding. For eight hours is really draining, and I mean, I am a very outgoing person and in those early years when I was just working in the inbox, those eight hour days were so draining and it was just so much. By the end of the day, it's like being in a meeting or running a meeting for eight hours, like it's just it is a lot. And when we started pulling in these intentional hour breaks throughout the day, you started to realize, oh, this is giving me the ability to like, build up my patience again, or to not get so personally frustrated with someone who's yelling at me or whatever it is. It lets you have that time away to switch gears and to work on something else and then come back to the inbox with renewed patience and empathy. And all of that I mean. If you were to go back to that time when I was just doing eight hour shifts straight through, you would definitely notice that, like, the emails I sent in hour one were way more empathetic and way more understanding than the emails I sent at hour eight, because by then I am fully run out of patience and empathy. Yeah, and so, putting these breaks in, I started to realize, oh, I'm enjoying the work more when I get to take breaks like this, but also the customers are getting a better experience when I'm able to take breaks. So that is really a huge benefit to incorporating these into your daily schedules for your team.
Priscilla:And when I say like taking breaks, I don't mean like, ok, I'm going to take a 10 minute break and go outside and get some fresh air. Yeah, I mean like taking a one to two hour break to work on something that is not a customer facing project. So it might be learning a new feature that has just been rolled out, or it might be working on a project that you've been given to write a new help article something else that's not going to be the same as working directly with a customer. It's kind of going to allow you to step back from that customer facing time of your day. Yeah, and the goal is for it to be a long enough break that it allows you to get into deep work in that other lane, instead of something quick that you just have to jump over, do really fast and then come back to the inbox. You want to make sure that when you're building these in, they're long enough for someone to get good quality, deep work out of it.
Jordan:Yeah, and it's hard to build that in. They're long enough for someone to get good quality, deep work out of it. Yeah, and it's hard to build that in, but I mean it does make sense.
Jordan:It's like when you're looking at a screen too long you can start getting that like eye fatigue and you get like ocular migraines and you get your your body starts feeling gross and you don't feel great and you get brain foggy, like if you're just like sitting there staring at a screen all day every day. Like if you're just like sitting there staring at a screen all day every day. So if you're sitting there talking to customers all day every day, you're gonna start getting brain foggy, you're starting irritable. So it totally makes sense to like take these breaks but be intentional about it, and you know they're productive at the same time. But it is just switching gears and it's just clicking reset in your brain and you're going to go.
Priscilla:Yeah, it just lets your brain take a different route for a little bit of time before you come back to it.
Priscilla:We also find that this allows us to be more flexible as a team.
Priscilla:One thing that our company really cares a lot about is allowing flexibility just into our daily lives and making sure that everyone on the team has a healthy work life balance, which I know is such like a clicky clickbait term, but anyone who works in support, I think, will tell you that flexibility is not really something that is seen in support a lot.
Priscilla:No, because you usually are scheduled for a very specific amount of time to cover an inbox or to cover a call center or whatever it is that you're covering, and so flexibility becomes a lot harder, and so allowing us to kind of schedule in these shorter shifts really allows us to give our team more flexibility so that they can put that outbox time in when they need to and when works with their schedule, and it doesn't necessarily have to be during the day, you know, in the middle of the two shifts they have in the inbox.
Priscilla:It might be that they have two shifts in the inbox that day and they have a couple hours of margin time that they put in first thing in the morning and then in between those two shifts they go and work out or something like that. Because the reality of it is that defining when you're going to be in the inbox allows you to have flexibility put in those other places, but it still allows us to schedule coverage of the inbox really well so that we know that our customers are being taken care of during those hours.
Jordan:It reminds me of. I was working a job at a coffee shop where sometimes they would schedule me to close the night before and then open the next morning, and so I would out only. But I mean, but they it would just like sometimes do that and like sometimes not, and then, like the schedules would be like willy nilly all over the place and honestly, it didn't offer a lot of flexibility, because I hesitated to schedule anything in my life, because I was like I don't know if I'm working, like I have no idea. Yeah, so I mean, I totally get that, because it did feel in a weird way there was no structure and so it prevented me from having the flexibility of making plans or planning trips or something like that, cause I was just like I don't know if I can get this off, I don't know if I can like go to this concert this night, cause who knows, they might put me on the schedule.
Priscilla:Yeah, well, and it's funny, when we first started looking at this idea of scheduling our hours more specifically and less like, okay, now you're going to work an eight hour shift in the inbox, when we started being more specific about the schedule, it felt at first very rigid and we had to spend a minute with it and realize that it's actually. It feels a little more rigid right now, but the more we have used this, the more it actually has shown us that you get a lot more flexibility when you know exactly when you're working, because then you can be flexible in those times that you know you're not expected in the inbox. It's like if you have meetings scheduled but you don't know when they're going to happen, so you have to keep the whole day open for the meeting. Yeah, that doesn't provide you the ability to go and have a doctor's appointment in the middle of the day because you might or might not have a meeting. Yes, but if you know exactly when those meetings are happening, it gives you more flexibility. So the structure actually adds to the flexibility, which is something that we've really enjoyed and has made the job easier to navigate and easier to give your team that work-life balance.
Priscilla:Yeah, exactly, and then also having this time outside of the inbox or outside of the queue allows you to prioritize improvement in your team. We kind of talked about this a little bit, but it gives your team time to develop processes around so many different things, around how you work with angry customers, around your tone, your communication goals. It gives you the time to step back and to set those things up, because that stuff is so important to providing remarkable support and you're not going to get there if you don't have time outside of the inbox to do it. Whether you're a leader or not, and if you're in a small team where everyone is in the inbox, it's going to be really hard to set up those kind of pillars or those foundational things to have everyone on the same page.
Priscilla:And so you have to prioritize this time outside of the inbox to get that done. And so if you want your work to get better, if you want your team to get healthier and stronger, you have to work that into your schedules. Let me give you a little bit of insight into how I actually schedule the coverage of our inbox, just to allow for this balance of inbox and outbox time. Yeah, so we schedule our weeks about a week in advance, which allows everyone on the team to give me their ideal hours for the next week. So what you were saying, jordan, about you know working in the service industry and never knowing if you're going to be working a night shift or the morning shift or both, and how that's all going to work. We try really hard to let the specialists on our team dictate when they're going to work, and then I take what they tell me and I set up the coverage after that. And so if someone wants to take a long lunch and then go do a workout and then come back and want to work in the afternoon, they can build that break into their day and say, hey, I'm going to work four hours in the early morning and four hours in the later afternoon today and then that gives me the ability to build the inbox coverage based on their kind of ideal schedule. Yeah, it doesn't mean that every single time someone submits a schedule that's not traditional, that it's going to be great and it's going to work Not always, but for the most part we try to work around that, keeping in mind that support coverage is the priority and that that margin time or that outbox time that can be a little bit more flexible, of when it's put in by the support specialist, when it's put in by the support specialist, then I build the schedule that allows each support specialist to have basically two or three hour blocks in the inbox and then one to two hour blocks outside of the inbox a day. So, like I said earlier, that typically looks like a 25% of their time is out of the inbox time and 75 percent is in the inbox, and that ratio can change based on what kind of projects they're working on. If someone has like a really big project that they're working on outside of the inbox, then they might end up with 50 percent outbox time and 50 percent inbox time and we kind of are flexible with that from week to week depending on what kind of projects people have. But it allows us the ability to prioritize inbox time and outbox time equally, without feeling like you're constantly being pulled back into the inbox and so you don't have time to be focused on those things that are outside of the inbox.
Priscilla:Yeah, so we've tried to build this in a way that the structure is in place to foster an environment of flexibility and deep work. But the outbox time is really only as beneficial as we make it. So I want to kind of talk through some tips for making that time really worthwhile. Because you're out of the inbox for two hours a day. That's two hours that you can work on something really cool outside of the inbox and step back. But if you don't do that intentionally, then it can also be wasted time, and so you kind of have to be you know, you have to be intentional about how you spend that time.
Jordan:And for some people, like they don't thrive with free time. Yeah, exactly. They're not good at being like okay, like this should be a priority to me. Like sometimes they just like they need direction, they need a task.
Priscilla:Yeah, and so it's one of the things I talk about with new hires a lot is how to use this time well so that they get benefit out of it and that it benefits the team as a whole.
Priscilla:Okay, so some of my tips for using this time is schedule communication. So all of this starts with communication. You have to communicate with your team. What is expected of them as the leader, with your team, what is expected of them as the leader? You want to set that expectation for your team as to when they're supposed to be in the inbox and when they're not. So you want to post that schedule in a place where it's easily accessible to your team so they always know what's expected of them when it comes to when they're working in the inbox with customers and when they're out of the inbox working on projects, and so we just have those schedules available to everyone. But it's your job as the leader to make sure that's really clear so that the specialists on your team are not questioning well, right now, what's the priority? Is the priority inbox for me, or is the priority working on this project?
Jordan:Yeah, you can't make assumptions that they know exactly what to do Exactly.
Priscilla:And so you just want to lay it out clear for them, because I know for me, if I'm sitting in a space where I see there's a busy inbox but maybe I should go work on this project, it's going to be really hard for me to leave a busy inbox and get out of that space to work on something else.
Jordan:Yeah, especially if you don't think you have something that is like more pressing, right, you know, if you have like free time to you know, sharpen your ax and sharpen your skills, you're going to be like is that really more important than just clearing the inbox? Probably not, and so it's really easy to slip back into the inbox.
Priscilla:Exactly. And then, before you know it, it's been eight hours that you've been in the inbox and you haven't taken any time to work on anything outside of the inbox or to learn about that new feature that's now been launched for two weeks and you haven't taken the time important as the leader to clearly define when people are in the inbox and when they're out, and then to respect that boundary and to really hold fast to that and say OK, they're out of the inbox, I am not going to bother them with inbox things until they are scheduled to be back in the inbox. The second kind of side of this communication is within the team. We as a team communicate throughout the day, but it's really important for us to know who's in the inbox at that time and who's not, because we don't want to reach out to someone who's not in the inbox when we're working through a difficult situation if they're in deep work working on some customer feedback, and so we are very communicative when it comes to who is in the inbox and who's not in the inbox. But I will put like one word of warning out there Be careful not to fall into a trap of constant communication and constantly like keeping each other up to date on what you're doing.
Priscilla:Yes, when we went fully remote for the pandemic, we got into a pretty bad habit of being very communicative about what we were working on as a support team. So, you know, if I was working on something, I'd say, hey, this is exactly what I'm working on right now and I will be doing it for X amount of time, and when I'm done with this, I will come back into the inbox. And it got really rigid, yeah, and it felt very like I got to make sure everyone knows what I'm working on at all times.
Jordan:Well, and I'm picturing all like the pings and notifications.
Priscilla:Yeah, and it doesn't really foster an environment of trust If you're constantly telling everyone this is exactly what I'm doing. Or I left for lunch and now I am back from lunch and it is all very strict. Even if it's just in a way to be communicative, you can fall into that trap of it being like very, very strict, yeah. And so we've had to be really intentional about stepping back and saying, hey, we want to be communicative with each other so that we know who's in the inbox and who's not. But the reality is, we don't need much more detail beyond that. We trust each other.
Jordan:Yeah, that could quickly fall into like micromanagement territory where it's just like Definitely Taking a bathroom break, be back in five minutes, right?
Priscilla:Exactly. You don't want that. So the communication is really good, especially when you're working on a team and you're all working out of the same inbox. But you have to be really careful not to fall into a trap of constant communication that can become very rigid, because once you hit that, it's really hard to undo it, and then you have to find the right balance. So let's go back to the Parkinson's law the inbox is going to take the time that you give it. So it's important, as a leader, that you find the right balance for your team, because you want to make sure that your inbox is getting the coverage it needs. So you want to be realistic about how many emails you're getting or how many phone calls you're getting or how many chats you're getting or whatever form of communication your customers use to get to you. You want to be really aware of what that is, so that you're giving the right amount of coverage, because you don't want to overload one or two or however many specialists that are in your queue at a time, but you also don't want to overload it so that they have too many people in there and then you're not getting the benefit of this outbox time. You don't want to build in small little breaks that don't give you the time to do deep work? Yeah, but it's better to have one two hour break in the day than to have four half an hour breaks or to have, you know, six, 15 minute or whatever it is. You want to give yourself time to have the deep work and you want to give your team time to have deep work and you just want to make sure that's balanced with the priority that is the inbox, because ultimately that is the main role that you're hired for.
Priscilla:When you're hired for a support team, in most situations your main goal is that inbox time and then plan your time with intention. You know and this is what I go over with our new hires a lot In a typical week for someone on the support team you're looking I've said it a couple times but you're looking at 75% in the inbox and 25% out of the inbox is usually about where it falls. But that means you usually have about 10 hours of dedicated time outside of the inbox to work on projects or professional development or any of those kind of outside of the inbox projects that you might have, and so you could easily squander those hours away and not let those be beneficial. But what I will tell new hires is like take time to plan out what that looks like. You know, sit down and kind of map out your week, say, ok, I've got a two hour break here, I've got a four hour break here, I've got a three hour break here. What do I want to spend those times doing? So maybe you have a project and you're like I'm going to use this big chunk to work on writing that new help document, because I know that's going to take me time and I'm going to need to get into some deep work for that. And maybe you have a smaller hour where you're like I'm going to use that time to go watch a webinar and brush up my skills on analytical reading. Or I'm going to go and learn about this new product or this new feature that we just launched. Building that out allows you to really use the most of that time instead of getting out of the inbox going all right, I've got two hours, now what am I going to do? That's not going to allow you to use that time efficiently, and so, as someone who you know, you want to be a good manager of one. We've talked about that before. And so, in order to do that, it takes a little bit of planning to make sure that you're using your time well and that you're getting the most out of that outbox time for yourself, for your own development and for your own knowledge.
Priscilla:And then the last kind of tip I have is to respect deep work, along with the communication of the team of who's in the inbox and who's out of the inbox.
Priscilla:Really holding yourself to that commitment of not interrupting someone when they're in the middle of deep work or when they're out of the inbox.
Priscilla:That's really important. It gives your team time to focus on the thing that they're working on, but it also allows you to know that you're not going to get interrupted when you're not in the inbox either. It's kind of this give and take of I'm respecting the time that they are out of the inbox and I'm going to let them get into their deep work and I'm not going to interrupt them, because we all know that interruptions can eat up your entire day. And then you've lost all of that time. Oh, yes, that you were going to work on whatever project you were going to work on, and now you're back in the inbox and you didn't get that work done because you kept getting pulled back into some other something that someone needed you to look at, and so we try really hard to respect that outbox time. So when I know someone's not in the inbox, I try to leave them alone as much as I can so that they can get that time.
Jordan:There's times I will finally fall into that like flow state of work and I'll just start going, going, going and, surely enough, two minutes after I'm into that like deep work state, someone pops their head in the office and they're just like hey mom, can you, can you do this? Or like so-and-so is bugging me and it's just I'm out of it again, and then it takes me like 20 minutes to get back into it and it does. It eats up all your time and so, especially if you have, like, remote workers, you don't want to add to that as well.
Priscilla:Yeah, and it's really hard.
Priscilla:I know as a leader of a team it can be really difficult because you want to touch base with someone on your team and they're in the middle of an outbox break or hour of work and you want to reach out and say, hey, do you have a minute to chat?
Priscilla:But even that is going to cut into whatever it is they're working on, and so you have to be really careful about it. I don't know who it was, but I remember years ago going up to someone in the office and saying, hey, can I ask you a question? Or I said something along the lines of do you have time to answer a question for me? And they were like, well, yeah, now I do, because the interruption has already happened, type of a thing, and they weren't frustrated, it wasn't rude, but it was a good reminder to me that even going and asking and like interrupting that time breaks the deep work, and so we just have to be really careful as leaders that we're giving that ability to get into deep work for our team, because that's when you're really going to be able to have really good quality work when you're in those deep work moments, but interrupting that all the time doesn't allow anyone to get into that space.
Priscilla:Like you said, once you're out of it it's really hard to get back into it, and then you've lost so much time. It's not about getting you know as much as possible out of someone during that hour. It's more about giving someone the ability to use that hour in a way that is going to be beneficial to them and what they're working on.
Jordan:Well, think about how deflating it is when you have spent the we've all. We've all done this. You spend the entire day working but you don't feel like you got that much accomplished. Yeah, and that is so deflating as an employee. But when you have a day where you're just in it and you're in the zone. You leave at the end of the day going, yeah, I nailed it today, Like this feels great. And then you're excited to come back the next day because you just got so much done.
Priscilla:And those days feel good and you want people on your team to have those days and you want to have those days. So if you model that kind of behavior for your team and set their time that can be out of the inbox and respect that boundary that you put in place, it's going to turn around and they'll respect your boundaries as well and then you'll have this ability to really get good quality work done outside of the inbox. Ultimately, the most remarkable support experiences are going to come from a healthy support team that has margin in their day to succeed and get better. So giving your team that margin outside of the inbox it's going to help you avoid burnout on your team, it's going to keep your patience and empathy reserves full and, ultimately, it's going to provide your team with a calmer work environment that's built for them to thrive. Calmer work environment that's built for them to thrive. It's time for Support in Real Life, our segment where we discuss real life support experiences Jordan what is our Support in Real Life question?
Jordan:today we got an email from Stefan that says do you think offering an online training for customers on how to use your software or interface would decrease the demand for support?
Priscilla:Oh, that's a good question. That's actually like a really good question based on the conversation we just had.
Priscilla:Yeah, this feels like it ties into, like our proactive support too a little bit yeah for sure, which we didn't really talk about when we were talking about Outbox time, but all of those kind of things that you're doing outside of the inbox, all of that can be considered proactive support and getting ahead of those things, and so this is a great example of how to use that time. So, yes, to answer Stefan's question, certainly I think adding training or offering like an online course to use your product to new customers is definitely going to impact the support you're seeing. Oh yeah, will it decrease the demand? Probably, but it'll certainly make the questions that are coming in be less basic, if that makes sense.
Priscilla:So you know you might want to create help videos that you put in your help documents, or maybe you create an online course. Depending on the product that you're providing customer support for, it might be something where the barrier to entry is pretty high and you have to have a certain amount of knowledge in order to use it. Having those videos or having an online course for new customers to use to get in that mindset, that can be really helpful in answering those basic foundational questions before they get started. You know we're in podcasting Buzzsprout is a podcasting service, and so there is definitely an aspect of our product that is necessary to have a certain amount of foundational knowledge about podcasting in order to build on that and have a successful podcast. And so one thing that we're currently kind of working through is this idea of how do we best educate our customers right when they get to us, before they start getting into the nuts and bolts of things, so that we can kind of build a foundation under them so that they know exactly how to accomplish what they want to accomplish using our product. And so I think you know Stefan's exactly right Offering online training for your customers on how to use your service or your product can definitely decrease your support, but more so it can increase the service that you're offering.
Priscilla:I mean, think about the idea of getting on a one-on-one conversation with a new client that you bring on. It gives you the ability, as a customer support representative or specialist, to build that relationship with your new customer right from the beginning and set the expectation of what your support is going to look like. And so when they reach out in the future, they've already spoken to you. So when they reach out to you, they know oh, Jordan is on the other side of this. I've talked to her before. I know she cares about me, I know that she's knowledgeable and kind and here to help, and so I'm going to ask her a question and I'm already expecting good service instead of you know someone not knowing what to expect and they come in hot and frustrated because that's how they expect support to respond. So no, I think this is great and these are great projects that can be given to your support specialists to work on outside of the inbox, Exactly.
Jordan:Exactly. It's actually very easy to create a YouTube channel and make you know just kind of like walk through videos or how to get started videos, and if you mark the videos as unlisted, you can do like a welcome email or, you know, if someone writes in needing help, you can direct them to these unlisted videos by dropping a link and then, since they have a link, they can watch the video themselves. But I mean, that's kind of thing is like you're, you're sort of weeding out the more intensive work, because the hardest part about new like software or services, is usually getting started, like just getting started. Sometimes just getting through the gate is really difficult.
Jordan:Yeah, and like you said, like you will get more meaningful answers because it's not someone writing in going like what, what do I do? I signed up, what do I do? You know? Cause they, they know what they're doing. But now they're going to say you know, I got to this step and now I kind of got hung up in like entering this data here, what am I doing wrong? It's going to be more pointed rather than you have to walk them through over and over and over again for how many clients you have.
Priscilla:Right and it allows you to be proactive with your new customers and it allows you to start building that relationship right off the bat. So yes, Stefan, you're absolutely right. Having those kind of help videos and you know you were talking about the unlisted YouTube videos that's Jordan dropping some free knowledge there about using YouTube I mean that is such a good tool. Youtube really can be a great tool when it comes to educating your customers, and it doesn't have to be a big public YouTube page that you're spending thousands and thousands of dollars to create fancy videos. They can be easy screen share videos or easy demos that you're walking your customers through more complicated processes. So that's a really great tool to use for sure.
Priscilla:Thank you for writing in that question, Stefan, and remember, if you want to share your stories or questions with us, you can email us at happy to help at buzzsproutcom. So if you send in a question or a story of yours, we might talk about that on a future episode of the podcast. That's it for today. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to leave us a review and follow us on Apple podcasts or anywhere else where you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. Now go and make someone's day.
