Happy to Help | A Customer Support Podcast

Curiosity, Community, and Casa Bonita: ElevateCX Recap

• Buzzsprout • Season 1 • Episode 16

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This week we are recapping our time at the ElevateCX Conference in Denver! Kate Chupp joins us to discuss some of our main takeaways from our time at ElevateCX!

In this episode, we'll discuss specific talks from the event, why ElevateCX doesn't feel like your typical work conference, and how our time in Denver inspired us to continue providing remarkable support experiences for our customers. Plus, you'll hear directly from support professionals as they share their advice, software recommendations, and insights into the future of Customer Support!

If you're able to make it to ElevateCX in London, we highly recommend it. 

Tools featured in this episode:

Special thanks to everyone who interviewed with us at ElevateCX!

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.

Thanks for listening!

Priscilla:

Welcome to Happy to Help. A podcast about customer support from the people of Buzzsprout. I'm your host, priscilla Brooke. Today we're recapping our time at Elevate CX in Denver. We'll discuss our main takeaways from the event and you'll hear from some of the customer experience professionals we met while there. Thanks for joining us. Let's get into it. Jordan, did you know that this week is National Customer Service Week? I did not. Yeah, I had no idea. I didn't know that either until a couple weeks ago. Someone mentioned it, actually at the Elevate CX conference. I was talking with Sarah Caminiti and she said oh well, next week is Customer Service Week. And I went there's a Customer Service Week and I looked it up and, sure enough, it's National Customer Service Week last week. So when we're recording this it's this week, but by the time it gets published it'll be last week.

Jordan:

Okay, I feel like I should have sent flowers or something. It's like when they do like the teacher appreciation week and like I'm really busy and so I forget to like get a gift for the teacher, I feel so bad. I have like that kind of feeling right now. I should have gotten you something.

Priscilla:

Well, the good news for you is that it's real time, so you have the rest of the week to do something.

Jordan:

I do. I have the rest of the week to get it together, but if you're, listening to this and it's next week and so you've missed it.

Priscilla:

You don't have to wait until next year. You can do something next week and it'll just be a couple of days late, but I promise you your support friends and your customer service workers will love whatever it is you want to do for them, even if it's a week late. Yeah, so this is just a reminder to anyone who didn't know that customer service week was happening or that they missed it. Go back and do something for your team, because it really is a great way to just celebrate the people on your team, who often get overlooked and really on this podcast, every week is customer service week.

Jordan:

There you go.

Priscilla:

I love it. Speaking of which, we have a guest on this podcast today. Kate Chupp is back. She was here on our last episode to talk about writing, and she's here today to talk about Elevate CX, because she and I both went to Denver for the Elevate CX conference. How are you doing, kate?

Jordan:

Hi guys and Kate, you're in Colorado, so this was like super easy for you to go to Elevate CX, right, oh?

Kate :

yeah, just over to the nearest big city, denver, for me. I love it. Yeah, it was such a cool experience. I'm excited to be talking about it today.

Priscilla:

Yeah, so before we get to our takeaways from Elevate CX, I want to share someone who made my day recently and really it's a community of people. So if you live in the US, you probably know that Hurricane Helene came through the southeast a couple of weeks ago and really devastated a lot of the southeast, but specifically western North Carolina. And last week I and some of my family members packed up a bunch of supplies and drove up to North Carolina. And last week I and some of my family members packed up a bunch of supplies and drove up to North Carolina just to donate those to people who need it and to get them. They're accepting a lot of donations in that area and then taking them to people who are stranded in their homes, who need, you know, food and water and clothes and all the things that they lost in this terrible, devastating hurricane.

Priscilla:

So we went to Franklin, North Carolina, which is about an hour west of where a lot of the major destruction was. Franklin, north Carolina is a little community, it's very small. I think the day we went up is when it got cell service back. So for about a week and a half afterwards it didn't have any cell service and so it was hard to get in touch with people there. So they were dealing with major power outages and no cell service and no internet and all of that. But even while they were dealing with that and that small town, they were collecting supplies and they were communicating with each other and they were organizing donation and it was incredible to see like you could go to any open parking lot in Franklin and give supplies and they were accepting and organizing supplies and getting them onto trucks and sending them east into like Asheville area and the surrounding communities that were like just devastated. And it was just—it made my day, but it was also heartbreaking, right.

Deon:

Yeah.

Priscilla:

But it made my day to see this community come together and support each other. But it made my day to see this community come together and support each other. Our hearts are with the people in North Carolina, but it's so cool to see that community come together and really serve the people in the area.

Jordan:

That's so incredible. That's beautiful.

Priscilla:

It reminded me that, like, we have so much power to impact each other, even if we're in need Exactly, yeah, and it's little things. It's like going and helping sort, you know, water and food and diapers and formula out so that it's in the right spot. Like that's not hard work but it takes hands, and so being able to offer that, or just giving someone a compliment or giving someone a hug when they need it or, in our case, giving someone really good customer support, like those kind of things are pretty easy to give out and can make a huge impact on people, and so it was just encouraging to me to see, and so hopefully that's encouraging to you guys as well. Love it All, right. So let's talk about Elevate CX.

Priscilla:

So last week, or I guess a week and a half ago at this point, kate and I went to Denver. We met in Denver, we attended the Elevate CX conference and for both of us it was our first conference that we had gone to for Elevate CX. Oh, wow, which was cool. Yeah, it was new for both of us, and you know we had just done the episode with Sarah Hatter on Happy to Help, so if you haven't listened to that, go back. I think it's three or four episodes ago. Amazing episode yeah, sarah came on and told us all about Elevate and where it came from and how it's grown over the years and what it looks like now and that episode I started to get really excited about what this conference was going to look like. I, even afterwards, was like I don't even want to call this a conference. This sounds more like an event, like it just sounds less like a stuffy conference that you're used to when you're going to a conference. Right, it sounds more like a fun party.

Jordan:

I think I told her like it sounds more like a retreat.

Priscilla:

And so we went and had a wonderful time and thought it would be really cool to have an episode kind of talking about some of our takeaways from the event. So there was so much good, encouraging information at this conference, so we're going to go through some of our top level takeaways, let's go. So the first one that I want to talk about this was not like a conference that I have ever seen before. Start there, I mean Elevate CX. I mean I knew that when we had the conversation with Sarah that it was clear it wasn't going to be like a regular conference, and it really was one of those things where I was a little bit skeptical when we were talking with Sarah, like how is this conference not going to be just like a regular old conference? But it really was elevated. It was so intentional. The way that Sarah put it on was so intentional and it really fostered an environment for us to connect with everyone around us.

Priscilla:

And so one of the things that was really cool that Sarah talked about on that episode was that it was small, intentionally small. Yeah, I want to say there were not more than 120 people in the room. Would you agree? Agreed?

Kate :

including, like, all the people sponsoring the event and everything. It was small. Yeah, we were all in one room.

Priscilla:

Yeah, it was small but in like the best way possible, because when it's small like that, it gives you the ability to meet everyone and talk to people and actually build relationships that you're going to stick with beyond the weekend. And it's kind of like going to a cool networking event that you actually want to be at and that lasts more than an hour and a half, where you actually get to meet people and talk to them about the things that they're doing and the things that they're struggling with, and give advice and accept advice and get tips from people. Like it fostered an environment for that, which was really, really encouraging.

Kate :

Totally. That was the thing that stuck out to me the most was just how people focused. It was Like even a lot of the talks and the speakers focused on like whole person development and not just here's some practical customer service things. It was like very people to people focused, relationship building focused. It was really cool, really unique.

Priscilla:

Yeah, that's very true. And another thing is that the speakers were all just sitting in the conference room with us. Yeah, it wasn't. Like you know how you go to a conference and the speaker's like up at the front and you're like, oh my gosh, I can't approach the speaker.

Priscilla:

Like they're up there speaking and then they leave, or they're in the VIP lounge out back Exactly, and so there's this like curtain between you and the speakers and you really you're lucky if you get a chance to talk with them.

Priscilla:

The cool thing about this conference was that there are no tracks, right, so everyone is in the same room. Everyone goes to all the talks. We all go together to all the talks. You don't have to leave your table, so it kind of eliminates the rushing from room to room or trying to figure out what's more important, or finding a seat because you're a little bit late, having to figure out when to go to the bathroom, like all of these kind of annoyances that come with conferences were gone because everything's in the same room and so you find a seat at the beginning of the day and that's your table, and then people sit at your table with you and you get to have these conversations with the people at your table and then the next talk happens and someone at your table stands up because they're giving the next talk and you're like whoa.

Priscilla:

I didn't even realize I was talking with this person it was very cool and so you had a lot of accessibility to the speakers and you know there was one talk about performance plans. That was really interesting and afterwards I sat and talked with the speaker for a while about her strategies around it, and so it was cool to have like these continued conversations beyond the talks.

Jordan:

It was very cool yeah, it kind of reminds me of when you go, like, on a cruise and I don't know if you've ever been on one, but like you basically are assigned a table at dinner and you get to know the families that are at your table for the entire duration of the cruise. Oh, that's cool, it's just really nice because you get to know these families that are on the cruise with you.

Priscilla:

Yeah, it was very cool. I wonder if they would ever consider doing an Elevate CX cruise in the future.

Kate :

I feel like that would be right up that community's alley.

Priscilla:

I'm not a cruise person but I would go on an Elevate CX cruise, I think, but it was very cool. One of the other things that I thought was fun was that they really are very intentional about just community time and hangout time and fostering those relationships outside of like going to talks, because you're doing everything together when the talks are over and you go to a happy hour. It's not like at other conferences where you go to a happy hour and you don't know anyone and you're looking for the one or two people that you connected with in a talk and you're trying to find them because it's kind of awkward, yeah, but instead you like walk out with all your friends that you've just met and hung out with for you know four hours, and do a happy hour with them and then you talk to all these different people and get to know all these different people. And it was very cool that there was so much of that time wrapped into the conference, because we had like two happy hours and we went to this crazy restaurant, casa Bonita.

Kate :

Casa Bonita which.

Priscilla:

I don't even know how to explain Would you call it a restaurant.

Kate :

I don't know what. I would call that An experience.

Jordan:

I don't know what I would call that An experience. I don't know. Is that the one I think?

Kate :

I feel like I've seen, like a image of that, where it's like, it's like a pink building, it is a pink building and inside they have cliff jumpers and mariachi bands and all sorts of like an arcade and felt like Disney World.

Priscilla:

Or like Dave and Buster's it was kind of Dave and Buster's like yeah, so weird.

Priscilla:

But it was so fun because it was a wild experience that we all did together. So, honestly, I feel like Casa Bonita fostered an environment for people. You know how it's like. You know you become better friends with people after you go to like amusement park with them or something like that. You have this like shared experience. That's what it felt like, and the next day I felt like I was so much closer to people at the conference because of Casa Bonita and we all experienced whatever that was together, totally.

Kate :

And also the people were just so welcoming, like it felt like everybody there wanted to connect and to talk and there wasn't an air of like clickiness yes, yeah, like it was structured in such a way that allowed that time, but everybody there also just really approached you and was welcoming and kind and all that.

Jordan:

So it seems like I mean especially like what you were talking about earlier, kate. You were you were discussing how everything was like person to person focused, and it feels like this conference sort of embodies that like not just in the talks and like what they're saying to do, but it's also like showing that in building relationships and community within the professional space, right, yes.

Priscilla:

Yeah Well, and the vibe was very celebratory. It wasn't like a dull conference where everyone's there because they're being forced to be there. It felt like a conference that everyone was there because they really wanted to go and they were pumped to see their friends and it was our first time there. But you could see that these people had met and been friends for years and years and it was exciting like being pulled into that community and they really, like Kate, that it did not feel like there was this click and we were on the outside trying to get in. It felt very inclusive and very excited and we were celebrating the fact that we all do the same kind of work and that we get to help our customers and improve their days. And it was like this fun, exciting vibe instead of, you know, what can oftentimes be kind of like monotonous. You know it was by far the best conference in the customer experience world that I've ever been to. I haven't been to a ton, so there's the caveat, but it really was wonderful and so if you haven't gone to an Elevate CX conference or if you are interested in it, I highly recommend you go, because it really is worth the time to get there and the ticket cost it's way more than worth it to go.

Priscilla:

Okay, so a couple of the main takeaways. The first one I want to talk about is one of my favorite talks of the whole event. Mercer Smith gave a talk. It was the very first talk and I think it was entitled like Untitled Goose Talk. Oh, like the game. Have you ever played that? Wait, is it a game?

Jordan:

Did I miss that? It's the Untitled Goose Game.

Kate :

Oh my gosh. Oh, we missed that. I missed that reference too. Well, I totally missed that.

Jordan:

Tell us about it. Let me tell you. It's basically this game where you're a goose and you get like a task list of things you have to do, and so it's things like you run in and like ruin people's picnics by dragging their picnic into the pond, but they try to like chase you off. You're basically just running around as a goose rigging havoc on a town and it's the best.

Priscilla:

That's so funny. Well, now that that makes me laugh, because I just thought it was a funny title because it was called Untitled Goose Talk, but now I'm realizing that it was even funnier than I thought. So, mercer, if you know me, you know that I love a good analogy, and Mercer's talk was basically one big analogy, and so I just I loved it. So, ok, here's the like two sentence overview. She talked about how geese fly together, obviously, but, like she talked about some of the reasoning why geese fly together and why they fly in a V and the ways that they take turns, being the point of the V and flying toward the back to like share the load of the difficulty, because it's so much easier to fly toward the back than toward the front.

Priscilla:

And then she talked about how, when geese honk at each other, a lot of the times what they're honking is encouragement or communication to stay in the correct formation, and so it's like a reminder to stay in the right formation.

Priscilla:

And she talked about how we as customer support specialists are kind of like geese in that we work better when we're in a community and when we fly together and when we support each other, when we take turns leading and letting other people lead and when we honk at each other for encouragement. It was such a good analogy, it's so cute and she did such a good job of laying it out and her graphics for her PowerPoint were amazing and it just was such a fun way to start the event. It was the first talk and I was immediately like, oh, I'm going to love this, like this is going to be so encouraging. And she created a honk box which they put at the back of the room so that if you wanted to encourage someone, you could just or shout someone out, you could write down a honk and put it in the honk box and then they were reading them throughout the event and so they would honk each other.

Priscilla:

It was the cutest thing and it was so encouraging and I loved every minute of it. Yeah, and you know I was thinking about it. It doesn't have to be. You know, if you are hearing this and you're like, oh, that's so great, I want to support the people on my team, like within my support team, that's so wonderful, Right To like. Support each other on your team.

Priscilla:

But if you're listening to this and you're maybe the head of a company that's trying to figure out how to support your support team, you don't have to be in support to be a goose that's honking at another goose. You know what I mean. You can be encouraging your team even if you're not on the support team, and so hopefully you know that's kind of what I was thinking Like. When you're in that room in the community with a bunch of other people working in customer experience, it's easy to honk at each other and encourage each other. But when you go back to your companies, where you might be one of four support people, it's harder because there's just four of you. And so obviously you know, encourage the people that you're working on a team with. But if you're someone who's outside of the support team, know that you can still encourage your support team. You can still be one of those geese in the V, you know, helping support each other, even if you're not directly like on that customer facing support team.

Jordan:

A good example of that is this week you guys are getting hit with a hurricane, yeah, and literally before we started recording I was like hey, you know, I know that you guys are probably going to have power outages and stuff like that. So if you guys need me to hop in the support box like I'm not technically customer support, no, but I feel like I can hop in there and at least help as much as I can.

Priscilla:

exactly, you can move to the front of the V Jordan and guide us while you have power and internet all the way over there, on the other side of the country and for those of us in Florida who may not have power and internet at the end of this week, we'll be in the back of the V just letting you carry it, okay. So, kate, what was one of your takeaways?

Kate :

Yeah, one of my favorite talks was on assumption and basically the whole point was stop assuming and to use curiosity instead of assuming things, and I really loved that. I thought that applied to so many different areas in building a team and in customer support Like there's just so many ways that you can apply it. But I thought that was powerful to, when you're interacting with a customer, to not assume that you know everything that's going on in their head or to just take a pause. That was one of the big points that they talked about was the power of pausing and, yeah, I thought that was just a really easy, practical tip to apply to every area of customer support interacting with your team, your personal life, everything. To just pause and assess the situation before you react. Yeah, yeah.

Priscilla:

That was a talk that Sarah Caminiti did, who was on our show a couple months ago, and yeah, she was talking about just the assumptions that we make, and one of the things that I thought was powerful was that she kind of like how self-doubt can get into our heads and become those assumptions, like I assume that I'm going to fail at this. I haven't done it before, so I really don't know if I'm going to fail, but my brain is telling me that I'm going to fail, so I'm assuming I'm going to fail, and it was encouraging to hear her talk about it in a way that, you know, instead of letting the assumption which is not based in fact lead, what if we hypothesize that? Actually, my hypothesis is that this is going to go well. Now let's see if that was accurate or not Totally, and you're right, it was something that was cool because she applied it to like a variety of different scenarios, both within ourselves personally, like I assume that I'm not going to do well in this thing I've been tasked to do, but also in a customer facing, like actually just helping someone log in, like something as simple as that, if you assume you know what's going on but haven't asked the questions, or been curious or taken the time to pause and look at the context, then you won't be offering the remarkable experience that you want to be offering.

Priscilla:

And so the power of taking a minute to pause and to look up that context and to get the facts because the assumption that you've made in your head is not fact, even if it's based on experience of like oh.

Ashley:

I've seen the same.

Kate :

Why can't I log in email a million times? I know what's going on, but maybe take a pause. Look at the whole context. Yeah, yeah.

Priscilla:

I thought that was a very powerful talk, and it was one toward the end of the event which was really I think the placement of it was really great, because it allowed us to kind of leave on this note of all right, I'm not going to assume things about myself that I haven't proven, like the negative self-talk in me wants to do, and I'm also going to go back to my work with this renewed sense of curiosity to find out what's really going on and to understand the context of a situation when I'm working with someone, whether it be in person, like within the company, or whether it be a customer that you're working with. So, yeah, I thought that was a great one as well. Okay, another thing that came up a bunch of times while we were there was AI's role in customer support. Yes, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it.

Priscilla:

There were quite a few sponsors there that were AI focused, and then we had quite a few conversations or talks that were about you know how to navigate AI in your customer support offerings, and so you know there was a talk about navigating AI anxiety.

Priscilla:

That was really good, and so I just thought you know one of a talk about navigating AI anxiety.

Priscilla:

That was really good, and so I just thought you know one of the takeaways from the event was that AI is here, yeah, and really it's been here for customer support.

Priscilla:

We've been using it for a long time, right, but now it's trying to figure out how we take that AI and the tools that we have now available and what that means for customer support now available and what that means for customer support.

Priscilla:

The biggest thing that I feel like I recognized while we were there was that AI is going to be a tool that we can use to make our work more efficient and to make customer support even more human. Honestly, the things that AI is going to come in and hopefully take over are going to be the like small, easy things that people need quick answers on, but it's going to give customer support specialists the ability to kind of go deeper into the more complicated issues and to offer even more personalized service, and so it was really cool to kind of hear people in the AI space that were also in the customer support world talk about how this movement toward AI is not a way to replace people who are doing customer support, but a way to enhance the work we're doing and give us the ability to go even deeper into personal connection with our customers.

Kate :

Yeah, it did feel like at that conference everybody was on the same page about wanting to provide the most care to the customers as possible when we're in an interaction with them and how AI can kind of support that. But I think one of my biggest takeaways was just how caring customer support people are and how AI can kind of help benefit that and push that forward, but can't replace that kind of care that people can offer on like a human-to-human interaction but there's some great ways that it can support.

Kate :

Yeah, one of my favorite talks was from Sunit Bhatt, who did a talk on happy, proud and not yet satisfied. He does this talk to mainly college students. He's a guest professor and this is like a class that he talks about with students. But he gave us kind of the hour-long version and it was amazing, it was so practical hands-on. And he gave us kind of the hour long version and it was amazing, it was so practical hands on. And he asked us some great questions about looking at this past year, what are some areas we've been like happy and ask some good questions about that. And then same with proud, and then areas where you just don't feel satisfied, where you feel stuck or where you're having trouble kind of accessing solutions, and he left it up to us for that to be personal or in your professional life. Yeah, Space and grace was something he talked about a ton and kind of giving yourself space and grace to think through some of the areas that you felt stuck.

Priscilla:

The thing about Sunit's talk that was so cool was it wasn't really just a talk, it was a workshop and it was long enough that it gave us time to really sit down and try to think through the things that we feel stuck on. So he, right at the beginning, we did kind of some exercises and then he said okay, I want you to pick something that you where you feel stuck and we're going to focus on that. It wasn't to share it with everyone, it was so much more to just in your own head, write out your thoughts about this thing where you feel stuck and like give it intentional time. And so it was really cool, because you know it's so hard, especially in a professional setting, to like take a step back and to really give intentional time to the thing that you feel like you can't get over because there's so many things coming at you from all different angles. And so it was kind of like he gave us permission to just sit and focus on this one thing that we want to accomplish or that we can't seem to get over, and it was really therapeutic.

Priscilla:

Honestly, it felt more like a therapy session than it did like a conference talk, and there was an aspect of it that was very vulnerable with the people you were sitting with too, because he was encouraging us to share with the people we were sitting with at certain times not always, but at certain times and it was very cool to kind of have that vulnerability with these people that you've been learning with all day, and it was the way that we closed out the first day of the conference. It was really. It really felt more like therapy, honestly. Yeah, two the first, day of the conference.

Kate :

It was really. It really felt more like therapy, honestly. Yeah, two practical tips I just wanted to share. That I really took away from that talk was one using like positive imagination. So he was talking about often we look at the future and we're like what could be wrong, what could like troubleshooting kind of thing. He said, instead of doing that, to start imagining what you have done, what has made you happy in the past year or what has made you proud in your work for the last year, and start thinking about that and how it made you feel and different things like that, and use that as a marker of like what you're going to do moving forward.

Priscilla:

Yeah, and another thing he said that I really liked was he said you know, think about a time that you were proud of something you worked on or something like that, the things you bring to something. And he said if you're having a hard time coming up with something, think about how the people in your inner circle would answer the question about you. So, like, what would your best friends say about something that they were proud of you, that you did?

Priscilla:

Because so often we don't think about it that way for ourselves. We don't give ourselves the credit. I thought it was a really cool way to look at it and it helped me a lot to think about it that way.

Kate :

Yeah, and something that I've actually have been practicing from his talk, because it's come up quite a bit in my life, is he had us write for 15 minutes just like stream of conscious, write every thought you have down, and it was with the topic of like something that you feel stuck on and he called it the rusty faucet or something like that and it was like clearing out all the thoughts and all the things that are in your mind to kind of help you get to some clear waters and some answers and some solutions and tie back into the writing thing. Writing's just very powerful, yeah, yeah, that's been one of my favorite little activities from his talk and it actually is helpful to get you unstuck, like a practical thing. Oh yeah, so just start journaling.

Priscilla:

Yeah, and the fact that we can't support customers well if we don't feel that we are in a place where we're healthy. Right, and so a lot of it was like getting to a place where we're healthy and it was just a really nice intentional time to take a step back and do that and, all in all, I feel like Kate and I both can agree we would go back. It was a wonderful conference Totally. I met people there that I am confident I will be connected with for a long time. It was honestly powerful to be in a room with other professionals in the same industry as we are who are committed to that elevated level of service, because it wasn't just a conference about how to write a good email. While that is really important, this felt elevated and it felt like it was more than that, and so it was really cool to be in a room with people that you know are all committed to that same standard and to share advice and to get advice from them.

Priscilla:

I highly recommend that, if you're not already plugged into the Elevate CX community online, that you go and do that, because it's a great community and so welcoming and so encouraging, and then look up the next event you know that you can get to. I know they have an event coming up in London that's completely free, and so if you are in that area, I highly recommend that you grab a ticket and you go. I want to say it's a one day event, so if you are in London, go and enjoy that, and if you're not in London, then join the Elevate CX Slack community, because it really is a wonderful place to be if you are in the customer experience world and you want to offer an elevated service to your customers. So it's time for our Support in Real Life segment, which is where we discuss real life support experiences and questions, and this one is going to be a little bit different than normal.

Priscilla:

While we were at the Elevate CX conference, I sometimes awkwardly pulled people away from the conference to ask them some questions about customer experience. I kind of felt like we're in this room with all of these professionals who have so much advice to give, and I thought how am I not going to get some of that and share it with our listeners? And so I did these like mini interviews with people to get some awesome advice to share back with our listeners, and so what we're going to do now is listen to some of those responses, and so I will tell you what the question is, and then we'll listen to what some people had to say about it. Sound good, awesome.

Kate :

Sounds great.

Priscilla:

Okay, so the first question I asked was what do you love about working in customer experience?

Deon:

I'm Dion Nicholas, ceo and co-founder of 4Thought. There are two things I love about working in customer support. One is the people. I love that we're in an industry where empathy and understanding other people's problems and going to bat for other people is the name of the game, so that attracts a certain kind of personality, that attracts a certain kind of person, and so I just love spending time with support leaders, agents, everyone in the space. And then the second thing is actually just a follow up from. That is like problem solving. I consider myself a problem solver when it comes to technology and business and I love that. In this industry, our whole job is to solve problems for other people.

Kate:

My name is Kate Wilson. I am the Senior Director of the Product Solution Architect team at a company called Highspot, so what has kept me in customer experience and what I really love about it is the fact that you get to see your product in the real world. You get to see customer creativity. I love seeing how customers take our product and run with it in unexpected ways and can bring that back even to our product team and just like see the value that they're getting from it. I think it's super cool and rewarding.

Lance:

Hi, I am Lance Konzit. I am the customer experience lead at Found and I have been in customer experience slash support for the past 13 years. I love solving problems. I spend all day solving problems, whether it's for our customers or for my team, or for the managers that report to me or to my boss or to the product team is nonstop solving problems and figuring out what information can we give to the right people to tell the story of the customer, so that we are solving those problems in a way that makes sense for not just the business but for the people that we're serving.

Priscilla:

That's so good. Yeah, all right. So next I asked them what piece of advice they would give someone entering the customer experience industry.

Kristi:

My name is Christy Ernst-Thompson. I've been doing customer support since 2015, and I've been on the support team at Help Scout since 2017. My advice would be you have to be really intentional about protecting your own work-life balance and not burning out. And so that looks like being done with your work at the end of the workday and it looks like being empathetic with your customers, but not to the point that you take on all of their feelings as your own. And it also means concentrating on what's within your locus of control, because there's a lot of things swirling around product decisions and engineering fixes and financial decisions and so many things aren't in your control. So keeping your head down and focusing on how you treat your customers every day because that is in your control will really help prevent burnout.

Deon:

I think one piece of advice I would give to someone entering the customer experience industry is to really take a step back and understand your data. A lot of times, we enter this field and intuition is very important. Try and understand what's the problem, what's going on, but there's actually a wealth of information in understanding what are people asking, what are customers asking about, what are the most common problems, and then turning that back into insights for whether it's your product team, whether it's your sales team or whoever, I think that the customer experience organization is actually the most data-rich organization in a company.

Cheryl:

My name is Cheryl Spriggs. I am a manager of premier support at Zapier. One piece of advice I'd give someone to like entering customer experience customer support is that you have so many transferable skills from other jobs or projects or school that you've done. I come from a theater background and I first started in acting and then pivoted to like stage management and like that just translated so well into support with working with other people, working on projects, collaborating together and like making a cohesive team together to put on a show.

Kate:

So my biggest piece of advice is actually what I still continue to tell people in the customer experience industry. Very much related to Sarah's talk Just be curious and don't be afraid to ask questions. Everyone here is learning from each other. Whether you've been, you know you're brand new to the field or you've been here for 20 years. Like just be curious. The industry is always changing, the tools are always changing, the software stack is always changing, so, like you know, the answer you get today is going to be different than the answer that you get tomorrow. So just don't assume that people know better than you. They probably don't Ask questions. Be curious, that's it.

Priscilla:

There's some really good advice in there. The next thing I asked was, if you were joining a company for the first time without any dedicated support system, what is the first thing you would want to develop? I was really excited about this question, and there's some good answers in here.

Sarah C:

My name is Sarah Caminiti. I have been in and around the CX space for close to 20 years now or more, not going to age myself and I am currently the head of customer service in the US for AppCamp, but I am also the host of Epical Growth. If I was joining a company that did not have a dedicated customer support team yet, I've done it before, and the first thing that I did was talk to all of the teams that have been handling support in some capacity and understand what it was like for them, and then see how we can build a system that works for the customer, that they understand better than I do, and respect what they've already done and just find ways to make it better.

Ashley:

I am Ashley Haislett. I have been working in customer support for almost 20 years now. I started in college and have not left. The first thing that I would develop is an FAQ because, at least for me, doing so also trains me. That helps me learn the product, it helps me learn the pitfalls of the experience so I can start a new dialogue with product and engineering, and then it helps me start pulling out things to be macros for answering users and things like that. So obviously, like after diving into tickets and doing all that stuff, the first thing that I would really implement is an FAQ.

Mercer:

My name is Mercer Smith and I am the VP of Blended Operations at Partner Hero, so the first thing I'd want to understand and develop was customer personas. So who it is that we're trying to help, right, because if you don't understand who it is that we're trying to help, right, because if you don't understand who it is that you're trying to help, how are you going to help them? Right, like if you don't know what it is that they're curious about, or where they're hanging out or what kind of questions they have, you're just going to be kind of like taking a shot in the dark, whereas you could be spending less effort to make more impactful choices if you actually know who they are choices if you actually know who they are.

Priscilla:

The next thing I asked them was about a tool or piece of software that they use that makes their work easier. I was unsure about this question and how much response I would get, but, honestly, there are so many good tools that are recommended that I am going to download and start using.

Sarah H:

My name is Sarah Hatter. I am the events and community manager at Rebuy, but also the founder and producer of Elevate CX, and I've been running Elevate CX since October 2012, but I've been involved in the world of customer experience since 2008. Slack, Slack, Slack, Slack. You can quote me on that. I just think it's one of those things that I think if you know how to use it and use it well, especially if you're working with people who are remote or are in other countries, it's just invaluable.

Deon:

So one tool or piece of software I use to make my life easier? This is kind of a trick question for me, because I actually use Forethought, which is a company I work at, and we build generative AI for customer service and we use it for our customers on our website. We also use it internally for things like IT, hr questions and just general knowledge. So I'm super excited about AI in general, but also very excited about Forethought, using it and also sharing it with other people.

Ashley:

I'm a Notion girly. I live in Notion and have built so many different systems in Notion. I think the best thing that I was able to get out of it was building like our vendor directory and resources in Notion so all of their SOPs, all of their training and all of that stuff in there, and just making it super accessible and super editable. But man, it's just made documentation so much easier than having to dig around in Google Docs for everything.

Kristi:

I cannot live without Alfred, which is a tool for MacBooks. The main thing I love about it is you can create keyboard shortcuts, so it's kind of like having your own saved replies built right onto your own computer. So I do not ever type my own email address. I type semicolon KR and it autofills my email address. So you can do that with all sorts of stuff and it's a huge time saver.

Kate:

I freaking love Airtable. I think it is purpose built for people like me and people in support who are technical but are not engineers, because you can automate so many of your problems. You can put in workflows. You don't have to remember to do things. You can set up these automations. It's a relational database built for business people. I'm going to be a walking ad for them, but I do. I love Airtable. I totally encourage you to try it out and experiment with it.

Mercer:

Yeah, probably you haven't heard this one before. I use a tool called Habitica, which is a habit tracker. It tracks things that I need to do every day and then also has like a to-do list function, and so every single morning I go in and I look at Habitica and I'm like, okay, here's the stuff that I still have to do, and I organize and I prioritize it.

Jordan:

And we're going to be linking to every single one of those in the show notes.

Priscilla:

Yes, we definitely have to link to all of those. Yeah, there are so many tools listed that I am so excited to start using Alfred specifically. I am so excited Christy was telling. I mean I talked to her about Alfred during the interview and then we went back to our table for the next talk and she pulled it up on her computer and was showing it to me and I was like, oh, this is cool, this is I mean I don't know if I've said this on the show before, but I don't like the phrase game changer, but it felt like that Like oh my goodness, this is going to simplify so many things in my life, and so I'm very excited to test out some of these, and so, yeah, we'll definitely link these in the show notes so that you can download what you want to try out and use it, and hopefully it'll make your life just that much easier.

Priscilla:

Okay, and then the next thing I asked them was about the future of the customer experience space and specifically what they expect to see over the next five years and how they expect to see the customer support world changing.

Mercer:

I'm really hopeful for two things.

Mercer:

The first one is that we will see a swing back to value being placed on human, to human interactions.

Mercer:

You know, throughout the 80s, we saw like prepackaged stuff, like oh Wonder, bread is amazing and all of these like you know, like kid cuisine and stuff like that. And then, as we came into like 2020s or so, people were like oh yeah, I really want like homemade sourdough and I want hand poured espresso and I want all of these things, and I think we're going to come back into an area like a realm of craft customer support. So, rather than saying like, oh, let me hit a button to speak instantly to like a bot, people are going to hit a button to like wait a little bit to speak to a human, and so I see that changing button to like wait a little bit to speak to a human, and so I see that changing. And then, simultaneously, I see the impact of AI as freeing up support teams or CX teams to do more meaningful work and like the stuff that actually fulfills them, because no one gets into support to be like yeah, let me respond to like 50 inquiries about refunds today.

Lance:

I mean, we're all saying AI right, but I think the thing that is changing is the things that happen after AI. So AI handles all of the basic stuff that anybody can do and, theoretically, your customers should have already solved through a help center visit or something like that. So what I foresee is more specialization, more focus on a white glove, high touch service where you want to build a relationship, pulling away from just the blast chamber of support tickets.

Deon:

I think the customer experience landscape will change in one critical way, in that customer experience will start to be merged with the rest of the organization. I think that a lot of people have traditionally viewed customer experience as a cost center, as a place where people only go when they have issues, and you've heard phrases like the best customer support is no support, for example. Well, I actually think, when you think about it, customer experience is the front line of your organization. It's where customers go not only when they have a problem, but when they have a question, when they want to learn more, right, no-transcript. It's where you go and where you think about when it comes to retaining your dollars and expanding your dollars, and so, in that sense, customer experience should be merged, or, at least you know, in tandem with your sales org, with your marketing team and with your product team. So I think embedding a culture of customer experience throughout an organization is actually going to be the winning play.

Priscilla:

And then the last question that I asked everyone was what is one takeaway that you have from the last two days at Elevate CX? I really wanted to hear you know. I knew what things I was going to take away from it and I had been already ruminating on, but I wanted to hear what things stood out to the other people at the conference.

Sarah H:

Even as someone who produces this event and chooses every speaker, I still walk away with a lot of stuff, and it just really reiterated to me the power of community and what that means and that you don't always have to be in person to have these beautiful moments with people, these authentic relationship building moments. You can still do that virtually. You can still do that over Slack or over whatever it might be. I think if you focus on growing those authentic relationships and nurturing them, they last right, and we have people in this audience who've been coming to Elevate for 14 years. We have people in this audience who have this is their first time, and to see them mesh together and build those relationships and still have things of value to share with each other, that just reminds me that the community work is super important. It's super, super important that we continue to give people these spaces and to nurture that and to make it available.

Deon:

One of my big takeaways is actually, in a lot of the content we've been focusing on just leadership right. In so many ways, building a customer support team or building a customer experience organization is actually about building an amazing business that is customer-centric and empathetic, and these are takeaways that you can really bring across any organization that can be taught to any leader. So there were a lot of talks at this conference that weren't even necessarily about customer support specifically, but they were about performance management, feedback, imposter syndrome, learning how to grow as a leader, and I think that was my biggest, almost meta takeaway is that in the customer support world, we're all just leaders trying to do what we can for our customers and for our teams, and so I think that's pretty awesome just leaders trying to do what we can for our customers and for our teams, and so I think that's pretty awesome.

Cheryl:

This is my fifth Elevate CX, third in Denver, which is awesome. One of the special things about it this year is that like I got to come with my manager too and we got so many cool ideas. Got to meet people, connect and really just like see things from you know not our perspective, from like our company and get to just really get together with other peers and like that we're going through the same things together successes or challenges and like it's just very validating and I always feel so jazzed up after I leave Elevate.

Cheryl:

So it's been a great fifth year.

Mercer:

There's so many people to learn from and I think you know I've been doing this for a long time. I've been helping Sarah with Elevate for like 12 or 13 years at this point, so I've seen a lot of talks. You're never done learning. I think that's. The main takeaway is like no matter how long you've been doing it, you need to allow yourself to be humbled and be willing to learn, because there's always something to take away.

Sarah C:

One takeaway that's cute From the last couple of days at Elevate CX is holy crap. I am so freaking lucky to be around so many wonderful, smart, talented individuals that are changing the way that companies operate and think about customer support or customer experience, and it's just freaking awesome.

Jordan:

Sarah's energy is just so infectious I can't get over it.

Priscilla:

I know what a great note to end on. Thank you to everyone who took time to answer those questions and to have those little mini interviews. It was really fun to be able to talk to everyone and to pull all of that together and share it all with you.

Priscilla:

There's so much good information in those quick clips and so if you're listening to this like yeah, download some of the tools they recommended, listen to the advice they gave about starting a new support team and developing processes. That stuff is gold, and so I hope that if you listen to this, you'll take some of that and begin to incorporate it into your work. And I'm excited to see what the support landscape looks like as we continue to figure out how AI works with customer support, and I'm also just really excited to go to another Elevate CX conference and to see all these people again. So if you have a question or a support situation that you want us to discuss, you can email us at happytohelpatbuzzsproutcom or text the show using the link in the episode description.

Priscilla:

We usually spend this time talking about a question or a situation in a real life support case, so feel free to send those in and we will discuss it on a future episode. And if you liked this episode, I would love it if you would give us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. It would make me very, very happy. So thank you all for listening. I really mean it. Now go make someone's day.

People on this episode

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Priscilla Brooke, Host

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Jordan Blair, Producer

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