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
Customer Support Strategies for a Stress-Free Holiday Season
As the holiday season approaches, we are sharing practical tips on how to ensure customers receive timely assistance while giving your support team the chance to rest and celebrate!
From flexible scheduling to balancing half-day shifts and planning early, we discuss Buzzsprout’s approach to managing customer support over the holidays and how you can apply similar strategies to your team.
We hope these insights help you navigate holiday coverage without sacrificing your team’s well-being or customer satisfaction!
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!
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer support from the people at Buzzsprout. I'm your host, riscilla Brooke. Today we're preparing for the holiday season. We're talking all about how to navigate holiday coverage in a way that serves your customers while giving your team time to relax and celebrate. Thanks for joining us. Let's get into it.
Jordan:Okay, riscilla, this episode we are recording early. Yeah, because next week we're going to be in Nashville.
Priscilla:I'm so pumped, me too. I'm also like feeling that you know, week before going out of town, like everything has to be done and trying to get all your ducks in a row and all the things you're forgetting, that you know you're forgetting and are you going to remember them in time, and all of that stuff. I'm feeling that pressure right now. Yeah, but it's good, I'm excited.
Jordan:It is good. I'm also really excited. It's going to be just such a blast. There's something about meeting in person and it's it's a little bit difficult to going on a trip right before a major holiday. So I guess it kind of ties into what we're talking about today.
Priscilla:That is true. So, for anyone who doesn't know, jordan and I work for Buzzsprout, and Buzzsprout each year does kind of like a yearly meetup for the whole team. Most of our team is based in Jacksonville, florida, but we have several people around the US, and so it's kind of a time for us to get together and be in community and meet together as a team and focus on how we work and why we work the way we do and all of that, yeah, and it's such a great time. And so next week we're going to Nashville, and so Jordan and I get to see each other in person for the first time since we started this podcast, I think.
Jordan:Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's been forever.
Priscilla:And it's going to be a blast. I cannot wait. So we are recording this episode early, like you mentioned. So it feels a little bit funny because we're going to be talking about holiday schedules and I do not feel like we are in the holiday frame yet, and by the time this comes out, this episode gets released, it's going to be almost November. Yeah, I think it's the week of Halloween that this comes out, and so, before we jump into holiday coverage and talking about those tips, jordan, since it's just you and I today and we don't have a guest, I was wondering who has made your day recently.
Jordan:All right. So I have kind of an odd one, because I just went on a trip to Mexico. It was my anniversary trip and my husband, being such a sweetheart, scheduled all of our excursions for me. Oh, so nice. And he didn't realize that I have like a deathly fear of heights.
Priscilla:And so one of the excursions he scheduled was a zip lining and ATVing across a suspension bridge in the jungles excursion. Maybe that's why he booked all these for you is because he knew about that fear and wanted to do it anyway. Yeah, and to encourage you to face the fear.
Jordan:Yeah, and so you know my parents didn't raise a quitter. So I went on the excursion and it was horrific. It was so scary because my husband thought it was just a really quick zip line thing like really cute adventure park. No, we were literally getting like sent across mountains. It was like 1,500 feet long these zip lines were I mean insane.
Priscilla:And once you start a zip line, you're in it. It's not like you have a way out.
Jordan:No, and I thought it was one of the ones where they just like clip you in and you just hold on to the rope and go. But this was not one of those. You have to hold on to these like metal bars that don't have grips, your zip line things where you can't let go of the bars or it'll mess up the zip line and you could get stuck like halfway.
Priscilla:There's no way you could get me to do this.
Jordan:I know and so, and so I was holding it and I keep wiping my hands on my shirt and I was I've been panicking, like just panicking, and I was trying to be brave about it and it was just horrible. But the zip line guys there was like a group of four guys and they were going along with us and they very quickly clocked that I was suppressing some panic and I was shaking and I didn't realize that. And so throughout the entire excursion because yeah, once you're on the zip lines, you're like several mountains across and so there's nothing you can do but to go like another thousand feet at a time, right, yeah, and you're like 500 feet in the air.
Jordan:I mean, it was just so scary and they were so good at encouraging me and at one point they started like pulling pranks on me and like one of them at a water station. I kept getting bit by mosquitoes in the jungle and so I was just like I was kind of like swatting at my legs and stuff, and one of them had a long stick and he was poking the back of my legs with the stick. So I would think I was getting bit by bugs, but I wasn't. Actually it was just him Like breaking it up, like keeping things fun.
Priscilla:They were keeping things fun.
Jordan:They were like this isn't serious, like you're OK, you're not going to die, you're not going to die, Come on girl, trust us. And they made it so much fun and, honestly, about five or six zip lines in I was starting to have fun. Oh good, yeah. So I really appreciate.
Priscilla:You know they recognize that I was out of my comfort zone, they recognize that I was on the verge of a breakdown, and so, really, what they did was just made something that was horrendously scary to me very enjoyable their emotions, especially in situations where they literally can't leave. They have to do it, so there's no other option. Like, you've got to hire people for that role that are going to be able to calm the situation down, because if you don't hire people that can keep things calm or, like, lighten the mood or, you know, encourage people who are scared, you're going to end up with a lot of people stuck on one ledge because they won't go on to the next. You know zip line and yeah. So that's a good example of needing to find the right people for the job in order to make it a good experience, because they took the time to like, care about you and to help you have a good time. Now you are going to tell people it was a great experience and that they should do it even if they're scared. Yeah, that's exactly it.
Priscilla:Last episode, at the very end of the episode, I plugged our Apple podcast listing and asked people to go and rate and review, if they like the podcast, and I realized I really have not been doing that at all in these episodes, and I also realized that doing it at the end of the episode probably isn't the best place to do it, so I'm going to do it up front, right here. If you like this episode or if you like this podcast, go and leave us a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, because it really lets other people who are looking for a podcast like this one know whether it's worth listening to.
Priscilla:And our time is valuable, and I don't want people to listen to this if it's not going to bring them value, and so, if it brings you value at all, I want you to go and leave a review to let people know that it's worth listening to. So thank you for doing that, and if you do it, send us a fan mail let us know you did it, and then we'll give you a shout out. That'd be fun. Maybe we'll read some reviews. If we get some cool ones in the next couple weeks, love it. Ok, so this episode is all about holiday coverage and navigating holiday coverage and how to kind of build a strategy for holidays that respects your team but also provides a service to your customers, because you don't want to just forget about them on a holiday. And so you know we're about to enter this holiday season in the next couple of months, and so now is just the perfect time to start working on that strategy, and so we're going to take some time today to talk through what our strategy has looked like in the last couple of years and then what you should think about when you're trying to put that strategy together for your own team. Yeah, so first I want to give you a little bit of context for what holidays we take off and what holidays look like for Buzzsprout as a company, because it's slightly different than what the support team does Like. It's kind of built on a foundation of what Buzzsprout is doing, so I want to give you a little bit of that context.
Priscilla:So, with Buzzsprout, we take the 11 federal holidays off, and that's our standard when it comes to holidays. Is the federal holidays. It just keeps it easy. Everyone knows when those are. The reality, though, is that not everyone celebrates those holidays. Sometimes people celebrate other holidays or religious holidays, or they just always take the day after Thanksgiving off, because that's a day that they're with their family, but that's technically not a holiday, and so, with those 11 holidays, the way that we do it at Buzzsprout is you can flex any of those days to be any holidays you want. So you basically get 11 holidays and you get to choose what those 11 holidays are, and so it works really well for us. It's clear, and we communicate with each other, and then you get to take the days off that are important for you to take off, instead of like arbitrarily taking off a day just because you know that's the day that people told you to take off because that's the federal holiday, but really I'd rather just work on Columbus Day Columbus.
Priscilla:Day but is it even Columbus Day?
Jordan:It's really not anymore.
Priscilla:But that's a great example. Some people just want to work that day and would rather take the day after Thanksgiving off. That's exactly what I did. Yeah, that's what I did as well. Yeah, exactly. So. The whole point of that, though, is that we really work on flex days. Anyone on the team has the ability to work a holiday and to take a flex day, and to put that on a day that they want to take off for whatever reason, and so the interesting thing is, our support team works a little differently, because, with support, you really don't have the freedom, in most industries, to take full holidays and to leave your customers on their own for a full day or, in some cases, two days in a row, depending on the holidays you're taking.
Jordan:Yeah.
Priscilla:Like, if you take Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, that's two days that your customers may not be able to get in touch with you.
Priscilla:For some industries that's OK, but for some that's not going to work.
Priscilla:Yeah, and so when I started doing support here at Buzzsprout and navigating what this looked like for me, I started to realize that, oh, holidays in the customer service world are completely different than holidays in the corporate world, because in the corporate world it's pretty known that, ok, this is a holiday, we're off, but in customer service you really don't have that same kind of clarity, and so you have to figure out a strategy ahead of time so that everyone has the ability to be off and get that rest and relaxation or celebration time while still making sure your customers are being taken care of.
Priscilla:When I had first started, really the way we solved this was the partners did support on the holidays. I would take the holiday off. I was the only person doing support. I would take the federal holiday off, they would cover the support inbox, and then most of the time I'd come back the next day to a really busy inbox because there was just stuff that was left, or, you know, there were questions, a lot of follow up questions that happened and that was pretty normal, and it was.
Priscilla:It was pretty good because I got to take the holiday off and I felt like one of the team and it was great. But I realized that sometimes I would rather not have that day off because it made the rest of the week harder if I took that day off. And so as we started to bring people onto the support team, we started to realize that there might be a better way to do it than to have the partners come in and do support on the holidays or to have no support on a holiday. And so as we started to grow the team, we started playing with some different strategies. So I'm going to talk through a couple of those and what worked.
Priscilla:And so, just to set the scene a little bit, we had like two to three people for a while and what we first started doing was kind of saying OK, one person will work the holiday on their own and the other two will take it off. Again, we have these 11 federal holidays, so we'll balance them between the three of us and one person will work a third of them and then the others would take the full days off. So this worked well for us because it gave us the ability to have time off. So this worked well for us because it gave us the ability to have time off, and for two people.
Priscilla:Every holiday you got a full day off and you could enjoy it with friends and family and you didn't have to think about work at all and it was great and you had total freedom in that. But the negative side of that was if you were the person working the holiday especially depending on what the holiday was you were swamped and you were stressed and you were the only one working, and then the next day your team would come back renewed and refreshed and ready to go and you would feel burnt out and tired and maybe a little bit resentful of the fact that they got time off, even if just before you did on the last holiday, and if you were getting to flex that day to another day. And so we found that that really was putting too much pressure on the person who was in the inbox, even though it was providing the rest and celebration time for the people who got to take the day off.
Jordan:Yeah, but that sucks for the person that like maybe they don't really care for Thanksgiving or Christmas or something like that, and then they get stuck with those ones off and they're like, oh, I'd rather have 4th of July off. Yeah.
Priscilla:And if you're just arbitrarily picking who is working what holidays, yes, yeah, right. It's definitely not going to be this balanced feeling where everyone's like, oh man, because for myself personally, 4th of July was never a holiday that I loved. I like it, it's a fine holiday, it's nothing against the holiday, but it's the middle of the summer. In Florida, it's so hot in July and I never wanted to be outside growing up in July.
Priscilla:It's just too hot here, and so when I would get July 4th off, I'd be like man. I don't really want to go to a busy beach where everyone is, I'd rather just work this day. But I have this day off and someone else is working and I'd rather have Thanksgiving off. That's like my favorite holiday. I'd rather do that, and so, yes, you're right. If you're arbitrarily picking them like that and trying to rotate through, then people aren't going to end up with the days that mean the most to them.
Jordan:Exactly.
Priscilla:And the ones they do work, they're going to feel burnt out and just exhausted by the end of it, which doesn't serve your team and doesn't value the people on your team Absolutely. So as the team continued to grow, we were able to play with some more things, and I will say that you know, if you have a small team, it can be really hard because you only have a couple people. It can be really difficult to find a strategy that works because you only have two people to work with. But as you get more people on the team, you kind of get exposed to different options, and so one thing we tried that worked well for us. Again, we still just had like two to three, maybe four people.
Priscilla:At this point we started doing half days, and this, honestly, is where we have found the most comfort and the most success is working half days, and so what that looks like for us is that someone on the team will work in the morning and someone will work in the afternoon, or maybe we'll have two people in the morning and two people in the afternoon, and so you're getting some of the holiday and then you're working part of the holiday, and so it feels a little more balanced. You're still getting some of the day off to celebrate or to relax, but you're not getting a whole day off, which is a negative, and you're not working the whole day and getting like that full flex day. It's kind of like you're working a half day and then you're getting this half flex day and so again, it works. It feels a little more balanced, but there's still negatives to it. There's still pain that comes with that if you're working in customer support and trying to figure out how to do that.
Priscilla:Ok, so right now, the way that we do it is we work half days and everyone has the freedom to tell me what days they want to take off, specifically what holidays are most important to them.
Priscilla:They get to choose it.
Priscilla:So they come to me and they say, hey, Fourth of July is really important to me, so I know that I should be working half days on most holidays.
Priscilla:So I'm happy to work these holidays half days, but these two or three holidays are the ones that are really important to me. And then from there I build out a holiday schedule, kind of. You know, at the beginning of the year I start to plan it out, Wow, and as people make plans they touch base with me and that way we know before we get to the holiday who's working a half day, what their hours are on that day. So if you are a beach person and you want to go to the beach in the morning on 4th of July, but the afternoon for 4th of July you really like to be home in a quiet, dark, cold place to nurse your sunburn, then you can do that because you can plan to work in the afternoon. And so we kind of are flexible on the hours. But the expectation is that everyone on the support team is going to work a half day on a holiday and in return they're getting that full flex day back.
Priscilla:And so, instead of it being like a one to one ratio. It's really you're getting like a one and a half time situation or a two time situation.
Jordan:That's so cool. When you were explaining this, I was thinking that it was you know, they work half the day on 4th of July and then maybe they flex like the next half of the day to July 5th, so they could sleep in after fireworks all night. Yeah, but no, they get the whole day.
Priscilla:They get a whole day, that's crazy and it works for us because there's an incentive there to work the holiday. Oh, yeah.
Priscilla:Right. So for people who want to work a half day on Veterans Day and then get that full flex day to go put on a different holiday that's important to them, they'll have the ability to do that, and I don't think I've seen a situation on the team since we've started this process that has resulted in me saying, hey, actually you can't take that full day off because we don't have enough coverage. Yeah, almost everyone wants to work if they can work, and if they don't want to work that holiday, they usually have the freedom not to, and it works really really well for our team. So we are always open to looking for better ways to do things, and right now that's our strategy, but two years ago that was not how we did it. So I thought it'd be cool for us to talk through kind of some tips for planning your own strategy, because the reality is this works well for us and our industry, but it does not work for every industry. It is not going to work for every size team. Smaller teams are going to have a harder time figuring out what this looks like, and larger teams aren't going to want to do a bunch of half days. They might be able to do full days because they have a larger team that can split time, and so I wanted to talk through a little bit of our thought process to hopefully help you as you're planning your strategy for coverage over the holidays.
Priscilla:Yeah, the first piece of advice that I would say is know your customers right. That's the most important thing. Yeah, you need to know who your customers are, what they're expecting of you around the holidays and whether or not they can wait. I think is a big thing. You want to know. Do your customers celebrate the holiday in question? So, like, there are 11 federal holidays for the US, but there are holidays in other countries, there are holidays within certain religions. There are so many holidays that are celebrated that you may not even know of, and so it's important to look at your customers, where they're located and understand what their holidays are and if there's any crossover with the ones that we have here in the US. And if your team is located outside of the US. You want to be aware of what holidays they're celebrating, because it's just going to change, which is why the flex process we use for Buzzsprout it works so well, because you can choose the holidays that matter to you, even if they're not the US federal holidays.
Priscilla:Yeah, and this could just be for Buzzsprout or for my team, but there is a difference in Christmas and Thanksgiving and then the other holidays. Yes, christmas and Thanksgiving are big, huge holidays in the US and for the most part our coverage on those holidays is really minor. Yeah, it's really light Our coverage on other holidays. We try to keep pretty consistent so that there's not a big dip in those days when it comes to customers and understanding their customers' expectations around response time and accessibility and all of that. But with Christmas and with Thanksgiving, we try to be really respectful of making sure everyone is able to take that time off and be with family or celebrate in whatever way they want to celebrate. So our customers in those two situations typically wait longer than they would on a normal day. So I just want to clear that up.
Jordan:And usually customers are very understanding when they don't get a response right away on Christmas Day from us.
Priscilla:Exactly Right, which is why you're able to have a little bit more light coverage on Thanksgiving and on Christmas, because most people, especially in the US, understand that those are the big you know the big holidays. So, yeah, the first thing to do is to know your customers and I would ask yourself where are they located? What holidays are they celebrating? Are they going to reach out on Veterans Day, when my entire team is off, because we're all based in the US, but they're based in another country and they don't celebrate Veterans Day? Yeah, what does your product do that your customers are using it? Is it a product that they use when they're at work, and so when they're off on these holidays, they're not going to need your product, and so they don't reach out. We have a time tracking tool that really is used by people at work and so on holidays, that tool does not see any support because no one's tracking time when they're not working. But Buzzsprout is for hobbyists, and so people often use those holidays to get a jump start on their podcast.
Priscilla:And so we do hear from people on holidays in the US, because that's when they're doing their work, and we have people outside of the US who don't celebrate US holidays and they need to reach out on a holiday and we want to be there for them. And so, knowing your customers, their habits, how they're using your tools, when they're using your product all of that's going to be really helpful in setting the strategy for your holiday coverage. The other thing I like to think through is is your product time sensitive, like, does it have to be answered today? If you have a small team and you're trying to make sure that your team has the ability to take holidays and enjoy the day off, then what can give if it's not going to be that Right? So what? What can wait? Can your customers wait? Do you have a product that it's OK if they wait for 24 hours? Yeah, do you have a product that is time sensitive and there's no room for that and you can't lighten up coverage at all over the holidays because it really has to be answered right away. So you might work in insurance, where things happen on holidays and there's no way around that, or you might work in something that's a little less time sensitive, and so waiting 24 hours isn't the end of the world, and so knowing that as well like, what is the product you're supporting and how serious is it to get back to someone within 10 minutes? Or is it possible that letting your customers wait a little bit longer to allow your team to have time off to rest and come back, that might be a worthwhile tradeoff? Mm-hmm, all right.
Priscilla:The next thing you want to do is know your team, and this comes back to kind of what we were talking about the flex holidays, and people celebrate different holidays. Yeah, just like you know your customers, you know your team well, and you should know your team really well to know what things are important to them and what holidays are important to them, and to know what things incentivize them too, because you might be able to advocate for your team in a way that would really make working on holidays a good thing, an exciting thing. So we do it with you know you get extra flex time, basically, when you work on a holiday, and that's the incentive, and for the people on my team, that's awesome because they're getting a little bit more PTO, a little bit more flex time, so they get that balance Right. They work a half day on a holiday, but they get a full flex day that they can take whenever they want to. Yeah, but your team might be incentivized by money.
Priscilla:They might be like, hey, I don't care about extra PTO days or extra flex days. What I really want is some more cold, hard cash in my hand. And if that's the case, then you can, as the leader, step up and advocate for that, because the reality is, customer service professionals don't work that traditional holiday schedule that everyone else in the company works, and so you need to be aware of that and respectful of that traditional holiday schedule that everyone else in the company works. Yeah, and so you need to be aware of that and respectful of your team, and in some cases, that'll be advocating for your team to be able to be valued in that way, and so that might look like, hey, there's additional pay in it for you if you're working on a holiday, and that helps fight against the resentment, that helps make things feel more balanced on the team, and it can be a really cool way to get people to want to work holidays. Yeah.
Jordan:I have friends that have jobs in like hospitals and stuff where they get like time and a half or double time and they jump at those holiday shifts. I know that it's actually hard for them to get the holiday shifts because they want that pay incentive.
Priscilla:That's a great example. When a holiday happens, you can't have light coverage in a hospital. No, yeah, because you just you have to be available and ready and you have to have people to do the work. And so how do hospitals make that enticing to work? Yeah, they have pay incentives. Have pay incentives and people want that, and they make them good enough to make them desirable, and so you might find that for your team, hey, a pay incentive is actually what we're going to do here, and I'm going to advocate to the higher ups and decision makers that this is what we need to be doing for my team to make working holidays something that they want to do and that they're excited about doing.
Priscilla:Another thing is to just know your team and what their life looks like. Do they have kids that are out of school on holidays, and it's going to make it hard for them to work a full day on a holiday because their kids aren't in school. You want to be able to be there for your team members in that way and make it easier on them to do the job that they're hired to do, right, I mean? Because the reality is you're hired in a customer service role and you want to be able to do what's asked of you, but the other side of that coin is you're not replaceable at home and you need to be at home sometimes. And so, knowing that about the people on your team and working into your strategy that intentional thought of okay, is this going to work for this person on my team? Is this going to serve this person on my team while also providing coverage to my customer who is outside of the US and needs support on this day, even though we're all in the US and schools are closed? Yeah, so balancing all of that is really important and starts by knowing your team and knowing what their needs are, speaking of which, it's really important to be very clear about the expectations for holiday coverage when you hire someone and bring them on your team, because you could hire someone and not clarify that holiday coverage is expected, and then you get to the first holiday and they go oh no, I can't work holidays. Yeah, and when it comes to customer service, it is almost a guarantee that you're going to be expected to work holidays, but it should never go unspoken, yeah.
Priscilla:So in our process it is clear on the application. It is clear in the first interview. It is clear in the second interview. We make it very, very clear right up front. You're going to be expected to work some holidays. In our case they're half days. You're never really expected to work a full holiday, but you're going to be expected to work some half days. Here's the incentive that's going to come along with that. But that is the expectation, with an understanding that there's holidays that are really important to you. You can take those off fully.
Priscilla:Yeah, and being really clear about that as much as possible from the get go is going to be the best decision Getting someone on your team and not talking about that, because maybe you're a little worried that they're not going to want the job if they have to work holidays. Oh my gosh, it is going to be a bad decision once you get them on the team. They're not going to just magically change their mind and want to work holidays. So be clear about it up front. If someone can't work a holiday, or if that's not something that they're willing to do, then you really don't want them on your team because that's not going to work well for coverage, because you're going to have to cover the inbox. There's no way around that.
Jordan:And those like unexpressed expectations can really create a lot of like animosity and you're setting them up for failure because you didn't tell them what was expected of them. So I think that's great a tip.
Priscilla:Right, yeah, and if Sally comes in and she doesn't think she needs to work holidays and Joe's been working holidays for three years and Sally doesn't have to work holidays it can be really hard on your team dynamic if it's not something that the whole team is sharing together. And so all of that comes with clear communication and everyone knowing, hey, you can take the holiday fully off if that's what you want to do, if this is an important holiday for you, but the expectation is that most holidays you're working half days. Yeah, the other thing to keep in mind is that not all coverage is equal is equal. This was something that when I was doing support by myself in the beginning, I kind of had to figure out a way to be available in the inbox but also take a holiday, because it was just me and so sometimes that was the situation, and so I kind of, in my mind, I made these two categories you have inbox monitoring and inbox coverage. What's the difference between those? So coverage and this is just from my brain, okay. So maybe you listen to this and you're like this doesn't make any sense, priscilla, but hopefully it does.
Priscilla:Inbox coverage is when you are covering the inbox. Your goal is to go through every email that's in the inbox and clear it out for a certain amount of hours. So let's say you're scheduled to be in the inbox from 9 am to noon, so for those three hours you are in the inbox, you are working through emails, you are covering the inbox OK. But if you're monitoring the inbox, the difference there is that you're keeping an eye on the inbox but you might not be answering emails, or you might not be answering that many emails. You may just be monitoring it for fires, for roadblocks, for bugs that show up or situations that are urgent, but you're not covering it. So your responsibility is to be aware of what's happening in the inbox, while knowing that you're not glued to your computer. You're not glued to the emails or the inbox, but you're aware and you know what's going on and if something were to happen, you would be the one to then jump in and maybe switch into that coverage or to pull in people on the team, depending on what you find.
Priscilla:And so an example of this is coverage is kind of how we treat those nine federal holidays where everyone is working half days, but for Thanksgiving and for Christmas we usually have one person monitoring the inbox, and so they're just keeping an eye on the inbox. They are not glued to it, they are not working for three hours straight. They are looking for very specific types of emails and staying on top of that which could look like three hours of time over the entirety of the day, but it's in short increments and so they're just keeping an eye on the inbox. And so, yeah, monitoring versus coverage, deciding when it makes sense to have coverage and when it makes sense to just have someone monitor. When we had a team of one or two people, we did a lot more monitoring and a lot less coverage. And now, with seven to eight people, we did a lot more monitoring and a lot less coverage, and now, with seven to eight people, we do a lot more coverage and much less of the monitoring.
Priscilla:But some days you're still going to say look, everyone wants to take this as a holiday, so the two people who are behind you're just monitoring. That's all you're doing. There's no pressure to have a clear inbox. You're going to monitor it. You're going to make sure there's nothing terrible that happens. You're going to monitor it. You're going to make sure there's nothing terrible that happens. You're going to answer the people who are in roadblocks, but you are not going to be glued to an inbox for 16 hours today, because everyone else on the team wanted to go take the holiday.
Priscilla:You're just going to monitor it and then we'll all figure it out tomorrow when we come back from the holiday. Another strategy you could take is all company support. We haven't really talked about this much on this podcast, but we should have an episode, honestly in the next couple weeks about what we call support shifts at Buzzsprout. But basically it's where everyone on the team takes time to work in the inbox and you can strategically place this on holidays. There's no reason that your support team is the only people who work on holidays. Yeah, so if you have a team, especially if it's a small team, encourage everyone on the team to sign up for a holiday shift. Or maybe you plan it so you have one support person, one designer and one developer covering a holiday and then that support person is your point person. They help out and they direct the other two as much as they need to, but you've got these three people who are all working it together.
Priscilla:That has a lot of benefit in a lot of different ways. It makes your support team feel valued because they see that the rest of the company is taking time to work on a holiday and also sacrificing a holiday for your customers. That speaks volume. It also gives your support team the ability to interact with other people on your team on a face-to-face basis. They might not usually interact with that designer, but because they're both scheduled on this holiday together, they are working together on these problems. That can be a really cool strategy, especially if you're on a smaller team and you're trying to figure out how to let your customer support team have time off without it feeling so detrimental to your customers' access to your team.
Priscilla:Another thing, just real quickly, is auto responses. We don't use these a lot in Buzzsprout support, but they can be used in a thoughtful way. I would recommend not just turning them on and letting them be, but you can be really strategic with your auto responses. So, for anyone who doesn't know, an auto response is just a situation where a customer might email in and get a response from your support team that says something along the lines of hey, it's a holiday and we're not working today, but we'll be in touch tomorrow.
Jordan:Yeah, we almost had one of these for Hurricane Milton.
Priscilla:Exactly so. We just experienced Hurricane Milton here in Florida and thankfully we didn't have a big impact up here in Jacksonville. But we were planning because we thought we might lose power for several days and so we wanted to be prepared. So we were very intentional about writing an auto response that would help temper expectations for what our customers really can expect writing in over those times, and so we were trying in that auto response to be very transparent, that hey, we're in Florida, many of our team members are located in Florida and may be affected by this. This isn't going to have a huge impact on your getting a response, but we want you to know about it so that you can give us a little bit more grace when it comes to hearing back from us. And also, here's some really great resources that you can use if you're in a tight spot and you need to find an answer really quickly.
Priscilla:And being really intentional about auto responses is good. What's not good is just turning it on and leaving it on all the time and never turning it off. I hate those. And then everyone who writes in automatically gets a response that says we're looking into this and there's no faith in that. No, right, no, because no one's looking into that. They've received your email, but no one's looking into it yet no, and so I think that it's a double-edged sword, and you just have to be really careful with auto responses. Use them sparingly and be really intentional about what you're communicating in those responses to your customers, because they're going to see past the facade of we got this and someone's working on it right now, especially when every single time they email and that's what they get.
Jordan:Yeah I always get a little leery whenever I send a support email to like spotify or apple and then two later I get an email back from them like oh, of course, and it just, for whatever reason, that indicates me that I am in the back of a queue. That is however long, and it's going to be like half the day before I hear a response. At least yeah, if that yeah.
Priscilla:And I agree. I mean, I think auto responses in general give people that thought yeah, maybe there's a little bit of oh OK, I'm glad that they got the email. It successfully went through, great. So I know that it's there, but I don't think anyone is getting that and going oh wonderful, someone's looking at my ticket and I'm going to be responded to in a couple minutes.
Priscilla:So if you use those on holidays to kind of temper expectations, just be really intentional about how you're using them and what you're telling your customers and make sure you're writing it in your tone and all of that is communicated well, because those stock ones can be actually really damaging to what people think about your team, absolutely. And then just a couple other things Plan early. We talked about it at the top of this episode. It's important to have a strategy in place and it's important to plan early and to communicate it with your team. Talk to your team, get their input on what they want and what they don't want and what works for them and what doesn't. Try things out and try them out again and if they fail, try something else. And there are lots of holidays and you can try different strategies on every holiday until you figure out what works for your team and when you're communicating with your team, make sure that they know like hey, I don't have a plan for this.
Priscilla:We're small. We're trying to figure it out. We want to do two things we want to serve our customers well and we want to serve this team well, and those two things are hard to do, and so let's figure out. We're going to work together to find a way to do that. Especially if you're a small team, that should be well received by the other people on your team.
Priscilla:And if you're a larger team and you're trying to figure it out, bring them in as much as you can and get their feedback as much as you can and be open to change and be open to trying new things, because ultimately, these are the people that you want to work on holidays. You're asking them to work on holidays, they're giving of their holiday for this and you want to make sure there's buy-in, because that'll make coverage so much more simple if everyone is on the same page with what we're doing. Another thing, especially when you go into the holiday season like we are, is encourage people to take PTO early. One thing we will run into and I think this is kind of normal is where people kind of hold on to their PTO until the holidays and then they take a week off, lots of PTO around Christmas and Thanksgiving, which is totally understandable and New Year's like that week between Christmas and New Year's where we're all kind of like in a fog A lot of people want to take that whole week off and totally makes sense.
Priscilla:But when you are in a support team and you're covering an inbox, you have to be aware of that coverage. So it's not even necessarily a holiday, but it's surrounding the holidays and if you have three people come to you from your team of five people and say I want to take these two weeks off at Christmas, it's going to put your other two people in a really tough spot to cover them.
Priscilla:Christmas. It's going to put your other two people in a really tough spot to cover them, and so I always encourage our team to take PTO early to be aware of the rest of the team when it comes to putting in your PTO, we don't really have a strict submit PTO and get it approved process.
Priscilla:It's much more on our system and so when we are dealing with PTO, I am always encouraging people to take it early and to understand that they might need to be flexible about their dates when it comes to taking PTO, and we'll do a lot of half days too around the holidays when it comes to kind of using up that PTO at the end of the year.
Jordan:Well, that's the nice thing about the way that we do it is, I know that there's some places where you submit a form and then it like gets approved but like no one else in the company can see when you're taking time off, and the way that we have it it's sort of like a company calendar and then people just put their PTO that they're wanting to take on the calendar and other people can see it, and so it's really easy for even someone like me who's not on the support team, to go in and see so-and-so's out, or we have something going on and like maybe I need to be, you know, on deck to help out in the support box or you know something like that. So it's a lot easier when everyone can see it. And I know that a lot of people have reasons for not being that transparent about their time off, but I actually kind of like it.
Priscilla:Yeah, I think it shows that you value your team and that you trust them to make decisions that are good for the people they work with. Yeah, like you said, there are definitely situations where submitting and getting PTO approved is necessary. But in some ways, being able to own your own PTO and choose when you're taking it and when you're not taking it and when you're working, that can be really empowering to your team. And so what we always say is hey, you manage your own PTO, you don't have to get permission for PTO, but we ask that you be respectful of your team and you don't leave them in a tough spot.
Priscilla:Yeah, and so that means that if you want to take PTO next week and you look and four people are taking PTO that day, maybe you don't get to take PTO or you choose not to take it because it would leave your team in a tough spot, and that comes down to you making that decision yourself, and it really is a good way to kind of foster a sense of ownership around the product and around the customers and the inbox and all of that, and so I will always encourage people to get your PTO on early when it comes to holidays so that you can make sure that you're getting in there early on, and we also encourage a lot of half days. So if you're like, hey, I really want to have a nice break over Christmas, I want to be out of the inbox and have relaxing days, then I would say great, why don't you work three hours a day for the week and have every afternoon off? We can work around that, but it's a lot harder to work around a full week vacation.
Priscilla:And so I always encourage people if it's something that can't be moved, get in an early and if it can be flexible, be flexible. Let's find a way that it works for the whole team and balance that. So if you look at the Buzzsprout support team schedule in December, there are a lot of half days in there there are a lot of you know, fridays taken off a lot of kind of balanced PTO when it comes to that.
Priscilla:And then the other side of this, too, is you might be a product where you need to hire new people and more people over holidays for seasonal coverage. Oh yeah, we have a little bit of a dip in the Christmas time, but if you work for an e-commerce company, you probably need more people, and so you may have to hire people that are specifically for that season of time, and so be aware of that. If that's something that your team is going to need to prepare for, because that's not how we do things and that's not something we have to worry about, but it is very real for a lot of customer support teams, that's a good point. But I really think the most important thing is that you respect your team and respect their ability to rest and celebrate and be with family. Many years ago, when I was first starting to do support, I read an article and I'm not going to say the company name because I am not trying to point any fingers but there was an article I read about a company that basically the gist of it was that they just treated their support team terribly over the holidays and very last minute, they were requiring people come in and work over Christmas, and it was a very bad environment, and this article really laid out a lot of how their support team was being treated.
Priscilla:And I think it's really important to remember that the people on your team are real people and they can't support your customers well if they're not supported well and if they don't have their rest and if they don't have the ability to celebrate with their families and their loved ones, and so you have to think through that. You can't just say sorry, this is the job you signed up for and now you're working all of Christmas Day, because that's really not going to serve your customers well in the end. And so I think the most important thing here is to know your team, respect your team, advocate for the ability for them to take time off, and if that means other people on the team come in and help out, great. If that means offering incentive pay to work on holidays, then maybe that's what you do. If that means working half days and getting flex days, then maybe that's what you do, but something so that you're finding that balance of serving your customers and making sure they have the ability to get the answers they need in a timely fashion, while also respecting your team and making sure they have the time to rest that they need in order to come back and provide remarkable support to your customers.
Priscilla:Well, it's time for our support in real life segment, where we discuss real life support experiences and questions. Jordan, what question do you have for us today?
Jordan:So we got a question here that says would love to hear how others are handling unresponsive email cases. How often do you allow the case to stay open after a customer stops responding, and how many follow-ups do your agents or automated follow-ups entail?
Priscilla:Yeah, I like this one because I think I might have a unique take on it and some people might hear this and go this is a bad take, priscilla. Not unique, it's a bad one. So my advice is don't follow up. I don't know if that's right or wrong, but I think it stems from being on a support team of one, or being on a support team with only two people and a lot of support that comes in and knowing that I can't follow up with every single person who I write an email to and see if they got the email and if they want to write back, so I couldn't hold space for it in my head, I couldn't hold space for it in my to-do list because it'd just be too much. And so on Buzzsprout support, when you send an email, it goes to the close file and you forget about it in your head and you forget about it in the inbox and it is in their court and if they choose to respond, it comes back and we get it again. And if they don't respond, then we kind of bank on that not being that important to them and so they didn't need to respond.
Priscilla:Yeah, and I say all of this, and of course, there are exceptions to this Right. So if there's something really urgent that we know we need to follow up on, or something legal that we really want to follow up on, those things we don't just close out and those might take follow-ups. But when it comes to your run-of-the-mill everyday email, we are not sending automated emails out to people saying, hey, did you hear our email back? Or we haven't heard from you in five days, so now we're considering this case closed. We don't do that. I don't know about you, jordan, but when I get those emails, I go oh wait, I already got my answer.
Priscilla:If I wanted more information, I would have written back in, but I didn't, so you should have closed this five days ago.
Jordan:That's how I see it. I get really annoyed when people follow up Like. I've heard that you want to follow up on an email five days after you send it, and when you're working in support it's kind of hard to keep track of following up in five days. So I totally see your point about like it's closed, it's gone.
Priscilla:And you could use an automated follow-up situation, but again, like we were talking about with those auto emails, it takes away some of that personal touch. Yeah, and most people don't need that. If they have a question or a follow up question, they will reach back out to you and if you feel like the issue or the question that you're dealing with warrants a follow up, then make it really personal and assign it to yourself and leave it open and make sure you personally are following up and saying, hey, were you able to get this sorted out? Because that middle road where it's like I'm going to follow up but it's going to be an automated email, that takes away the personal touch. If you're going to take the time to follow up with someone, make it really personal, reach out to them, understand their problem, make sure that they're set going forward, reach out to them, understand their problem, make sure that they're set going forward. Another, you know, reason you might want to follow up with someone is if you've, like, launched a feature that that person requested. Yeah, then you might down the line, months down the line, want to follow up with that person and say, hey, just wanted you to know we just launched this feature that you requested and I came back and I found you and wanted you to know. That's another kind of reason you might want to follow up. But it's not really the situation of, hey, it's been three days, we haven't heard from you. We're following up. If you don't respond in two days, we're closing this ticket.
Priscilla:Sometimes that to me feels like a lot of clutter, yeah, and it takes away from my ability to focus on other customers who are writing in with questions right now If the customer that I responded to five days ago is sitting and waiting in my head as this clutter. And the reality is they already answered the question with my first email, they figured it out and they don't need anything else, but they're taking up space in my brain. I don't want to take that away from another customer. So, to answer this question, I would say don't follow up unless it really is a critical issue. Or if you're following up to tell them about a future request that they requested that went through and got published, all right. Well, if you have a question or a support situation that you would like us to discuss, you can email us at happy to help at buzzsproutcom, or text the show by using the link in our episode description, you may hear your question or your story discussed in a future episode of the podcast. And again, I'm going to plug Apple Podcasts. If you like this episode or this podcast, go and leave us a rating or a review in Apple Podcasts. It would make our days.
Priscilla:Thank you, Jordan, for doing this episode with me. I hope that you have a wonderful holiday season and I'm so excited to see you in Nashville next week. It's going to be a blast. Oh my gosh, too much fun, too much fun. Yeah, we have too much fun when we're together. So thank you to everyone for listening. Now go and make someone's day.
