The Future of Customer Support: 6 Takeaways from Support Driven Expo

Priscilla and Buzzsprout support specialist Serena return from the Support Driven Expo in Chicago to share their biggest takeaways. From new opportunities for support professionals to the importance of slowing down, we’re exploring what it looks like to grow with our industry while keeping human connection at the heart of our work.

We unpack six takeaways to help you:

• Explore how your customer support role can grow beyond answering tickets
• Find your voice in technical conversations and share your team’s perspective
• Support your teammates through challenges you can’t solve
• Manage urgency so you can make better decisions and avoid burnout
• Create a team culture where it feels safe to share ideas, experiment, and fail
• Find new ways to connect with customers as AI takes on more of the inbox

Plus, we share a few memorable customer service experiences from our trip and talk about why finding your support community can remind you just how valuable your work really is.

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!

Transcript

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6 Takeaways From Support Driven Expo Introduction

Priscilla 0:00

Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer support from the people at Buzzsprout. I'm your host, Priscilla Brooks. We just got back from the Support Driven Expo in Chicago, and after spending two days with other support professionals talking about everything from AI and customer support to strategies for connecting with customers, we're excited to share some of our major takeaways and highlights from the event. Thanks for joining us. Let's get into it. All right, so how is Chicago? It was fantastic. First of all, for everyone listening, you know, we're in Florida, and Chicago weather right now is a beautiful, wonderful break from the heat that is still hanging around in Florida. So it was so good. And it was really fun because going to Chicago, I didn't have to go by myself. I went with Serena from our team. And so I invited her to come in today to share some of her takeaways from the conference as well. So Serena's with us today. Hey guys. So I kind of teased it in the intro, but we just spent the last three days in Chicago with the support-driven community at their expo. And it was a really, really great experience for us. And so I thought it'd be really fun to take a few minutes and to talk through some of our big takeaways while they're still fresh on our minds. We got back into Jacksonville last night after midnight. And so here we are the next morning debriefing. And so I'm really excited about it.

Jordan 1:21

Yeah, I'm actually really excited to hear all about this. I'm gonna be living like vicariously through you because I've actually never been to a support-driven conference before. So this will be fun. Yeah.

Priscilla 1:31

Before

Who Made Your Day Recently? (Chicago Edition)

Priscilla 1:32

we get into the support-driven of it all, we had a really fun little trip. I mean, it was a conference, but we also, you know, a little trip to Chicago. Yeah. And we had several moments throughout our trip that we had really exceptional customer support experiences. And so I thought it'd be really fun to kind of kick off our episode, like we do with all of our episodes, to highlight some of those really good customer support experiences. So the first one I'll share was on the plane to Chicago, one of our flight attendants, she came up and offered me a drink. And I said, Oh yes, I'd love a drink. And she said, Well, I'd love to serve it to you. This is a perfect match, or something like that. But it was just like this kindness. And she was like, I'm here to give you a drink and you want to accept a drink. So this is a perfect match. It was very sweet. And I thought, you know, in that moment, like that kind of just kindness. There was nothing super fancy about it. It was just a little more human than it, you know, needed to be because she could have just handed me my drink. Yeah, it was sweet. And it was a seven o'clock flight, right? So we're all kind of tired and groggy, and she brought some energy first thing in the morning, and it was really great. And it like made that flight that much better. So that's like the first little nugget of like good customer support, really, in that moment. Serena, do you have any stories of good customer support that we got while we were on the trip?

Serena 2:50

So Priscilla and I went to dinner at one of our favorite places, Sunda. And I mentioned to the waiter, oh, does this have one of my allergens in it? And he immediately was rattling off, okay, you can get this dish. We'll do this to it, we'll make the adjustments that you need. And just from like a sly little comment, he was trying to give me the best experience despite my allergies. And I feel like that's rare. It is.

Jordan 3:16

Yeah. Usually it's like scary to like go to restaurants when you have allergies. My my friend was visiting with us and she's allergic to like everything, like sugar, gluten, onions, garlic, everything. And she has gotten to the point where she just doesn't eat out anymore. So when you go somewhere and you have someone who is like knowledgeable in what they have and understands like this is serious, and I can list off all these other things, and we have other options for you. Like, that's amazing.

Serena 3:43

Yeah, it's definitely one of my big anxieties with traveling. Yeah.

Priscilla 3:47

The thing that struck me about it was how knowledgeable he was on all the different food dishes. Because Serena said, Here are my allergies. These are the things that I need to keep separate. And then she asked about a couple different dishes and he literally rattled off, okay. Well, here's how we would modify this, and here's how we would modify this, with a lot of like confidence and clarity around what would be included and what wouldn't. Because of course it's going to change the dish for Serena if you know you have to remove five ingredients. And so she was able to make decisions on, well, do I still want that dish, even though now it doesn't have four of the five ingredients in it, right? I agree with Serena. That was another one that stood out. One more that I really just have to highlight because it was so solid was we stayed at a hotel called the Clarage House. It was a cute little hotel. And the person who was at the front desk when we got there to check in, her name was Miss Cookie, and she was fantastic. I love that. I mean fantastic. She was so welcoming when we got there. We had a great conversation as we were checking in. Both the rooms were under my name, so we had to make some adjustments. So that could have been a stressful situation. And she was totally chill about the whole thing. She was kind to us. She gave us all the information we needed about the hotels. She helped us get in the best rooms. She was so helpful and it felt like she was a friend of ours. So that by the time we were leaving, we were calling her by her first name. She knew us by our first names. She was going above and beyond for us. And it was just really, really cool to have that personalized help. And it was a good reminder that, like in the world right now, there's just a lot of opportunities for us to connect with each other on a human level, even if it's not in the customer support role, just connecting with people that you're walking by on the street. And that kind of connection is really encouraging. And I feel like we had a lot of it on this trip to Chicago.

Jordan 5:41

I love that. Okay. So for someone who has not been like me to a support-driven conference, what kind of things would you expect from one of those conferences?

Priscilla 5:52

Yeah. So for

What Support Driven Is

Priscilla 5:53

anyone who doesn't know anything about support-driven, I'm going to give you a quick little rundown. I've been in the support-driven community since 2019. I went to a conference. Actually, I went to the support-driven Expo back in 2019 when it was out in Portland and joined their Slack community. So the support-driven community kind of lives in Slack and then they also have a weekly newsletter. So when you join the support-driven Slack, you're immediately connected with other support professionals around the world from different industries and companies and different types of support teams. And you immediately are kind of thrown into this support group kind of thing to help grow your experience with support, learn new strategies. It's really a very encouraging group. Yeah. Right. We went a couple of years ago to the Elevate CX conference, and that was a similar situation. Elevate is a different support community, just like support-driven is a support community. So these are two different communities, but both are really awesome and really supportive, for lack of a better word. But support-driven is cool because they've got the Slack community. They have a weekly newsletter that goes out, and then they host regular events throughout the year. So on their website, I was looking to see how support-driven describes themselves. They said support-driven hosts community-driven events that help customer support and CX teams learn, connect, and grow at every stage of their careers. From leadership gatherings to large-scale conferences and online sessions, our events create space for real learning and peer support. You know, we just got back from a conference, and I feel like, oh yeah, they absolutely do that. This conference felt so much like a peer support event. I mean, you'd be sitting in a talk and the person talking would be sitting next to you in the next talk. Yeah. Because it wasn't like they were splitting up speakers and attendees. Everyone was together and people were attending and they were speaking. It felt very peer supported. So we went to an expo, which is one of the two types of conferences that they host. So the expo is like their larger community event. They have talks across different tracks like career development and customer experience and knowledge management and that kind of a thing. And then they have their summits, which are much more leadership focused. And those are really for heads of support or heads of CX, and they offer kind of a deeper dive into like strategy sessions and deep dive discussions and things like that. So they got options. Yeah. And they also have some virtual events. So if you're not part of a support community and you want to be a part of one, I highly recommend being a part of one. And support-driven is really a great place to start. So I thought it'd be cool. You know, we just got back from this expo, the support-driven expo, and we both went to a lot of different talks while we were there. And so I thought it'd be good if we kind of came up with three main takeaways for each of us to kind of share with our listeners as an encouragement, but also so that you get a little sneak peek into what the expo was like. And then you may want to sign up and go to the next one, which I think they have a summit coming up in a couple of months for support leaders, and then they'll have another expo next year. Okay, so let's jump into some of these takeaways. The first

Takeaway 1: How AI Is Changing Support Roles

Priscilla 9:12

takeaway I had was that your role and responsibilities and customer support are changing. One of the things that was discussed a lot at the expo was AI, you know, which is expected. AI has been in the conversation for so long. But what was cool about this expo that I feel like is changing now is that it's not so much that we're talking about AI in a way that's like, hey, you should be using AI. And if you're not, you're falling behind. It was more like, hey, AI is here. Most of us are already using it in some form. What does that mean about our jobs? What does that mean about the way things are going to shift? And so it was less about hurry up and get on the AI train and more about how to let AI impact your career and real ways that we can evolve as a customer support team now with AI like as a tool in our tool belt. And I thought that was a cool way to look at it. It was, it felt a little bit more encouraging and hopeful than, hey, you just need to get on the AI train, even if you don't want to be.

Jordan 10:16

Or your job is in danger.

Priscilla 10:18

Right. Exactly. Yeah. So one of the talks that I thought was really, really great that talked about this was from Daniel Kimber. He's the CEO and co-founder of Brainfish. He had a talk, I think it was titled The Rise of the Support Engineer. Oh. And he started the talk off by asking the question basically, what would you do if you didn't have an inbox for your support team to work through? So let's say in a hypothetical world, AI is covering all of your like tier one, tier two requests from your clients. So now your support team doesn't have an inbox to take up 60% of their time. So what do they do? Where do their skills go? Yeah. And it was really interesting to hear from him about where he would allocate that time. He talked about proactive support strategies, getting ahead of customer questions. He talked about how support specialists, because of our product knowledge and our connection with the customers, were uniquely positioned to kind of do these deep dives into customer predictions, like behavior predictions to get ahead of problems before they become an issue. And like one customer support agent could own onboarding and they would know the onboarding process in and out and predict how things can go, you know, sideways in order to find fixes for that. And that could be something that lives in support because support specialists are so knowledgeable of that. He also talked about bringing support team members onto product launches earlier. A lot of times, because support agents are in the inbox so much, they don't get included in the feature launches. Oh yeah. But he talked about the impact that it could have on a feature launch if there was always a support person in that team that's launching the feature, because that person could then come at it from a support angle. And I thought both of those examples were really cool ways to kind of reallocate your support team into your product work a little bit more.

Serena 12:24

Yeah. That's really interesting.

Priscilla 12:26

Yeah. So I felt like this talk took this idea that our role is changing as customer support agents over the next couple of years. The actual jobs, day-to-day tasks that we're doing is going to look different in the next couple of years as AI starts answering more of those tier one, tier two questions. But I felt like this talk really made things tangible and gave us some really cool ideas for how the support team can use the skills that we already have in our work outside of the inbox. Uh-huh. And I thought that was a theme kind of throughout the entire event.

Serena 12:58

Yeah, definitely was a refreshing take on how AI is going to be integrated into our lives.

Priscilla 13:03

All

Takeaway 2: Getting Included In Technical Conversations

Priscilla 13:04

right. So, Serena, what's your first takeaway from the support-driven expo?

Serena 13:08

Okay, so this was my first conference. And so it was really interesting going into it, not really knowing what to expect. My takeaway was that it was cool to be invited into conversations. I probably would not have found myself included otherwise.

Jordan 13:21

Yeah.

Serena 13:22

But it was nice to have that insight as a support person. And developers don't always know exactly where our pain points are. And so it was cool to hear, okay, this is what we should be looking for and how we should be relaying that feedback. So then it could be like a happy harmony.

Priscilla 13:38

I really like what you said about you being in conversations that you wouldn't typically be in by coming to this conference because there were several talks that were very technical.

Serena 13:47

Yes.

Priscilla 13:48

About like how to create your own AI agent. And I'm like, I'm not a developer, but part of the cool things about AI is that it gives you the ability to develop even without that kind of coding knowledge.

Jordan 14:01

Well, and there was something else that you said, Serena, that I fully agree with. And I think that is the value of a conference and like actually being in these places is it's like all this knowledge is distilled into like one room. And so you get to have access to people that you wouldn't normally get access to. Like if you were to shoot them an email, they'd be too busy to like respond to you or something like that. And when you're at a conference and you're together in the same space, like it's so much easier to have conversations with people or even talk to the brands that like you use on a daily basis and things like that. Like it's it's awesome.

Serena 14:38

Yeah, I feel like I try to keep up to date with what everyone's posting about in the company, but I don't always understand what these terms mean. Oh, yeah. I also thought that that was pretty cool hearing these conversations, especially the first one where they talked about how to build the agent and they were framing it as like the mind and the body and where it needs to live, and how you need a hand to do this and the eyes to do that. And they were literally doing a visual of it as they're explaining. And I was like, oh, now I understand.

Priscilla 15:10

Yeah. And it's just cool to have those perspectives from all people from all different types of agencies and industries and things like that. Like we get really comfortable in our own little box here in Buzzsprout, but there's so many people doing things different ways outside of this. And so it's cool to learn from them. And that is just the value of a conference in general and being able to be in community with other types of people in our profession. Okay, so moving on to the next takeaway.

Takeaway 3: Leading When You Cannot Fix It

Priscilla 15:34

This one, I labeled it you can't fix everything, or I can't fix everything. So not all of the talks were about AI. There were some that were really more about management style or like just interpersonal relationship talks. And there was one fantastic talk about how to lead through difficult situations that you can't fix as a support leader. And it was in the management track, and the speaker was Michelle McGowan. She's the director of operations at Rocket Money. And I'm pretty sure this was my favorite talk of the week. I mean, I'm still like processing some of these, but it was really a fantastic talk about how leading people is hard. And sometimes people will have problems that you as a leader will want to solve for them, but the reality is it can't be solved. Yeah. And so, how do you lead someone through a situation that isn't solvable while being there to support them without being able to solve it for them? And I thought this was a unique idea, especially because we are customer support agents and we don't like to say no. And we don't like to not be able to find an answer to something. And so it was kind of interesting to have this talk where the whole premise of it was you're actually not going to be able to solve it. So let's start there. It's not getting solved. So what do you do when it's not going to get solved? And how do you support your team even when there's no real solution there? And she gave some really insightful advice to support your team, you know, when things are difficult and to be there for them and to be proactive about picking up what you can pick up to take the load off of them as much as you can. Um, she talked about how people aren't gonna let you take something, like they're not gonna willingly give you something difficult to carry unless you take it. Like there is a little bit of like, hey, you need to pick it up. And once they see you picking it up, then they're gonna let you take it. But until then, they're gonna try to hold on to it and solve it on their end, or at least walk with it on their end. And then just the consistency of being there for people on your team, it gave me some really cool, insightful ideas as far as like working with the people on my team and being there for them in a more tangible way.

Jordan 17:42

Oh, that sounds like a great session,

Takeaway 4: Managing Urgency Without Burning Out

Jordan 17:44

Priscilla. Serena, was there any sessions where you felt like you could really also apply it to your role in customer support?

Serena 17:51

Funny question, Jordan. I went to Priscilla's talk on the importance of managing urgency and customer support. We're constantly trying to solve the customers' questions quickly. And we're moving through a queue, there might be a lot of emails building up. And so we start moving faster and faster, and that kind of creates this instability where we're not responding as we want to, and we're not putting our best foot forward. And I find myself when I'm working, I find myself starting to slip into oh my gosh, I need to accomplish this, I need to cross things off, I need to speed up. And no, calm down to work slow, because when you're working calmly and slowly, you're making better decisions, you're more in line with the work you want to put out there.

Jordan 18:37

Yeah, and well, and I think that's actually just good life advice too.

Serena 18:41

Like I was telling Priscilla that she's always saying, work from a place of calm, work from a place of calm. And I will be talking to my family, and I'm like, guys, we're not being calm right now. We Yeah, I do this. Why are we speeding up? My mom's like, Oh, we're running five minutes late. I'm like, this isn't a place of calm.

Jordan 18:59

It's so funny because I've actually taken that and applied it to my family as well. Like, whenever like they're placing unwarranted urgency on something, I'm like, guys, chill. We're pulling the Chase Clemens, like, it's just sandwiches. It's just sandwiches.

Priscilla 19:12

It's just sandwiches.

Jordan 19:13

So we actually did an episode, and it was actually one of my favorite episodes that we have done. I think it was called like the high cost of urgency or something like that. We did that on Happy to Help. Priscilla, was this talk based on that episode? Yeah.

Priscilla 19:26

Cool. So that episode was really fun to put together. And I used our good friends over at AI a couple months ago to go through some of our episodes of Happy to Help to see what could be kind of repurposed into a talk for support driven. And if you're a podcaster, this is a really cool way to use AI with your podcast. Yeah.

Jordan 19:46

I actually did it, and I'm talking next month in New York because I took one of our episodes and repurposed it into a talk too.

Priscilla 19:54

That's so cool. Exactly. It's a great way to, it's a great way to use the tool. And so anyway, I decided to create a talk based on the high cost of urgency and support. And, you know, it's fun to hear Serena talk about her takeaways from it because I often think that we forget the perspective, right? When I was preparing the talk, I was like, man, this isn't going to give people that much to work with because no one, you know, everyone knows this stuff. You know what I mean? Was kind of my feeling. But then hearing from so many people afterwards about, oh yeah, things are urgent in our company and we really need to do a better job of giving people the freedom to slow down or giving people margin in their days to do better work. And I thought, okay, good. Like you forget that your experience is not everyone's experience. And so I thought it went really well and I'm glad to hear that Serena enjoyed it. And hopefully it encourages some people who listen to it to take some of those ideas and apply them to their own companies and support teams so that they can have a more enjoyable work life because it doesn't need to be crazy urgent all the time.

Serena 20:59

We don't need to be burning out. Yes.

Priscilla 21:01

Okay,

Takeaway 5: Building Safety So Teams Thrive

Priscilla 21:02

Serena, what's your third and final takeaway of the conference?

Serena 21:06

Okay. The importance of creating a safe and transparent environment. So everyone feels that they can speak their mind, give an idea, and it's okay if the idea doesn't pan out how we wanted it to, and it's okay to fail or suggest or try something for a week or two and just experiment. Oh, yeah. And that you don't have to be like the leader of the team to throw these ideas out or to propose new things. I felt empowered to be like, okay, it's okay to be vulnerable and share an idea even though I'm not the founder or something. Yeah.

Priscilla 21:44

Serena, was there a talk that you specifically went to that talked about that?

Serena 21:47

Yes. The talk was building the culture where your team stays and thrives. And building off of the urgency, like creating a sustainable environment where you can breathe and you can. Propose new ideas and then you are feeling excited to go to work every day.

Jordan 22:04

It's funny because that was one of the things I struggled with the most when I first started working for Buzzsprout is that we do have a company culture of like, it's okay to like try something and fail at it. Yeah. Because at other places it's scary because you're like, no, no, no, I have to be perfect all the time. Like everything has to be perfect. And that pressure to be like perfect all the time and never mess up actually can make trip you up and make you mess up more. And you're never gonna like reach your full potential if you're not given the space and the safety net of growth from failure, right? Like that's really cool.

Serena 22:39

At one point, the speaker said that if a bet doesn't land, we've all learned together. And you wanna highlight the good and the bad. So when something is successful, you want to say that in a chat or just make sure to celebrate the little wins. But then also if something's not going right, you want to be clear with the team. Oh, we tried this, it wasn't the best, but here's where we pivoted, or this is what we're thinking.

Priscilla 23:04

Yeah. And it's funny, we've talked about it, I think, a bunch on these episodes that there's a lot of value to be found in trying stuff and failing at them and trying new things. You know, a couple weeks of a new strategy and see how that works and throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. And giving your team the freedom to try things and try new strategies. And it also helps you stay out of that hamster wheel of, well, this is how we've always done it. So this is how we're gonna keep doing it. Yep. And I would think that that is what leads to these stale work environments where people don't feel that they have the freedom or ability to go outside of the box and try something different. So yeah, that's a really cool talk. I want to see if I can find an archive of it somewhere online to watch it.

Serena 23:48

Well, I am thankful for you because you were like, oh, she's a great speaker. You should go to this. And it was one of my favorites. That's awesome.

Priscilla 23:56

Good. Okay. I want

Takeaway 6: Keeping Customer Connection In An AI World

Priscilla 23:58

to highlight one last talk that I really enjoyed and the takeaway I kind of got from this talk and several other little nuggets throughout the week was that customer connection is still important. I think we are talking a lot about AI and a lot about deflection and a lot about can you automate that workflow so that you're not having to do it and this AI can do it for you. In those conversations, it can be easy to be like, well, maybe the customer connection isn't that important anymore. Like maybe having that connection with your customers isn't something we need to prioritize. And there were enough conversations this week that reminded me that customer connection is still really important. And in some cases, it's actually more important because of how much AI is in the process now that that customer connection is even more important because it's not as easy when we had access to it in the inbox. And so one of the talks I went to that I really enjoyed was by Jill McKinney, who's the director of a customer service at DScript. Oh. And she, yeah, which is an like in our industry, in the podcasting industry. I know this one. Yep. And it caught my attention because the title of the talk was When Support Gets Weird. And I was like, okay, I gotta go. I gotta go to this talk. This is gonna be fun. And she kind of talked about two different events. One is a past event that they hosted, and then one's uh event coming up that they're hosting that are like live in-person events to connect with their customers. So the previous one they did was like a telethon. They live streamed their team working and squashing bugs, and they made it available to their customers to watch and like interact with them. They were doing like challenges during the live stream and sending in like feature requests, and that was really cool. And then she talked about an upcoming event that they're gonna have at a conference coming up. They're kind of piggybacking off of a conference and inviting their customers to come and kind of do in-person support. It was just really cool to hear her talk about the importance of connecting with your customers, especially with AI in the inbox taking over so many of the tier one and tier two emails that are coming in. There's just less of that easy access to connect. And so you have to be a little bit more intentional about it. And so it was really cool to hear her talk about that. And it kind of got me thinking about like events that we can do for our Buzzsprout customers that could be kind of quirky and fun and that would connect them with the people behind the product.

Serena 26:29

Yeah, I feel like when the conference started and we started talking about AI, I was getting nervous. But one of the speakers said support is the empathy backbone to a business. And I wrote that down because I was like, at the end of the day, a bot can't do that.

Jordan 26:45

Yeah, you need your backbone.

Serena 26:47

Exactly. Exactly. And so it was cool to kind of shift that narrative about AI from being like, oh, it's taking our jobs, I'm scared, to being like, oh, what can it help with to support us so then we can put that human touch on it so that we can give accurate answers, but keep the human in it.

Jordan 27:06

Yeah, I think that's another one of my favorite things about like attending conferences is sometimes you go in with your own sort of like misconceptions or your own ideas about how things in your industry work or what the outcome of some sort of like new technological advancement is gonna be. And then you have the experts actually go, no, it's it's cool. And then you're like, oh, this is great. And it's almost like you leave more rejuvenated and more excited for like the future of where your industry is going when you leave these conferences. Like I think that is such a great benefit to attending too.

Why Conferences Rebuild Confidence In Support

Priscilla 27:40

Yeah, one thing they do at these conferences at the support-driven expos that I really like is they have conversation corners. So during every session, they're also gonna have kind of like a discussion room that's led by a moderator, but it's not like a talk, but as a different topic. Oh, that's cool. Yeah, we went to one of those about the customer connection strategies. And it was really cool to talk with other people who are in the industry who came with some questions how to connect with their customers. And so we got to share some of the things that we do to connect with customers. And then we learned from some other people about like tools they use to connect better and to bridge the gap when it comes to customers writing in and talking to different support reps. And so it was just really cool to have that kind of like knowledge sharing. And I think that really is what these expos are all about. Yeah. They're all about bringing together customer support professionals who all have different skills and different experiences and creating an environment where they can share that information with each other in a positive, encouraging way. And things like AI, it's a great example. Like a lot of people are scared about AI, even now, a couple of years in. And it's not as scary now as it was a couple of years ago, but there's still some fear there. And there were a lot of talks that had to do with hey, your job isn't going anywhere. It's just changing, and we want to be able to change with it. And so it's reassuring and it's encouraging and it's hopeful for people in customer support, especially when you're kind of siloed. You know, you may be on a team with just three or four people and you don't really know what this means for your job. Being able to get into a community like this allows you to be supported by people who are doing the same kind of work you're doing. And I think it's really powerful. And we had a really great time being there and having conversations with other support professionals and learning from other support professionals. So if you are not going to conferences as a customer support professional, you really should. You should really look some out. There are a lot to go to. You could go to support-driven or you could go to an Elevate CX, or you could go to some of the bigger conferences, but all of them are kind of that same idea. Like find other people in your profession and encourage them and let them encourage you because really it makes life a lot better when you can learn from other people and you can help teach other people.

Serena 30:03

I think that was one of the coolest things was that I was talking to some other people who were earlier on in their career, but then I also was turning around and talking to CEOs of companies. And it was like we all were in the same room, we're all having the same conversations, we all have our notebook out, writing the same things down. And it was cool to have that information sharing.

Jordan 30:24

That's exactly my experience in like going to like podcasting conferences and stuff like that, too. Like you're just all together. Yeah.

Priscilla 30:31

It was cool. And I think one like other thing that just occurred to me sometimes customer support is looked down on as a profession because it's like, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, it's entry level, or it's just not like a career, right? And that can be really disappointing if you're working in this profession and you love it like we love it. It can be disappointing to feel like, oh, no one takes my job seriously. So to go to a conference where everyone is taking it seriously. The people who are there love it and are using it as a career, it can be really encouraging if you're in a place like in a headspace where you're like, I love this work, but people don't view it as valuable. Like get yourself to a conference like this and you'll be reminded how valuable this work is. It's really encouraging.

Next Event: Support Driven Summit

Priscilla 31:20

Okay, so their next event is in, I think it's in New York City, and it's in a couple of months in the fall of 2026, and it's their leadership summit. So if you're a support leader and you want to grow in your leadership skills, that would definitely be a conference to check out. Thank you, Serena, for coming on the episode and sharing your takeaways with us. This was a lot of fun. Thanks for having me.

Serena 31:43

I had a great time.

Priscilla 31:44

If you have any questions or if you have a topic that you want us discuss on a future episode, use the send us a text link in the show notes. Or if there's just something you want to learn more about, like send it in. And we'd love to make an episode specifically about that for you. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. We would love to see those. Thank you again to Serena for joining us on this episode. Thank you all for listening. Now go and make someone's day.