August 12, 2025 • 48 mins
In this episode of Happy to Help, Priscilla Brooke is joined by Buzzsprout teammate Cara Pacetti to explore the strategy behind Buzzsprout Orientations. These orientations are a live onboarding experience designed to empower new podcasters with confidence, clarity, and connection!
We're breaking down:
- The difference between demos and orientations
- How proactive education reduces support volume
- Lessons learned from months of live customer sessions
- The power of human connection in digital onboarding
- Tips for launching your own educational initiative (without burning out your team!)
If you’re a Customer Support Specialist, CX leader, or anyone thinking about proactive support, this episode will inspire you to invest in education and see measurable results in satisfaction, confidence, and reduced ticket volume!
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!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Priscilla (00:00):
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer
support from the people atBuzzsprout.
I'm your host, Priscilla Brooke.
In today's episode we're takinga deep dive into the importance
of customer education.
We'll talk about a recentproject that we've been working
on and how educating yourcustomers can move you toward
the goal of offering remarkablesupport.
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
(00:20):
So it's not every day that ourguest is joining us and
recording in their closet.
Is it Jordan?
Have we ever had this?
Jordan (00:30):
As a podcast producer, I get so excited when I see
someone recording from theircloset, because there is no
better space for sound than acloset.
I don't know what it is.
Priscilla (00:40):
Sometimes there's like the clothes hanging there.
They absorb all of the bouncingsound and so it just gives you
a cleaner, crisper sound.
Jordan (00:48):
Yeah.
Priscilla (00:48):
Well, today we have Cara Pacetti joining us.
Cara's on the Buzzsprout team.
She's been on an episode ofHappy to Help before.
She has an education backgroundand an administration
background, but really, thething about Cara that makes her
so good for this job is that shehas a huge passion for people.
The thing about Cara that makesher so good for this job is
that she has a huge passion forpeople, so I'm really excited
because she's been working onsome really cool customer
(01:08):
education initiatives over thelast year, and so that's what
we're going to talk about todayis customer education, the
importance of it, somestrategies for doing it well,
how Cara has really taken thatproject and run with it over the
last couple of months, and whatshe's learned along the way, so
I'm really excited to talkabout that.
Before we get into all of that,though, I, Cara, want to ask
(01:29):
you the question that we askeveryone who comes on the
podcast who has made your dayrecently?
Cara (01:34):
I did know this question was coming, so I gave it a
little bit of forethought beforejumping on today and actually
it's a small example, but I feellike it's still significant.
I was paying a bill, a medicalbill, because that's what I do
in my family, but I was not thepatient and it wasn't my
dependents.
It was for my husband and it'san HSA card, so of course I need
(01:56):
a receipt.
Well, it's not my email on file.
I'm not the patient, and theadministrative or the billing
person I was working withstarted to get a little funny
about that, which I always crackup when people do that.
I'm like I'm trying to pay you.
Why is this hard, but I get it.
She was a little hesitant and Ikind of explained but at the
(02:18):
end of it I kind of backed offand said you know, it's okay, he
can forward it to me, just sendit to his email.
And I felt like she heard thathuman heart of mine and went you
know what we can do this?
What's your email address?
Let me just forward this and youknow, kind of she didn't break
any rules, she just kind of wenta little bit out of her
standard procedure and, boom,sent it to me.
(02:38):
I was able to print it in thatmoment, file it away, which was
very helpful and just I thoughtthat was, that was customer
service, and it just made my daythat she took a moment to make
it easy for me.
It was no benefit to her really, it was one extra step, but I
was appreciative that she tookthat for me and did that.
Priscilla (02:55):
Yes, yeah, I feel like we've talked about it on
the show before like this ideaof giving your employees, or
giving the people on your team,the ability to make those
changes in the moment when itmakes sense to do it.
Now, obviously, if you havelike procedures and things you
have to follow, like those arein place for security reasons,
that makes sense.
But, like you said, in thissituation it wasn't a breach of
(03:16):
security, it was just a emailthat needed to be sent, and so,
like giving people the abilityto make those kind of decisions
in the moment and like trustingyour team to do that, I think
can, like you said, have thesereally good, positive outcomes,
whereas if she had to stay withsending the email to the person
directly, it wouldn't be the endof the world, but it wouldn't
(03:37):
have been a good experience.
You wouldn't have felt reallygood after the call and it
wouldn't have made you feel anykind of way about the person you
were working with or thecompany that you were working
with in a positive way.
Cara (03:46):
So I think that's a great example.
Priscilla (03:47):
And it's like a really good, like very small
example, but where it actuallymade your day easier and it made
your day better.
Cara (03:53):
Well, when you asked the question, that is what popped up
.
So she, she, I remembered it.
So it was little but notinsignificant.
Yeah, no, that's great.
Oh, I love that.
Priscilla (04:02):
So today we're talking about customer education
.
A couple episodes ago we hadChase Clemons on from 37 Signals
and he talked about how theirsupport team kind of used
themselves as a fire departmentor like a local fire station and
the idea being that like, yes,they put out fires and they go
to people's homes and they solveproblems you know, obviously
(04:26):
not the support team but thefire department but they also
handle the initiatives like firesafety and prevention that the
fire department doesn't onlyhandle the putting out of the
fires but it also handles theeducating people on how to avoid
fires in the first place, ortaking initiatives in the
community to have, like, firehydrants set up and things like
that, so that you're ready forthe fires when they come.
(04:48):
And so I, you know, kind of gotme thinking about some of the
things that we do in thatproactive support realm at
Buzzsprout to get ahead of thosefires.
Out to you, Cara, because abouta year ago we started working
on a project that has becomewhat we call Buzzsprout
Orientations as a way to educateand train our podcasters as
(05:11):
they are getting used toBuzzsprout and getting started
with their podcasts before theylaunch, and so I thought it'd be
a really great time for us tohave a conversation about
customer education, theimportance of it and that
project and how it kind of hasevolved over the last year.
As we've been learning andseeing where those pitfalls are,
as we've been falling into themand figuring out, you know how
(05:31):
to solve those problems.
So before we get started, Iwant to kind of set the scene on
why customer education isimportant.
A lot of support teams I wouldsay all support teams really but
like the majority of supportteams, really focus on that
reactive support.
But there is an aspect ofremarkable support that is the
proactive support side of things, and so that is the stuff that
(05:54):
gets out ahead of the fires,that gets out ahead of the
issues, and so we, you know,recently had an episode about
knowledge bases.
That is proactive support.
That's giving people a way tofind their own answers before
having to come to us as asupport team, and this training
project that we've been workingon is another great example of
that proactive support.
Cara (06:14):
Totally agree with you, Priscilla.
It's so important, and theknowledge base is one thing, but
I know when I first started, mytraining was done in person
with you and I also had a lot ofstuff to read through, because
we have excellent help articlesand we have a giant knowledge
base.
We also have great videos.
But there was something aboutthat one-on-one conversation
(06:34):
with you that stuck, and maybethat's just me as a learner, but
I think there's differentcustomers all throughout and
their learning styles are justso different, and so you want to
not only educate the customersbut also find the style and the
format that they can learn it in.
Priscilla (06:49):
Yeah, the fact of the matter is that customers can't
succeed if they don't understandwhat they're doing or they
don't understand the product.
Like they can't succeed inusing something if you don't
know what it is or you don'tknow how to use it.
You know what I mean.
You can have a jump rope, andif you don't know what you're
supposed to do with that jumprope, you're not going to ever
learn how to jump rope.
But as soon as you understandwhat's supposed to do, then
(07:10):
you're like OK, well, now I canpick it up pretty well.
And so it's this idea that,like, we, as support
professionals, can come in andgo, hey, in order for you to
succeed, we have to educate youon how to use the product in a
way that will make you succeed.
Let's talk about some of thethings that we were seeing back
when we were first thinkingabout launching this project and
some of the things that wenoticed as far as, like, that
(07:31):
need for education.
Cara (07:33):
Usually the phrases that I see are I'm not a tech person,
I just I don't understand tech,it's too much.
I'm not tech savvy, but alsothere would be a lot of back and
forth emails, so we would kindof introduce this is how it
works.
We are a podcast host, we needto get your content out to the
directories, and that justdidn't resonate because they
(07:54):
just didn't understand that.
And you could tell with theback and forth wait, but wait, I
have to download my episode.
Well, no, you need to uploadyour episode.
And it's just confusing and Ikind of think of like if you
have family members who maybedidn't grow up with computers
and internet and podcasting, andI think about when they ask me
for help and I'm leaning overtheir shoulder and I'm showing
(08:15):
them on the screen and I'mhelping them, and that's what
we'd see in the inbox and I justwent man, I wish there was a
way, like if I could just meetwith this one podcast or this
one customer and help them.
Maybe it would make things alittle easier for them.
And so those are kind of somethings that I saw in the inbox.
Priscilla (08:32):
Yeah, I definitely feel like one of the big things
we saw a lot is this continualquestion email thread that goes
on and on and on, where you havesomeone who writes in their new
they ask one question and youanswer that question and then
they ask the second question andthere are all these really
basic, really fundamentalquestions and you can say, hey,
go read this article.
(08:52):
And sometimes people will dothat, especially if they're
taking ownership of their ownknowledge.
But sometimes what we would seeis that people would see how
quickly and how great we were inresponding to them, that they
would go.
Man, I can just keep askingCara my next question.
I know she's going to get backto me really quickly with a
really solid answer, and so thenwhat you end up is with these
like really really long emailchains back and forth with
(09:16):
someone who's just trying togather that foundational
knowledge, and we were noticingthat was taking up a lot of time
in the support inbox.
It was taking away time frombeing able to troubleshoot more
technical issues or more urgentissues that were coming in, and
so that was one of the thingsthat I remember seeing, I also
think, this confusion about whatour product did so for us, it's
(09:38):
podcasting, and podcasting canbe pretty technical, and so we'd
have a lot of people that wouldwrite in like, isn't this what
you do?
Aren't you supposed to do thisfor me?
What am I paying you for?
And it was because they did notunderstand the service that we
were providing.
Now I hear myself say that andI go OK, well, shouldn't you be
able to clarify that, like inthe product or in your marketing
(09:58):
or whatever?
And the truth is, yeah, I meanthat was clear in the marketing,
but there's still this level ofmisunderstanding that someone
can come into, especiallysomething more technical like
podcasting.
Then they can come into withthis misunderstanding of what it
is that they're paying for whenthey pay for a Buzzsprout
account, what the features thatthey're getting when they reach
out to us.
Cara (10:18):
Another thing that we would see and this one's kind of
tough when we did see it isthey do everything on their own,
never reach out to support.
And then they reach out tosupport and say I published my
episode.
How come it's not on Spotifyand iHeart and Apple?
Yeah, and we look and we'relike, oh no, you didn't walk
through the process ofsubmitting your podcast there,
but yeah, so we'd see that here.
They did this legwork.
They didn't even reach out andthen they are still.
(10:40):
They missed the mark.
They missed their launch date.
I remember seeing that.
That one was tough.
Priscilla (10:44):
That is a really good example of why it is important
to do this educational piece,because, you're right, the issue
that we were seeing was thatpeople wouldn't submit to
directories before they wantedtheir launch to happen, and
there is a wait period there.
It's much shorter now, but acouple of years ago it could
have been two weeks, and so ifsomeone was planning on
(11:05):
launching their podcast onSeptember 1st and then on
September 1st they uploaded theepisode and it wasn't live in
Apple, and by the time they'dreach out to us, it was too late
to fix the problem for them,because there had to be this
waiting period, because Appleneeded to review the podcast
submission, and so it was verymuch like oh no, now your first
interaction with support issomething that we can't actually
(11:27):
fix for you, which makes thiswhole thing start on a sour note
, which is not a good way tostart.
And if we're looking at ourpodcasters and going, how can we
make them succeed?
Well then we need to get aheadof that and make sure they know
that process really well.
Cara (11:42):
Absolutely.
I feel like, from our vantagepoint, we were like this was
avoidable.
Yeah, this was avoidable.
How can we make this not happenagain?
Priscilla (11:49):
Yeah, and I think, like just the terminology,
giving them that understandingof the terminology helps them
feel more comfortable and moreconfident and have those
educated answers on your endwithout having to come to
support all the time.
Cara (12:01):
And when they do reach out to support, we can better
assist them because they areusing that correct terminology
in the right way.
And then so when you'retroubleshooting, you're like OK,
I know exactly, becausesometimes we have to read in
between the lines a little bit.
Priscilla (12:14):
Yeah, another reason I thought that really getting
ahead of this education side ofthings was really important was
because anyone who has an onlinesubscription service or online
payment in any way has to dealwith disputes.
A lot of times, the reasonpeople are disputing charges is
because they don't recognize thecharge.
That could be because theydon't know that it's a monthly
(12:34):
subscription service, eventhough they put their credit
card in or they don't know howmuch it's going to be each month
.
And all of this can be found inyour account.
But again, if you don't knowhow to find it, you don't know
what you're looking for, thenyou won't be able to put those
points together.
And so you know, having theability to educate on what to
expect when you're gettingbilled, how often, what days
(12:55):
even two sentences in anorientation can give people a
little bit more understandingand then can avoid those
confusions about billingdisputes and that feeling of
like sleaziness that you cansometimes feel when you don't
understand why you're beingcharged money.
Whenever anything is related tomoney, it always can feel kind
of very easily.
Cara (13:14):
Yeah, getting all that information out there up front
to me shows transparency.
It shows trust, both from thecustomer and from you, that
you're going to say hey, at theend of the day, we want you to
be successful, we want it to bewith us, but if it's not, that's
okay.
This is how you cancel X, y, z,and if you need help we're here
.
And so education at the frontto me shows confidence and it
(13:37):
shows trust.
Priscilla (13:37):
Yeah.
The last thing I want to saythat I personally ran into a lot
before we started doing theseorientations was just the
request for phone support.
So I would run into situationswhere we'd be back and forth
with someone in an email and I'dgo, man, a 10 minute
conversation would actually be alot easier and I always, when
someone asks for phone support,I always want to say yes, yeah.
Cara (13:59):
Yeah.
Priscilla (13:59):
But I know that is not sustainable for our team
right now, as we are and aswe're set up to offer phone
support.
It's just not something that wecan do consistently for
everyone.
But that doesn't mean I don'twant to offer it to some people
who can really benefit from it,and so there would be times when
I would find someone who reallyjust wasn't understanding the
process via email, and so Iwould offer to get on a phone
(14:20):
call with them, and it would bea 10 minute conversation that
would give them so muchunderstanding of what whatever
confusion was causing them to befrustrated Right.
So, whether they didn'tunderstand the billing thing, or
whether they didn't understandwhy they couldn't launch their
podcast at a certain time, orwhatever it was, a very short,
educational phone call wouldrelieve so much of that stress
(14:43):
that just came from not knowing,and I would get off these phone
calls and the majority of thetime would go.
Man, I wish I could calleveryone who was confused,
because it really would help somany people to lose some of that
anxiety around the wholelaunching process or the whole
billing process or whatever itis that causes that.
You know causes the frustrationwhen you reach out to support
(15:04):
having someone to actually talkto you.
And then they go oh man, you'rea real person and I'm a real
person and we're talking aboutthis and you're explaining it to
me while I'm driving in the car.
Like I remember having a phonecall with someone while she was
like in her commute and I wasexplaining to her how RSS feeds
work and the technical side ofthings.
And as soon as I explained itfor her, it clicked and she went
well, now it makes sense why ithas to be done that way, and
(15:26):
it's not just that you're beingdifficult as a support team, but
that this is the process andhow it has to work.
And then her frustrations andanxieties just disappeared
because now she knows howeverything works.
And so that was something thatI feel like we saw a lot was
that request for phone support,and just as a team, we really
wanted to give that.
You know, yeah, all right.
(15:46):
So all of that to say.
We started to ask ourselves whatcould we do to get ahead of all
of these questions?
What if we could reduce theproblems that people are running
into, reduce those questionsthat people have before they
have them?
What could we do to stop thatahead of time.
And so that's where, you know,we kind of started to lean into
this proactive support a littlebit more.
And then we started looking at aproject that would allow us to
(16:07):
do demos is what we were callingthem at the beginning with
customers and how we could dothat in a sustainable way.
And so that's when we startedmoving into kind of this
Buzzsprout demo discoveryproject.
And so, you know, the idea wasto start thinking through how
are we going to train podcastersin a way that would be
(16:28):
sustainable for our team, thatwouldn't be super time consuming
because you could offerone-on-ones and just constantly
be doing one-on-ones with peopleand training them.
But would that be the return oneffort that we want it to be,
or would it be too much and notenough of the result?
Yeah, so, Cara, what do youremember about those early
beginning stages of the projectand what we considered when we
(16:50):
were building this project?
Cara (16:52):
Well, it's funny that you say the one-on-ones, because
that even actually was a part ofour discovery project as well.
We gave that a try For somepodcasters.
We'd identify in the inbox andsay they would benefit from a
one-on-one, and I did a coupleof them.
It was intimidating, but Ifound that what was done
one-on-one could be done in agroup.
(17:12):
It was the same demo I wasdoing for just one person, but I
was jumping on calls and sayingthe same thing, and so we kind
of learned and, like you said,the time just wasn't worth the
investment there.
And so one part I rememberspecifically in getting started
was okay, how are we going totry this out?
We got to give it a try and Ihad to cold email new signups
(17:36):
and like, as they signed up, Iwould just.
I just went through the listand emailed and asked them to
come join an orientation, andthat's how we got our first
audience.
Yeah, for an orientation.
Priscilla (17:46):
Yeah, so I know we talked about one on ones as a
strategy and we talked aboutorientations, which was the idea
that we'd have like multiplepeople in a call with you.
We also talked about likerecording a demo and just having
a demo video.
That would also be prettysustainable for us, so that like
leans on the sustainable sideof things, we'd make a video,
post it, and that's that.
(18:07):
We shared the demo with people.
But what we noticed with thedemo was that then you're
lacking that personal connection, and part of this project that
we started to realize as we wereworking on it was this gives us
a way to personally connectwith our new users.
As they're signing up, theirfirst interaction with a support
team is going to be in personwith Cara, which really was one
(18:30):
of the strengths I mean, it isone of the strengths that
Buzzsprout has is, you know, wehave a really great support
system for our customers andthey know that and they know
that we're here for them if theyneed us, and so it was kind of
like gave us that big win rightout the gate when we had these
person to person, and so that'swhy the demos really didn't feel
like they were solving theproblem that we were trying to
(18:50):
solve, and then the one-on-onesfelt like they were solving the
problem and giving this reallyhyper-personalized one-on-one
option, but it was notsustainable, and so that's like
you were saying how we ended upwith the orientations, kind of
this like option in the middleof the two.
Cara, do you want to just likeexplain to our listeners, like,
what the orientations look like?
Cara (19:10):
So an orientation is a live stream event.
Attendees register and attendlive and I basically share my
screen and walk through whatyour Buzzsprout account looks
like, what are the steps ongetting your podcast launched
and listed on the directories,and during that time the
attendees can ask theirquestions.
We actually prompt them to aska question before they even sign
(19:32):
up, and so it's veryinteractive.
Even though I'm not seeing thefaces of the attendees, we're
interacting and theconversations are great because
they're actually helping eachother.
Sometimes when I'm talking, Iremember they were a Buzzsprout
customer, maybe they've been inpodcasting, but they clarified
the question for me from anotherattendee because it didn't make
a lot of sense, and they said Ithink she means this.
I'm like, thank you.
(19:53):
And so it feels like I'm in aclassroom with or maybe not even
a classroom that's a littleformal but a very comfortable
space just chatting with ourcustomers who are here to get
launched, and so that's a littlebit about what an orientation
is yeah, the nice thing aboutthe orientations is the fact
that it's for our new podcasters.
Priscilla (20:14):
It's really when we were building it, we were
thinking who are we buildingthis for?
Is it for anyone who's usingBuzzsprout or is it more
specific?
What type of customer are wetrying to target with the
orientations?
And really it was the newpodcaster who's just starting,
who doesn't know what they'redoing.
And so when you think aboutlike a demo, which is a
traditional type of way that alot of support teams educate
(20:36):
their customers, this isdifferent.
While it is giving you a demo,like there's part of your
orientation that is, a demo ofthe product.
There's also this aspect of thetraining side of it, with the
how to get listed on directoriesor strategies and
recommendations for naming yourpodcast.
There's like this extra levelof our personal guidance in the
(21:01):
orientations, more than justhere's how you change your
billing.
This this here's how you, youknow, get to whatever, but it's
more of here's what you need tothink about as you're getting in
that launch position, gettingready to go, and then you have
that added section of the Q&Athat really encourages the
engagement.
Do you remember why we landedon naming them orientations?
Cara (21:23):
Well, you know when you first start middle school or
high school.
Yeah, totally I remember, yeah,I remember and you go into your
school and you got to walk theclassroom and you walk your
schedule and you find out whereyour locker is and that's the
orientation, that's just gettingyou there.
And so I know you and I,Priscilla, we're like it's not a
demo, because we're not juststanding up there projecting
(21:46):
this thing and there's no parton the podcaster side.
Jordan (21:49):
Well, and a demo can be done, like on a YouTube video
that you just send out to anyone.
Cara (21:54):
Yeah, right, but in orientation you're walking the
halls like you're meeting yourteachers, you're in it.
And so I remember us landing on.
It's like this is theBuzzsprout class of May 21st and
they are going to get orientedwith Buzzsprout and podcasting
in general and we're here tosupport them.
And that's how we landed there,and I do love that they're
(22:14):
called orientations, I thinkit's fun.
Priscilla (22:16):
Yeah, I remember us talking about the names and one
of the things we really likedabout calling them orientations
was the fact that you would have, you know, five to 10 people in
an orientation each week andthey would feel like they're
part of the class, of whatever.
And there was this camaraderiewith the podcasters who were
joining you, like you were justsaying that are helping each
(22:39):
other, you know, in the chat,while you're helping them in the
video, and you know we haven'treally gone there yet with these
, but I liked the idea of, okay,what could we push more beyond
these orientations to actuallylike encourage this community
more down the line of these?
You know 20 people who were inthis orientation together.
(22:59):
How can they continue tosupport each other?
Because we've talked about somany times on this podcast that
podcasting can be very solo andisolating, and so what if we
were able to use theseorientations as a way to be like
you all started in the samemonth, you all launched in the
same month and now you cansupport each other as you
continue podcasting?
And so we haven't really gonethat far yet, but that was part
(23:19):
of the reason for naming themorientations was that we really
want to build that idea of thisis your group like.
These are your people to helpyou and Cara's walking you all
through it and giving you allthe information you need to be
successful.
Cara (23:32):
And it's so awesome because sometimes when other
people ask a question, they'relike oh OK, they asked my
question's not that silly, I canask too.
And then they get confident toask those questions, whereas
sometimes they may sit quiet.
Priscilla (23:44):
Or they won't know to ask the question.
Yeah, right, like sometimes youdon't know what you don't know.
And so if you're in aone-on-one with someone and you
don't know what question to askand they're going through their
script and then you're done andyou didn't know what questions
to ask, you might miss out oninformation that later you're
going to need.
But if you're in an orientationwith 10 people and Cara goes
(24:04):
through a script and someoneelse thinks of a question, that
might help you to have a betterunderstanding, even if you
wouldn't have thought of thatsame question.
So, yeah, you're right that,like, having more people in the
room can help a full, morewell-rounded knowledge of the
product and how it works and howto be successful.
Okay, so we had the discoveryproject and we did a lot of
testing during that.
We tested different types oforientations or different types
(24:26):
of demos.
We looked at what software arewe going to use that's going to
allow us to have people in theroom with us?
Is everyone going to be onvideo?
Is no one going to be on video?
Are we going to screen share?
Are we not going to screenshare?
How long should these be?
One of the things we talkedabout a lot was how many people
did we want to have in theorientations?
Cara (24:44):
If you make it too large, then sometimes people can talk
over each other or it gets.
Maybe there's so many questionscoming in that me, as the host,
it's hard to keep up with orfollowing up.
If I'm trying to send emailsafterwards, that's 30 people to
follow up with and then, if yougo too little, you lose that
classroom, that orientationfield that we were just talking
(25:05):
about, where, okay, all fivepeople are new and all five
people don't know what to askand so you're missing that
benefit.
And so we decided to cap it at20.
And I remember it starting alittle smaller and now it has
grown to where it's about 10 to15 consistent that attend every
week and sometimes we see 20register, but it's about 10, 15
(25:27):
consistent, yeah, and I thinkthat you know you were saying
that if it's too small you losethat orientation feel.
Priscilla (25:30):
I think if it's too small you lose that orientation
feel.
I think if it gets too big youlose that orientation feel too.
Cara (25:35):
Yeah.
Priscilla (25:35):
Like we could open it up to 50 people, but if 49
people show up in an orientation, you, Cara, have so much more
to cover.
Now you've got all thesequestions coming in and we want
to keep it.
One of the things we talkedabout was we wanted to keep it
(25:57):
easy for people to join withoutfeeling like they were giving up
half of their day, and so wewanted to keep them at 30
minutes.
You kind of sometimes go alittle long with Q&As because
sometimes people have questionsthat need to be that, but really
what you need to be there foris that first 30 minutes and
then, if you need to drop off,you can drop off, and so that
was another reason why we kindof landed on that.
20 people is the cap, andoccasionally we'll open it up a
little bit more than 20 peopleif we need to, but we try not to
(26:18):
get into those higher numbersand if we ever find that people
are wanting to sign up weeklyfor these more than 20 a week,
then we'll add a second one onin the week, because you know we
want to keep that total perorientation low.
I know in the beginning a waythat we were measuring success
was how many people joined theorientation, and we pretty
quickly learned that that is nota good measurement of success,
(26:41):
right?
No, because you could havepeople join and then your script
could be off and not be exactlywhat you wanted it to be, and
so it wasn't beneficial forthose five people, and not be
exactly what you wanted it to be, and so it wasn't beneficial
for those five people.
Or you could have one personjoin and it could be a great
orientation and they learned alot and they got this really
good foundation and in thatsituation it would be successful
(27:01):
because that person got exactlywhat we were trying to do with
the orientation.
And so what other ways do you,as you've been doing these now
for several months, what otherways do?
Cara (27:14):
you use to measure the success of the project.
Some of the things I look at Iwill look at their accounts and
see after the orientation, didthey create an account and did
they upload an episode?
Because to me that is a measureof success.
We walk through that during theorientation.
And another big one is did theysubmit to the directories?
Because that's a big part ofthe orientation and so I like to
see when I look into an accountof someone who attended the
(27:35):
orientation, they have episodesand they're listed on the
directories.
Also, in the inbox, we're notseeing those long one question
like process emails where theyjust keep asking question after
question.
I do see them come in but nowthey're asking well, what's this
magic mastering feature and howdo I enable subscriptions?
(27:55):
And they're talking aboutfeatures and they're learning to
use the different parts of ourproduct and not the like very
foundation of getting started.
Like we conquered that in our30 minute orientation and now
they get to do the other funstuff and we can help them with
that because that's what we'rehere for and so those to me, are
great metrics of success.
Yeah, that's like best possibleoutcome.
Priscilla (28:17):
Yeah Well, and you still see in the inbox sometimes
the people who have those backand forth questions, those
foundation questions, but thoseare not the people that were in
an orientation and you don't seeit from the people that were in
the orientation.
They now have that foundation.
So when they ask thosequestions, like you were saying,
they're the questions that area little more technically
advanced or a little bit morelike I want to tweak and make
(28:38):
things really great.
Cara's enjoyment of doing it.
I think that's a way that Imeasure the success of it.
You know, when you're choosingsomeone to do this, you want to
look at the kind of person thatwould enjoy it.
Because if you have someone whois an extrovert, who loves
(29:01):
people, who loves training andmaking people feel confident in
their knowledge, that person isgoing to do a better job than
someone who is more introverted,who doesn't really love being
on camera and who has a littlebit harder of that, like your
listeners or your attendees aregoing to draft off of that
energy from the person who'shosting it.
(29:22):
And so for me, when I look atthese kind of projects we do and
the success of them, I oftenwant to look back at just the
happiness and the enjoyment fromthe person who is running it.
And so it's fun for me becauseCara, when she comes out of an
orientation, is almost alwayslike oh yeah, that was great,
that was fun, like we had a goodtime, and that tells me that
it's successful because it isbringing life to Cara and it is
(29:45):
educating our podcasters, andboth of those are ways to
measure the success of it.
And if Cara was coming outdrained every week, then you
would question is it worth it tobe doing this for our customers
, if what we're giving up isthis employee satisfaction or
just employee happiness?
And so that's another thingthat when I am looking at
measuring success for thingslike this, that's what I'm
(30:06):
looking at, which is always funbecause Cara loves them and
she's so good at them I do, Ireally do which is always fun
because Tara loves them andshe's so good at them.
Jordan (30:11):
I do, I really do.
I imagine that you gain a lotmore confidence as you go, when
people thank you for it or theytell you oh my gosh, that was so
wonderful, like that completelychanged my experience.
I couldn't have done it withoutyou.
I bet after just a couple ofcomments like that, you're like
yes, let's go to the next one,let's go, we could do it.
Cara (30:28):
Yes, yeah, absolutely.
Priscilla (30:30):
And that's a great point, jordan, is you start to
hear that from people.
Yeah, and they say man, when Ilaunched, I got invited to an
orientation.
I met Cara and she was thefirst person that I met on the
Buzzsprout team and now I feellike I know the people who
develop this product that I'musing and there is this level of
like thank you so much, Icouldn't have done it without
your support and of like, thankyou so much, I couldn't have
(30:50):
done it without your support.
And when you hear that frompeople, it's very easy to go oh
man, that shows me that this hasbeen successful because it's
made so-and-so's day better.
Cara (30:57):
Absolutely, and I say all throughout the orientation I'm
from the success team.
I'm a real person and we are ateam full of real people, and so
that's so awesome.
I'm like I'm not faking it.
I promise we are real peopleand we're actually really all
very excited to help you, andthis is what it looks like.
Yeah, so when you get ouremails, please know this is
who's responding to you.
Yeah, and I did want to pointout one other benefit of an
(31:19):
orientation new employees.
So we've had some recent hires,and I think two out of three so
far have been to an orientation, and so it's a great tool.
If we're using it to educateour podcasters or our customers
on our product, we actually alsouse it for our own employees,
and so it's a really it's anadded benefit to have
orientations available even forthat.
Priscilla (31:39):
That is a really good point, especially because you
would have people that arejoining not your support team,
so they're not going through allthis rigorous training that
someone in support goes through.
But maybe it's a designer who'sgoing to work on one very
specific part of the product, ormaybe it's a marketer who's
working on one.
You know specific strategy, butto help them with their work,
they need to have a goodunderstanding of the product,
(32:01):
since they can come to anorientation on their first week
for 30 minutes and get a goodunderstanding of it to help them
better their own work.
That's a great example, some ofthe things that we would
recommend you think through asyou're considering this kind of
a thing, because not everyone'sproactive support and education
is going to look like how we'vedone orientations.
(32:21):
But there are a lot of thingsto think through when you're
trying to decide how you aregoing to educate your customers.
So the first thing is timing.
When do you want to get thiseducation to your customers?
Do you want to hit them rightoff the bat when they sign up?
Do you want it to be that firstthing, or do you want to give a
little time and come in at aplace later in their journey
(32:42):
where you can give them a littlebit more of like specific and
directed education.
You know what I mean.
For us, it's right in thebeginning, because you have to
have the foundation knowledge.
But for something else that'snot super technical, you might
say, hey, actually we don't needto come in right at the
beginning, but once they upgradeto a pro plan, that's when we
need to come in, because nowthey have access to all these
(33:04):
other features or something likethat.
Right Another thing, Cara, Iknow that you went through a lot
of trial and error with, wassoftware.
What software are you going touse?
What did you end up trying?
And then, where did you end uplanding when it came to software
?
Cara (33:18):
We started with StreamYard and it was great.
The only thing that we reallywanted in the end was like a
landing page.
We wanted it to be veryuser-friendly and we wanted it
all kind of held in one place,and so we actually now use
Crowdcast, and Crowdcast hasbeen wonderful.
We have a full-blown channelthat offers multiple orientation
dates, because we were seeingpodcasters want to sign up but
(33:40):
they can't make that date nextweek, and so we said, okay,
here's a whole month, pick whichone you want, and it's updated.
And so Crowdcast has been avery reliable and user-friendly
channel for streaming live.
Jordan (33:52):
Yeah, I love that.
It offers flexibility for theusers too.
It's not like you're going tomiss your window to be in this
live orientation and sorry,that's it.
Priscilla (34:01):
That's all you get, yeah, but that was a big part of
that early discovery was tofigure out how we want to like.
What is that platform going tolook like.
That's going to enable us togive these orientations in the
best way possible.
And, like you said, we did useStreamYard for a little bit and
they were good.
I remember liking StreamYardbut we ended up with Crowdcast
because they really had thatlanding page aspect, which was
really nice.
(34:22):
One of the things I know wetalked about was who should lead
it.
Picking the right person who'sgoing to really have a lot of
joy in this is really important.
You might find that youactually don't want the same
person to lead every single week, that you want it to be a
rotating cast, or, you know,maybe your team just doesn't
have the ability for it to beone person to dedicate time to
it every week, and so you wantto give people one orientation a
(34:43):
month and you split it upamongst your team.
Those kind of strategies.
You want to look at that likewho's going to really enjoy it
and who maybe isn't the best fitfor that personal kind of
training and coaching.
And then I know, Cara, that wehad a lot of conversations about
promotion how you get it infront of your customers.
Oh yeah, what are some of thestrategies that we used,
(35:05):
especially in the beginning?
I know that it's like evolved,but can you talk about a little
bit of those strategies likefrom the beginning?
Cara (35:10):
Well, I mentioned earlier those cold emails.
Yeah, so, many emails just likethey signed up and we got their
email.
I sent it to them and that wasnot.
It was not worth the investmentof time for me.
So we needed to get it out infront of everybody more
consistently and then give themthe option to sign up.
We used our weekly newsletterthat goes out and we did see a
(35:31):
lot of success with that.
We also would share.
We have a community group forBuzzsprout and so we would share
it there, I think weekly.
Every time we'd have one andwe'd set a reminder hey, we're
going live in an hour.
You could register here and allof that really did get the ball
rolling.
I mean, the word got out and wehad attendees, but it still
wasn't really targetingnecessarily new podcasters,
(35:54):
because they may or may not begetting the newsletter, Maybe
they didn't choose to subscribe,or in the Facebook community
group again, like you have to bein the group.
So we wanted to get it in frontof new signups at Buzzsprout.
Priscilla (36:07):
Yeah, and one of the things that we did do right from
the beginning was we includedit in our support signatures yes
, so that people could sign upright from the beginning.
Was we included it in oursupport signatures?
Yes, so that people could signup right from the support email?
And then we would alsoproactively send it to people
who interacted with Buzzsproutsupport, like right after they
signed up and said like I needhelp launching, and we'd say,
hey, great, here's someresources, but also join this
(36:29):
orientation next week.
That's going to be the best.
And so we were very proactivein like pushing it through
support to people.
But you're right, well, it gotthe target that we needed.
It was reliant on the people inthe support team to actually be
the ones pushing it.
Cara (36:43):
Yes, All of those are still in place.
In addition to we have added itto our onboarding email.
So if you don't publish anepisode right away when you sign
up for Buzzsprout, you'll getan email saying, hey, are you
ready to publish your firstepisode?
And that orientation link isincluded there, that invitation,
and I think that's a reallygreat email, because maybe they
(37:04):
signed up and then they startedlooking at things and like me
and said no, this is too much, Ican't do it.
And so here we are saying it'sokay, it's okay, come join me in
this orientation, I'll walk youthrough it, it's not that hard,
let's just check it out and sothey can sign up that way, and
that has been.
I feel like that's reallyincreased the number of signups,
and so that's been exciting.
Priscilla (37:25):
Yeah, as you're thinking about this and how this
can look in the support you'reoffering your customers, think
through like, what are the bestways that I'm going to promote
this to the people who Iactually want to be, the ones
who sign up and come to theorientation?
And you know, for us it took usa minute to get to those
welcome emails, but that's justbecause we wanted to make sure
the orientations were successfulin the way that we wanted them
(37:46):
to be before we startedincorporating them in our
onboarding processes.
But once we were like, okay,yeah, these are great and we
just need to now get more peoplein here, that's when we really
started putting them in thatonboarding and it became really
successful.
So, as you're working throughit, like, think of those
different strategies to getthese orientation invitations,
or whatever you call yours, intothe hands of people who really
(38:08):
need that.
Ok, and then a couple ofpitfalls to avoid.
We talked about some of these.
But length you want to make surethat it's easy to consume for
people.
Don't make them sign up for atwo-hour orientation.
That's going to be so long thatthey have to block aside time
for it afterwards.
(38:35):
That she says to everyone youcan leave or you can stay for
the Q&A.
It's easy to do during a lunchbreak, you can watch it, you
don't have to set aside time forit.
So think about the length, beaware and consider your
customers in that sense.
Think about the technical depththat's needed for your
customers to be successful.
So you don't want to get tootechnical, but you might,
depending on the product you'resupporting, you might need to
give some technical kind offoundational knowledge, and so
(38:58):
you want to be careful tobalance that.
And then content accuracy.
You know there are a lot ofchanges in the podcasting
industry, and I'm sure itapplies to so many other
industries that things arealways changing, yes, and so you
want to make sure that thecontent you're giving in your
orientations is always accurate.
So, Cara, I know for you you'reconstantly revising your script
(39:18):
, you're constantly updatingthings based on how the product
is changing or how the industrychanges, and so you know, be
aware of that your script foryour orientation or your
education or your training oryour class or whatever you call
it, that should be a livingdocument that is always updating
and always changing.
And maybe you start doingorientations and you realize
people don't have questionsabout this page.
(39:40):
I don't need to spend twominutes on this page.
I can spend 30 seconds on thatpage and then move on, because
people don't have questionsabout that, and so be aware of
that.
We talked about class sizes.
Don't let it get too big,because then you lose the
camaraderie of the orientation,which is what you really want to
hone in on and let people feellike they're a part of this
group, and so, yeah, don't letthem get too big.
(40:02):
Try to make sure there's enoughpeople there so that there's
conversation.
But there can still be value inan orientation.
That's two people, as long asthere's engagement there and
they're tracking andunderstanding what they're being
taught.
And then the last thing I haveon my list here is just host
burnout.
Jordan (40:18):
Yeah.
Priscilla (40:21):
Be aware of the person who is hosting these.
It can take a lot of energy tosit there with a new group of
people every week and have anexciting personality and engage
with everyone.
It can be tough over time.
Oh yeah, and so you want tocheck in with your host and talk
with them about hey, how areyou feeling?
Do you need to take, you know,a week break?
Do you need someone to fill infor you?
Like, talk with them, be awareof that burnout, because what
(40:43):
you don't want to do is push,push, push, start doing so many
of these over a week and thenhave it just hit a wall and then
your host is like, listen, Ican't do this anymore and no one
else is trained and ready toback them up.
Do you have any other pitfalls,Cara, as someone who really led
the charge on this project?
Cara (41:01):
I would say like, just don't put too much pressure on
yourself to be perfect the firsttime.
It is live.
But one thing I always startout with when I do the
orientation is just because wework in the podcasting industry
doesn't mean that my audio isgoing to be perfect.
So if I have a glitch, pleaselet me know.
We are not immune.
And so just being real, likejust viewing it as you are a
real person, and especially witha discovery project, if you're
(41:23):
just implementing it.
We did a lot of ups and downsand trial and error, so just
keep looking forward and don'tadd so much pressure on yourself
to be perfect the first time.
Your customers will teach youthe right fit and you'll work
that out as you continue to trythings out.
Priscilla (41:38):
Great advice that is really good advice, yeah, so key
takeaway, I think, from thisepisode is that education is
proactive support, and proactivesupport is remarkable support,
and so taking the time to investin this kind of training
strategy, this proactive supportstrategy, can really result in
a remarkable experience for yourcustomers 100% worth the
(42:01):
investment.
Cara (42:02):
Yeah, not only for the customers but for us as a team.
That knowledge base and justeducating our customers is going
to help everybody.
It's going to help uscommunicate, it's going to help
build confidence, both for thecustomer and then as we're
troubleshooting things.
So, absolutely, and also theconnection, the human connection
is the biggest part, just beingable to say, yep, we're here on
(42:25):
this journey with you, we'rehere to support you.
Priscilla (42:27):
I love it.
Yeah, if you have launched aneducational initiative with your
customers or if you are lookingto do it like what worked, what
didn't work, I want you toreach out to us.
You can text us directly usingthat link in the show notes and
let us know what things you didthat really worked well, or what
things you tried that maybedidn't work so well that other
(42:49):
people can avoid, and we'llshare that on a future episode
if you want to send us in yourthoughts.
Thanks for joining us for this,Cara.
It was really great to talkabout orientations with you.
It was really fun, Thank you somuch.
Cara (42:59):
Well, you know it's my passion project.
I love them, I love theorientations and they do really
fill my cup, so I'm excited toshare about it, and I really
hope that your listeners willtake this and take on the
challenge in their companies aswell.
I can't wait to hear about that.
Priscilla (43:18):
It's time for Support in Real Life, our segment where
we discuss real life supportexperiences.
So what question do you havefor us today, Jordan?
Jordan (43:27):
All right, we have a question from Support Driven
Slack that says hi y'all.
I'm curious how you mighthandle the situation where a
customer sent in a ticket, theteam verified it is a bug and
sent to the developers, but theissue will take a couple weeks
for the developers to have thefix released.
Do you keep the ticket with thecustomer open or on hold, or
let them know the date the issuefix will be released and then
(43:48):
mark the ticket as solved?
Priscilla (43:50):
It's a good question.
It is a good question.
I think that the biggest thingwhen I hear that, the biggest
thing I like take from it isthis idea that like maybe you
would let them know hey, you'reright, we see the bug that
should be released in a coupleof weeks, have a great day and
you send that.
And what you lose by doing thatand closing the ticket is the
(44:12):
connection with the customeronce the solve has been released
.
And like that win.
You know, a lot of times we'lltalk in support about like
getting the win, like you go getthe win.
Like we fixed the thing thatthey ran into.
Now go get the win.
Like don't let it fizzle out,capitalize on the fact that they
got whatever they asked forsolved, or it got released, or
(44:33):
it got updated or whatever it is.
So get the win.
And so I would highly recommendnot just closing the ticket.
So we use Help Scout and thenHelp Scout, there's a snooze
feature, and so you can snoozean email for however long you
need to and so say you know thatthe fix is going to be released
in about two weeks.
Snooze that email for two weeksand then when it pops back up,
(44:54):
you can check and see if the fixhas been released.
Then you can email the customerand say hey, this thing we
talked about two weeks ago, wehave not forgotten you.
It is live now.
You should be all set to go.
If you run into any questions,let me know, and then that
allows you to get the win.
Cara (45:08):
Oh yeah.
Priscilla (45:08):
And it makes your customer feel like, oh my gosh,
they remembered me, yeah.
Be like oh my gosh, theyremembered me, yeah.
And if you don't have a snoozeoption you know, because a lot
of people don't you can makeyourself a to-do to follow up
with them.
You can use tagging to tag thequestion and then come back to
it.
You can leave it pending andthen that way you don't lose it
but never miss the opportunityto follow up.
Cara (45:31):
Always put yourself as a customer.
What would you want?
Yeah, it would make my day tobe concerned about something and
it kind of gives a high five tolike if they're the one that
pointed out the bug.
I think they said they're theones that wrote in like thank
you so much for helping us findthis.
Like all right, we're in thistogether and so absolutely make
that connection Again.
Let them know, let yourcustomer know you're in this as
(45:53):
a team and it's fixed for you,and have a good day after that.
Then you can close it.
Priscilla (45:57):
Yeah, that just made me think like one step beyond
that.
When people have featurerequests for something and they
say I really wish like it's notnecessarily a bug, but they're
like I really wish that thisproduct or this feature could do
this thing, and you starttracking that, like in your
voice of the customer project orhowever it is that you track
feature requests, if thatbecomes a feature down the road,
(46:18):
go back to those customers andsay, hey, I know last year you
wrote in and asked about youknow whatever dynamic content.
Well, I want to let you know wejust launched it and we'd really
like you to test it out and letus know what you think.
The impact that that has onyour customer is huge because it
accurately communicates to yourcustomer that you cared about
(46:38):
them, because by thinking ofthem and keeping them like top
of mind or keeping a way to findget back to that person, that
shows that you care about themand it communicates that to them
when you reach out to them, andso we do that a lot at
Buzzsprout.
Support is whenever there's anew feature that gets launched
that we know either came from afeature request or just like
aligns with some featurerequests that we have, we will
(47:01):
say like hey, Cara, can you gotake an hour and go find some of
those people that requestedthis and let them know that it's
been launched?
One.
It allows us to have peopleusing it right away, but it also
gives us the benefit of gettingthat win with that customer who
requested that.
Cara (47:17):
Those are my favorite emails to send.
Honestly, they really are.
Priscilla (47:20):
I love them too, yeah they're so fun.
Cara (47:22):
You're like guess what yeah exactly, guess what.
Priscilla (47:26):
We did it.
I told you we might do it andwe did it.
Yeah, absolutely, those are fun.
Well, if you have a question ora support story that you would
like us to discuss, or just likea story you want us to shout
out, you can email us athappytohelp at buzzsproutcom, or
you can text the show using thetext, the show link in the
description, and we may discussyour question or story on a
future episode.
(47:46):
As always, if you liked thisepisode, please share it with
someone who works in customersupport and leave a review on
Apple Podcasts.
We would love to hear what youthink about the show.
Thank you all so much forlistening.
Now go and make someone's day.
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer
support from the people atBuzzsprout.
I'm your host, Priscilla Brooke.
In today's episode we're takinga deep dive into the importance
of customer education.
We'll talk about a recentproject that we've been working
on and how educating yourcustomers can move you toward
the goal of offering remarkablesupport.
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
(00:20):
So it's not every day that ourguest is joining us and
recording in their closet.
Is it Jordan?
Have we ever had this?
Jordan (00:30):
As a podcast producer, I get so excited when I see
someone recording from theircloset, because there is no
better space for sound than acloset.
I don't know what it is.
Priscilla (00:40):
Sometimes there's like the clothes hanging there.
They absorb all of the bouncingsound and so it just gives you
a cleaner, crisper sound.
Jordan (00:48):
Yeah.
Priscilla (00:48):
Well, today we have Cara Pacetti joining us.
Cara's on the Buzzsprout team.
She's been on an episode ofHappy to Help before.
She has an education backgroundand an administration
background, but really, thething about Cara that makes her
so good for this job is that shehas a huge passion for people.
The thing about Cara that makesher so good for this job is
that she has a huge passion forpeople, so I'm really excited
because she's been working onsome really cool customer
(01:08):
education initiatives over thelast year, and so that's what
we're going to talk about todayis customer education, the
importance of it, somestrategies for doing it well,
how Cara has really taken thatproject and run with it over the
last couple of months, and whatshe's learned along the way, so
I'm really excited to talkabout that.
Before we get into all of that,though, I, Cara, want to ask
(01:29):
you the question that we askeveryone who comes on the
podcast who has made your dayrecently?
Cara (01:34):
I did know this question was coming, so I gave it a
little bit of forethought beforejumping on today and actually
it's a small example, but I feellike it's still significant.
I was paying a bill, a medicalbill, because that's what I do
in my family, but I was not thepatient and it wasn't my
dependents.
It was for my husband and it'san HSA card, so of course I need
(01:56):
a receipt.
Well, it's not my email on file.
I'm not the patient, and theadministrative or the billing
person I was working withstarted to get a little funny
about that, which I always crackup when people do that.
I'm like I'm trying to pay you.
Why is this hard, but I get it.
She was a little hesitant and Ikind of explained but at the
(02:18):
end of it I kind of backed offand said you know, it's okay, he
can forward it to me, just sendit to his email.
And I felt like she heard thathuman heart of mine and went you
know what we can do this?
What's your email address?
Let me just forward this and youknow, kind of she didn't break
any rules, she just kind of wenta little bit out of her
standard procedure and, boom,sent it to me.
(02:38):
I was able to print it in thatmoment, file it away, which was
very helpful and just I thoughtthat was, that was customer
service, and it just made my daythat she took a moment to make
it easy for me.
It was no benefit to her really, it was one extra step, but I
was appreciative that she tookthat for me and did that.
Priscilla (02:55):
Yes, yeah, I feel like we've talked about it on
the show before like this ideaof giving your employees, or
giving the people on your team,the ability to make those
changes in the moment when itmakes sense to do it.
Now, obviously, if you havelike procedures and things you
have to follow, like those arein place for security reasons,
that makes sense.
But, like you said, in thissituation it wasn't a breach of
(03:16):
security, it was just a emailthat needed to be sent, and so,
like giving people the abilityto make those kind of decisions
in the moment and like trustingyour team to do that, I think
can, like you said, have thesereally good, positive outcomes,
whereas if she had to stay withsending the email to the person
directly, it wouldn't be the endof the world, but it wouldn't
(03:37):
have been a good experience.
You wouldn't have felt reallygood after the call and it
wouldn't have made you feel anykind of way about the person you
were working with or thecompany that you were working
with in a positive way.
Cara (03:46):
So I think that's a great example.
Priscilla (03:47):
And it's like a really good, like very small
example, but where it actuallymade your day easier and it made
your day better.
Cara (03:53):
Well, when you asked the question, that is what popped up
.
So she, she, I remembered it.
So it was little but notinsignificant.
Yeah, no, that's great.
Oh, I love that.
Priscilla (04:02):
So today we're talking about customer education
.
A couple episodes ago we hadChase Clemons on from 37 Signals
and he talked about how theirsupport team kind of used
themselves as a fire departmentor like a local fire station and
the idea being that like, yes,they put out fires and they go
to people's homes and they solveproblems you know, obviously
(04:26):
not the support team but thefire department but they also
handle the initiatives like firesafety and prevention that the
fire department doesn't onlyhandle the putting out of the
fires but it also handles theeducating people on how to avoid
fires in the first place, ortaking initiatives in the
community to have, like, firehydrants set up and things like
that, so that you're ready forthe fires when they come.
(04:48):
And so I, you know, kind of gotme thinking about some of the
things that we do in thatproactive support realm at
Buzzsprout to get ahead of thosefires.
Out to you, Cara, because abouta year ago we started working
on a project that has becomewhat we call Buzzsprout
Orientations as a way to educateand train our podcasters as
(05:11):
they are getting used toBuzzsprout and getting started
with their podcasts before theylaunch, and so I thought it'd be
a really great time for us tohave a conversation about
customer education, theimportance of it and that
project and how it kind of hasevolved over the last year.
As we've been learning andseeing where those pitfalls are,
as we've been falling into themand figuring out, you know how
(05:31):
to solve those problems.
So before we get started, Iwant to kind of set the scene on
why customer education isimportant.
A lot of support teams I wouldsay all support teams really but
like the majority of supportteams, really focus on that
reactive support.
But there is an aspect ofremarkable support that is the
proactive support side of things, and so that is the stuff that
(05:54):
gets out ahead of the fires,that gets out ahead of the
issues, and so we, you know,recently had an episode about
knowledge bases.
That is proactive support.
That's giving people a way tofind their own answers before
having to come to us as asupport team, and this training
project that we've been workingon is another great example of
that proactive support.
Cara (06:14):
Totally agree with you, Priscilla.
It's so important, and theknowledge base is one thing, but
I know when I first started, mytraining was done in person
with you and I also had a lot ofstuff to read through, because
we have excellent help articlesand we have a giant knowledge
base.
We also have great videos.
But there was something aboutthat one-on-one conversation
(06:34):
with you that stuck, and maybethat's just me as a learner, but
I think there's differentcustomers all throughout and
their learning styles are justso different, and so you want to
not only educate the customersbut also find the style and the
format that they can learn it in.
Priscilla (06:49):
Yeah, the fact of the matter is that customers can't
succeed if they don't understandwhat they're doing or they
don't understand the product.
Like they can't succeed inusing something if you don't
know what it is or you don'tknow how to use it.
You know what I mean.
You can have a jump rope, andif you don't know what you're
supposed to do with that jumprope, you're not going to ever
learn how to jump rope.
But as soon as you understandwhat's supposed to do, then
(07:10):
you're like OK, well, now I canpick it up pretty well.
And so it's this idea that,like, we, as support
professionals, can come in andgo, hey, in order for you to
succeed, we have to educate youon how to use the product in a
way that will make you succeed.
Let's talk about some of thethings that we were seeing back
when we were first thinkingabout launching this project and
some of the things that wenoticed as far as, like, that
(07:31):
need for education.
Cara (07:33):
Usually the phrases that I see are I'm not a tech person,
I just I don't understand tech,it's too much.
I'm not tech savvy, but alsothere would be a lot of back and
forth emails, so we would kindof introduce this is how it
works.
We are a podcast host, we needto get your content out to the
directories, and that justdidn't resonate because they
(07:54):
just didn't understand that.
And you could tell with theback and forth wait, but wait, I
have to download my episode.
Well, no, you need to uploadyour episode.
And it's just confusing and Ikind of think of like if you
have family members who maybedidn't grow up with computers
and internet and podcasting, andI think about when they ask me
for help and I'm leaning overtheir shoulder and I'm showing
(08:15):
them on the screen and I'mhelping them, and that's what
we'd see in the inbox and I justwent man, I wish there was a
way, like if I could just meetwith this one podcast or this
one customer and help them.
Maybe it would make things alittle easier for them.
And so those are kind of somethings that I saw in the inbox.
Priscilla (08:32):
Yeah, I definitely feel like one of the big things
we saw a lot is this continualquestion email thread that goes
on and on and on, where you havesomeone who writes in their new
they ask one question and youanswer that question and then
they ask the second question andthere are all these really
basic, really fundamentalquestions and you can say, hey,
go read this article.
(08:52):
And sometimes people will dothat, especially if they're
taking ownership of their ownknowledge.
But sometimes what we would seeis that people would see how
quickly and how great we were inresponding to them, that they
would go.
Man, I can just keep askingCara my next question.
I know she's going to get backto me really quickly with a
really solid answer, and so thenwhat you end up is with these
like really really long emailchains back and forth with
(09:16):
someone who's just trying togather that foundational
knowledge, and we were noticingthat was taking up a lot of time
in the support inbox.
It was taking away time frombeing able to troubleshoot more
technical issues or more urgentissues that were coming in, and
so that was one of the thingsthat I remember seeing, I also
think, this confusion about whatour product did so for us, it's
(09:38):
podcasting, and podcasting canbe pretty technical, and so we'd
have a lot of people that wouldwrite in like, isn't this what
you do?
Aren't you supposed to do thisfor me?
What am I paying you for?
And it was because they did notunderstand the service that we
were providing.
Now I hear myself say that andI go OK, well, shouldn't you be
able to clarify that, like inthe product or in your marketing
(09:58):
or whatever?
And the truth is, yeah, I meanthat was clear in the marketing,
but there's still this level ofmisunderstanding that someone
can come into, especiallysomething more technical like
podcasting.
Then they can come into withthis misunderstanding of what it
is that they're paying for whenthey pay for a Buzzsprout
account, what the features thatthey're getting when they reach
out to us.
Cara (10:18):
Another thing that we would see and this one's kind of
tough when we did see it isthey do everything on their own,
never reach out to support.
And then they reach out tosupport and say I published my
episode.
How come it's not on Spotifyand iHeart and Apple?
Yeah, and we look and we'relike, oh no, you didn't walk
through the process ofsubmitting your podcast there,
but yeah, so we'd see that here.
They did this legwork.
They didn't even reach out andthen they are still.
(10:40):
They missed the mark.
They missed their launch date.
I remember seeing that.
That one was tough.
Priscilla (10:44):
That is a really good example of why it is important
to do this educational piece,because, you're right, the issue
that we were seeing was thatpeople wouldn't submit to
directories before they wantedtheir launch to happen, and
there is a wait period there.
It's much shorter now, but acouple of years ago it could
have been two weeks, and so ifsomeone was planning on
(11:05):
launching their podcast onSeptember 1st and then on
September 1st they uploaded theepisode and it wasn't live in
Apple, and by the time they'dreach out to us, it was too late
to fix the problem for them,because there had to be this
waiting period, because Appleneeded to review the podcast
submission, and so it was verymuch like oh no, now your first
interaction with support issomething that we can't actually
(11:27):
fix for you, which makes thiswhole thing start on a sour note
, which is not a good way tostart.
And if we're looking at ourpodcasters and going, how can we
make them succeed?
Well then we need to get aheadof that and make sure they know
that process really well.
Cara (11:42):
Absolutely.
I feel like, from our vantagepoint, we were like this was
avoidable.
Yeah, this was avoidable.
How can we make this not happenagain?
Priscilla (11:49):
Yeah, and I think, like just the terminology,
giving them that understandingof the terminology helps them
feel more comfortable and moreconfident and have those
educated answers on your endwithout having to come to
support all the time.
Cara (12:01):
And when they do reach out to support, we can better
assist them because they areusing that correct terminology
in the right way.
And then so when you'retroubleshooting, you're like OK,
I know exactly, becausesometimes we have to read in
between the lines a little bit.
Priscilla (12:14):
Yeah, another reason I thought that really getting
ahead of this education side ofthings was really important was
because anyone who has an onlinesubscription service or online
payment in any way has to dealwith disputes.
A lot of times, the reasonpeople are disputing charges is
because they don't recognize thecharge.
That could be because theydon't know that it's a monthly
(12:34):
subscription service, eventhough they put their credit
card in or they don't know howmuch it's going to be each month
.
And all of this can be found inyour account.
But again, if you don't knowhow to find it, you don't know
what you're looking for, thenyou won't be able to put those
points together.
And so you know, having theability to educate on what to
expect when you're gettingbilled, how often, what days
(12:55):
even two sentences in anorientation can give people a
little bit more understandingand then can avoid those
confusions about billingdisputes and that feeling of
like sleaziness that you cansometimes feel when you don't
understand why you're beingcharged money.
Whenever anything is related tomoney, it always can feel kind
of very easily.
Cara (13:14):
Yeah, getting all that information out there up front
to me shows transparency.
It shows trust, both from thecustomer and from you, that
you're going to say hey, at theend of the day, we want you to
be successful, we want it to bewith us, but if it's not, that's
okay.
This is how you cancel X, y, z,and if you need help we're here
.
And so education at the frontto me shows confidence and it
(13:37):
shows trust.
Priscilla (13:37):
Yeah.
The last thing I want to saythat I personally ran into a lot
before we started doing theseorientations was just the
request for phone support.
So I would run into situationswhere we'd be back and forth
with someone in an email and I'dgo, man, a 10 minute
conversation would actually be alot easier and I always, when
someone asks for phone support,I always want to say yes, yeah.
Cara (13:59):
Yeah.
Priscilla (13:59):
But I know that is not sustainable for our team
right now, as we are and aswe're set up to offer phone
support.
It's just not something that wecan do consistently for
everyone.
But that doesn't mean I don'twant to offer it to some people
who can really benefit from it,and so there would be times when
I would find someone who reallyjust wasn't understanding the
process via email, and so Iwould offer to get on a phone
(14:20):
call with them, and it would bea 10 minute conversation that
would give them so muchunderstanding of what whatever
confusion was causing them to befrustrated Right.
So, whether they didn'tunderstand the billing thing, or
whether they didn't understandwhy they couldn't launch their
podcast at a certain time, orwhatever it was, a very short,
educational phone call wouldrelieve so much of that stress
(14:43):
that just came from not knowing,and I would get off these phone
calls and the majority of thetime would go.
Man, I wish I could calleveryone who was confused,
because it really would help somany people to lose some of that
anxiety around the wholelaunching process or the whole
billing process or whatever itis that causes that.
You know causes the frustrationwhen you reach out to support
(15:04):
having someone to actually talkto you.
And then they go oh man, you'rea real person and I'm a real
person and we're talking aboutthis and you're explaining it to
me while I'm driving in the car.
Like I remember having a phonecall with someone while she was
like in her commute and I wasexplaining to her how RSS feeds
work and the technical side ofthings.
And as soon as I explained itfor her, it clicked and she went
well, now it makes sense why ithas to be done that way, and
(15:26):
it's not just that you're beingdifficult as a support team, but
that this is the process andhow it has to work.
And then her frustrations andanxieties just disappeared
because now she knows howeverything works.
And so that was something thatI feel like we saw a lot was
that request for phone support,and just as a team, we really
wanted to give that.
You know, yeah, all right.
(15:46):
So all of that to say.
We started to ask ourselves whatcould we do to get ahead of all
of these questions?
What if we could reduce theproblems that people are running
into, reduce those questionsthat people have before they
have them?
What could we do to stop thatahead of time.
And so that's where, you know,we kind of started to lean into
this proactive support a littlebit more.
And then we started looking at aproject that would allow us to
(16:07):
do demos is what we were callingthem at the beginning with
customers and how we could dothat in a sustainable way.
And so that's when we startedmoving into kind of this
Buzzsprout demo discoveryproject.
And so, you know, the idea wasto start thinking through how
are we going to train podcastersin a way that would be
(16:28):
sustainable for our team, thatwouldn't be super time consuming
because you could offerone-on-ones and just constantly
be doing one-on-ones with peopleand training them.
But would that be the return oneffort that we want it to be,
or would it be too much and notenough of the result?
Yeah, so, Cara, what do youremember about those early
beginning stages of the projectand what we considered when we
(16:50):
were building this project?
Cara (16:52):
Well, it's funny that you say the one-on-ones, because
that even actually was a part ofour discovery project as well.
We gave that a try For somepodcasters.
We'd identify in the inbox andsay they would benefit from a
one-on-one, and I did a coupleof them.
It was intimidating, but Ifound that what was done
one-on-one could be done in agroup.
(17:12):
It was the same demo I wasdoing for just one person, but I
was jumping on calls and sayingthe same thing, and so we kind
of learned and, like you said,the time just wasn't worth the
investment there.
And so one part I rememberspecifically in getting started
was okay, how are we going totry this out?
We got to give it a try and Ihad to cold email new signups
(17:36):
and like, as they signed up, Iwould just.
I just went through the listand emailed and asked them to
come join an orientation, andthat's how we got our first
audience.
Yeah, for an orientation.
Priscilla (17:46):
Yeah, so I know we talked about one on ones as a
strategy and we talked aboutorientations, which was the idea
that we'd have like multiplepeople in a call with you.
We also talked about likerecording a demo and just having
a demo video.
That would also be prettysustainable for us, so that like
leans on the sustainable sideof things, we'd make a video,
post it, and that's that.
(18:07):
We shared the demo with people.
But what we noticed with thedemo was that then you're
lacking that personal connection, and part of this project that
we started to realize as we wereworking on it was this gives us
a way to personally connectwith our new users.
As they're signing up, theirfirst interaction with a support
team is going to be in personwith Cara, which really was one
(18:30):
of the strengths I mean, it isone of the strengths that
Buzzsprout has is, you know, wehave a really great support
system for our customers andthey know that and they know
that we're here for them if theyneed us, and so it was kind of
like gave us that big win rightout the gate when we had these
person to person, and so that'swhy the demos really didn't feel
like they were solving theproblem that we were trying to
(18:50):
solve, and then the one-on-onesfelt like they were solving the
problem and giving this reallyhyper-personalized one-on-one
option, but it was notsustainable, and so that's like
you were saying how we ended upwith the orientations, kind of
this like option in the middleof the two.
Cara, do you want to just likeexplain to our listeners, like,
what the orientations look like?
Cara (19:10):
So an orientation is a live stream event.
Attendees register and attendlive and I basically share my
screen and walk through whatyour Buzzsprout account looks
like, what are the steps ongetting your podcast launched
and listed on the directories,and during that time the
attendees can ask theirquestions.
We actually prompt them to aska question before they even sign
(19:32):
up, and so it's veryinteractive.
Even though I'm not seeing thefaces of the attendees, we're
interacting and theconversations are great because
they're actually helping eachother.
Sometimes when I'm talking, Iremember they were a Buzzsprout
customer, maybe they've been inpodcasting, but they clarified
the question for me from anotherattendee because it didn't make
a lot of sense, and they said Ithink she means this.
I'm like, thank you.
(19:53):
And so it feels like I'm in aclassroom with or maybe not even
a classroom that's a littleformal but a very comfortable
space just chatting with ourcustomers who are here to get
launched, and so that's a littlebit about what an orientation
is yeah, the nice thing aboutthe orientations is the fact
that it's for our new podcasters.
Priscilla (20:14):
It's really when we were building it, we were
thinking who are we buildingthis for?
Is it for anyone who's usingBuzzsprout or is it more
specific?
What type of customer are wetrying to target with the
orientations?
And really it was the newpodcaster who's just starting,
who doesn't know what they'redoing.
And so when you think aboutlike a demo, which is a
traditional type of way that alot of support teams educate
(20:36):
their customers, this isdifferent.
While it is giving you a demo,like there's part of your
orientation that is, a demo ofthe product.
There's also this aspect of thetraining side of it, with the
how to get listed on directoriesor strategies and
recommendations for naming yourpodcast.
There's like this extra levelof our personal guidance in the
(21:01):
orientations, more than justhere's how you change your
billing.
This this here's how you, youknow, get to whatever, but it's
more of here's what you need tothink about as you're getting in
that launch position, gettingready to go, and then you have
that added section of the Q&Athat really encourages the
engagement.
Do you remember why we landedon naming them orientations?
Cara (21:23):
Well, you know when you first start middle school or
high school.
Yeah, totally I remember, yeah,I remember and you go into your
school and you got to walk theclassroom and you walk your
schedule and you find out whereyour locker is and that's the
orientation, that's just gettingyou there.
And so I know you and I,Priscilla, we're like it's not a
demo, because we're not juststanding up there projecting
(21:46):
this thing and there's no parton the podcaster side.
Jordan (21:49):
Well, and a demo can be done, like on a YouTube video
that you just send out to anyone.
Cara (21:54):
Yeah, right, but in orientation you're walking the
halls like you're meeting yourteachers, you're in it.
And so I remember us landing on.
It's like this is theBuzzsprout class of May 21st and
they are going to get orientedwith Buzzsprout and podcasting
in general and we're here tosupport them.
And that's how we landed there,and I do love that they're
(22:14):
called orientations, I thinkit's fun.
Priscilla (22:16):
Yeah, I remember us talking about the names and one
of the things we really likedabout calling them orientations
was the fact that you would have, you know, five to 10 people in
an orientation each week andthey would feel like they're
part of the class, of whatever.
And there was this camaraderiewith the podcasters who were
joining you, like you were justsaying that are helping each
(22:39):
other, you know, in the chat,while you're helping them in the
video, and you know we haven'treally gone there yet with these
, but I liked the idea of, okay,what could we push more beyond
these orientations to actuallylike encourage this community
more down the line of these?
You know 20 people who were inthis orientation together.
(22:59):
How can they continue tosupport each other?
Because we've talked about somany times on this podcast that
podcasting can be very solo andisolating, and so what if we
were able to use theseorientations as a way to be like
you all started in the samemonth, you all launched in the
same month and now you cansupport each other as you
continue podcasting?
And so we haven't really gonethat far yet, but that was part
(23:19):
of the reason for naming themorientations was that we really
want to build that idea of thisis your group like.
These are your people to helpyou and Cara's walking you all
through it and giving you allthe information you need to be
successful.
Cara (23:32):
And it's so awesome because sometimes when other
people ask a question, they'relike oh OK, they asked my
question's not that silly, I canask too.
And then they get confident toask those questions, whereas
sometimes they may sit quiet.
Priscilla (23:44):
Or they won't know to ask the question.
Yeah, right, like sometimes youdon't know what you don't know.
And so if you're in aone-on-one with someone and you
don't know what question to askand they're going through their
script and then you're done andyou didn't know what questions
to ask, you might miss out oninformation that later you're
going to need.
But if you're in an orientationwith 10 people and Cara goes
(24:04):
through a script and someoneelse thinks of a question, that
might help you to have a betterunderstanding, even if you
wouldn't have thought of thatsame question.
So, yeah, you're right that,like, having more people in the
room can help a full, morewell-rounded knowledge of the
product and how it works and howto be successful.
Okay, so we had the discoveryproject and we did a lot of
testing during that.
We tested different types oforientations or different types
(24:26):
of demos.
We looked at what software arewe going to use that's going to
allow us to have people in theroom with us?
Is everyone going to be onvideo?
Is no one going to be on video?
Are we going to screen share?
Are we not going to screenshare?
How long should these be?
One of the things we talkedabout a lot was how many people
did we want to have in theorientations?
Cara (24:44):
If you make it too large, then sometimes people can talk
over each other or it gets.
Maybe there's so many questionscoming in that me, as the host,
it's hard to keep up with orfollowing up.
If I'm trying to send emailsafterwards, that's 30 people to
follow up with and then, if yougo too little, you lose that
classroom, that orientationfield that we were just talking
(25:05):
about, where, okay, all fivepeople are new and all five
people don't know what to askand so you're missing that
benefit.
And so we decided to cap it at20.
And I remember it starting alittle smaller and now it has
grown to where it's about 10 to15 consistent that attend every
week and sometimes we see 20register, but it's about 10, 15
(25:27):
consistent, yeah, and I thinkthat you know you were saying
that if it's too small you losethat orientation feel.
Priscilla (25:30):
I think if it's too small you lose that orientation
feel.
I think if it gets too big youlose that orientation feel too.
Cara (25:35):
Yeah.
Priscilla (25:35):
Like we could open it up to 50 people, but if 49
people show up in an orientation, you, Cara, have so much more
to cover.
Now you've got all thesequestions coming in and we want
to keep it.
One of the things we talkedabout was we wanted to keep it
(25:57):
easy for people to join withoutfeeling like they were giving up
half of their day, and so wewanted to keep them at 30
minutes.
You kind of sometimes go alittle long with Q&As because
sometimes people have questionsthat need to be that, but really
what you need to be there foris that first 30 minutes and
then, if you need to drop off,you can drop off, and so that
was another reason why we kindof landed on that.
20 people is the cap, andoccasionally we'll open it up a
little bit more than 20 peopleif we need to, but we try not to
(26:18):
get into those higher numbersand if we ever find that people
are wanting to sign up weeklyfor these more than 20 a week,
then we'll add a second one onin the week, because you know we
want to keep that total perorientation low.
I know in the beginning a waythat we were measuring success
was how many people joined theorientation, and we pretty
quickly learned that that is nota good measurement of success,
(26:41):
right?
No, because you could havepeople join and then your script
could be off and not be exactlywhat you wanted it to be, and
so it wasn't beneficial forthose five people, and not be
exactly what you wanted it to be, and so it wasn't beneficial
for those five people.
Or you could have one personjoin and it could be a great
orientation and they learned alot and they got this really
good foundation and in thatsituation it would be successful
(27:01):
because that person got exactlywhat we were trying to do with
the orientation.
And so what other ways do you,as you've been doing these now
for several months, what otherways do?
Cara (27:14):
you use to measure the success of the project.
Some of the things I look at Iwill look at their accounts and
see after the orientation, didthey create an account and did
they upload an episode?
Because to me that is a measureof success.
We walk through that during theorientation.
And another big one is did theysubmit to the directories?
Because that's a big part ofthe orientation and so I like to
see when I look into an accountof someone who attended the
(27:35):
orientation, they have episodesand they're listed on the
directories.
Also, in the inbox, we're notseeing those long one question
like process emails where theyjust keep asking question after
question.
I do see them come in but nowthey're asking well, what's this
magic mastering feature and howdo I enable subscriptions?
(27:55):
And they're talking aboutfeatures and they're learning to
use the different parts of ourproduct and not the like very
foundation of getting started.
Like we conquered that in our30 minute orientation and now
they get to do the other funstuff and we can help them with
that because that's what we'rehere for and so those to me, are
great metrics of success.
Yeah, that's like best possibleoutcome.
Priscilla (28:17):
Yeah Well, and you still see in the inbox sometimes
the people who have those backand forth questions, those
foundation questions, but thoseare not the people that were in
an orientation and you don't seeit from the people that were in
the orientation.
They now have that foundation.
So when they ask thosequestions, like you were saying,
they're the questions that area little more technically
advanced or a little bit morelike I want to tweak and make
(28:38):
things really great.
Cara's enjoyment of doing it.
I think that's a way that Imeasure the success of it.
You know, when you're choosingsomeone to do this, you want to
look at the kind of person thatwould enjoy it.
Because if you have someone whois an extrovert, who loves
(29:01):
people, who loves training andmaking people feel confident in
their knowledge, that person isgoing to do a better job than
someone who is more introverted,who doesn't really love being
on camera and who has a littlebit harder of that, like your
listeners or your attendees aregoing to draft off of that
energy from the person who'shosting it.
(29:22):
And so for me, when I look atthese kind of projects we do and
the success of them, I oftenwant to look back at just the
happiness and the enjoyment fromthe person who is running it.
And so it's fun for me becauseCara, when she comes out of an
orientation, is almost alwayslike oh yeah, that was great,
that was fun, like we had a goodtime, and that tells me that
it's successful because it isbringing life to Cara and it is
(29:45):
educating our podcasters, andboth of those are ways to
measure the success of it.
And if Cara was coming outdrained every week, then you
would question is it worth it tobe doing this for our customers
, if what we're giving up isthis employee satisfaction or
just employee happiness?
And so that's another thingthat when I am looking at
measuring success for thingslike this, that's what I'm
(30:06):
looking at, which is always funbecause Cara loves them and
she's so good at them I do, Ireally do which is always fun
because Tara loves them andshe's so good at them.
Jordan (30:11):
I do, I really do.
I imagine that you gain a lotmore confidence as you go, when
people thank you for it or theytell you oh my gosh, that was so
wonderful, like that completelychanged my experience.
I couldn't have done it withoutyou.
I bet after just a couple ofcomments like that, you're like
yes, let's go to the next one,let's go, we could do it.
Cara (30:28):
Yes, yeah, absolutely.
Priscilla (30:30):
And that's a great point, jordan, is you start to
hear that from people.
Yeah, and they say man, when Ilaunched, I got invited to an
orientation.
I met Cara and she was thefirst person that I met on the
Buzzsprout team and now I feellike I know the people who
develop this product that I'musing and there is this level of
like thank you so much, Icouldn't have done it without
your support and of like, thankyou so much, I couldn't have
(30:50):
done it without your support.
And when you hear that frompeople, it's very easy to go oh
man, that shows me that this hasbeen successful because it's
made so-and-so's day better.
Cara (30:57):
Absolutely, and I say all throughout the orientation I'm
from the success team.
I'm a real person and we are ateam full of real people, and so
that's so awesome.
I'm like I'm not faking it.
I promise we are real peopleand we're actually really all
very excited to help you, andthis is what it looks like.
Yeah, so when you get ouremails, please know this is
who's responding to you.
Yeah, and I did want to pointout one other benefit of an
(31:19):
orientation new employees.
So we've had some recent hires,and I think two out of three so
far have been to an orientation, and so it's a great tool.
If we're using it to educateour podcasters or our customers
on our product, we actually alsouse it for our own employees,
and so it's a really it's anadded benefit to have
orientations available even forthat.
Priscilla (31:39):
That is a really good point, especially because you
would have people that arejoining not your support team,
so they're not going through allthis rigorous training that
someone in support goes through.
But maybe it's a designer who'sgoing to work on one very
specific part of the product, ormaybe it's a marketer who's
working on one.
You know specific strategy, butto help them with their work,
they need to have a goodunderstanding of the product,
(32:01):
since they can come to anorientation on their first week
for 30 minutes and get a goodunderstanding of it to help them
better their own work.
That's a great example, some ofthe things that we would
recommend you think through asyou're considering this kind of
a thing, because not everyone'sproactive support and education
is going to look like how we'vedone orientations.
(32:21):
But there are a lot of thingsto think through when you're
trying to decide how you aregoing to educate your customers.
So the first thing is timing.
When do you want to get thiseducation to your customers?
Do you want to hit them rightoff the bat when they sign up?
Do you want it to be that firstthing, or do you want to give a
little time and come in at aplace later in their journey
(32:42):
where you can give them a littlebit more of like specific and
directed education.
You know what I mean.
For us, it's right in thebeginning, because you have to
have the foundation knowledge.
But for something else that'snot super technical, you might
say, hey, actually we don't needto come in right at the
beginning, but once they upgradeto a pro plan, that's when we
need to come in, because nowthey have access to all these
(33:04):
other features or something likethat.
Right Another thing, Cara, Iknow that you went through a lot
of trial and error with, wassoftware.
What software are you going touse?
What did you end up trying?
And then, where did you end uplanding when it came to software
?
Cara (33:18):
We started with StreamYard and it was great.
The only thing that we reallywanted in the end was like a
landing page.
We wanted it to be veryuser-friendly and we wanted it
all kind of held in one place,and so we actually now use
Crowdcast, and Crowdcast hasbeen wonderful.
We have a full-blown channelthat offers multiple orientation
dates, because we were seeingpodcasters want to sign up but
(33:40):
they can't make that date nextweek, and so we said, okay,
here's a whole month, pick whichone you want, and it's updated.
And so Crowdcast has been avery reliable and user-friendly
channel for streaming live.
Jordan (33:52):
Yeah, I love that.
It offers flexibility for theusers too.
It's not like you're going tomiss your window to be in this
live orientation and sorry,that's it.
Priscilla (34:01):
That's all you get, yeah, but that was a big part of
that early discovery was tofigure out how we want to like.
What is that platform going tolook like.
That's going to enable us togive these orientations in the
best way possible.
And, like you said, we did useStreamYard for a little bit and
they were good.
I remember liking StreamYardbut we ended up with Crowdcast
because they really had thatlanding page aspect, which was
really nice.
(34:22):
One of the things I know wetalked about was who should lead
it.
Picking the right person who'sgoing to really have a lot of
joy in this is really important.
You might find that youactually don't want the same
person to lead every single week, that you want it to be a
rotating cast, or, you know,maybe your team just doesn't
have the ability for it to beone person to dedicate time to
it every week, and so you wantto give people one orientation a
(34:43):
month and you split it upamongst your team.
Those kind of strategies.
You want to look at that likewho's going to really enjoy it
and who maybe isn't the best fitfor that personal kind of
training and coaching.
And then I know, Cara, that wehad a lot of conversations about
promotion how you get it infront of your customers.
Oh yeah, what are some of thestrategies that we used,
(35:05):
especially in the beginning?
I know that it's like evolved,but can you talk about a little
bit of those strategies likefrom the beginning?
Cara (35:10):
Well, I mentioned earlier those cold emails.
Yeah, so, many emails just likethey signed up and we got their
email.
I sent it to them and that wasnot.
It was not worth the investmentof time for me.
So we needed to get it out infront of everybody more
consistently and then give themthe option to sign up.
We used our weekly newsletterthat goes out and we did see a
(35:31):
lot of success with that.
We also would share.
We have a community group forBuzzsprout and so we would share
it there, I think weekly.
Every time we'd have one andwe'd set a reminder hey, we're
going live in an hour.
You could register here and allof that really did get the ball
rolling.
I mean, the word got out and wehad attendees, but it still
wasn't really targetingnecessarily new podcasters,
(35:54):
because they may or may not begetting the newsletter, Maybe
they didn't choose to subscribe,or in the Facebook community
group again, like you have to bein the group.
So we wanted to get it in frontof new signups at Buzzsprout.
Priscilla (36:07):
Yeah, and one of the things that we did do right from
the beginning was we includedit in our support signatures yes
, so that people could sign upright from the beginning.
Was we included it in oursupport signatures?
Yes, so that people could signup right from the support email?
And then we would alsoproactively send it to people
who interacted with Buzzsproutsupport, like right after they
signed up and said like I needhelp launching, and we'd say,
hey, great, here's someresources, but also join this
(36:29):
orientation next week.
That's going to be the best.
And so we were very proactivein like pushing it through
support to people.
But you're right, well, it gotthe target that we needed.
It was reliant on the people inthe support team to actually be
the ones pushing it.
Cara (36:43):
Yes, All of those are still in place.
In addition to we have added itto our onboarding email.
So if you don't publish anepisode right away when you sign
up for Buzzsprout, you'll getan email saying, hey, are you
ready to publish your firstepisode?
And that orientation link isincluded there, that invitation,
and I think that's a reallygreat email, because maybe they
(37:04):
signed up and then they startedlooking at things and like me
and said no, this is too much, Ican't do it.
And so here we are saying it'sokay, it's okay, come join me in
this orientation, I'll walk youthrough it, it's not that hard,
let's just check it out and sothey can sign up that way, and
that has been.
I feel like that's reallyincreased the number of signups,
and so that's been exciting.
Priscilla (37:25):
Yeah, as you're thinking about this and how this
can look in the support you'reoffering your customers, think
through like, what are the bestways that I'm going to promote
this to the people who Iactually want to be, the ones
who sign up and come to theorientation?
And you know, for us it took usa minute to get to those
welcome emails, but that's justbecause we wanted to make sure
the orientations were successfulin the way that we wanted them
(37:46):
to be before we startedincorporating them in our
onboarding processes.
But once we were like, okay,yeah, these are great and we
just need to now get more peoplein here, that's when we really
started putting them in thatonboarding and it became really
successful.
So, as you're working throughit, like, think of those
different strategies to getthese orientation invitations,
or whatever you call yours, intothe hands of people who really
(38:08):
need that.
Ok, and then a couple ofpitfalls to avoid.
We talked about some of these.
But length you want to make surethat it's easy to consume for
people.
Don't make them sign up for atwo-hour orientation.
That's going to be so long thatthey have to block aside time
for it afterwards.
(38:35):
That she says to everyone youcan leave or you can stay for
the Q&A.
It's easy to do during a lunchbreak, you can watch it, you
don't have to set aside time forit.
So think about the length, beaware and consider your
customers in that sense.
Think about the technical depththat's needed for your
customers to be successful.
So you don't want to get tootechnical, but you might,
depending on the product you'resupporting, you might need to
give some technical kind offoundational knowledge, and so
(38:58):
you want to be careful tobalance that.
And then content accuracy.
You know there are a lot ofchanges in the podcasting
industry, and I'm sure itapplies to so many other
industries that things arealways changing, yes, and so you
want to make sure that thecontent you're giving in your
orientations is always accurate.
So, Cara, I know for you you'reconstantly revising your script
(39:18):
, you're constantly updatingthings based on how the product
is changing or how the industrychanges, and so you know, be
aware of that your script foryour orientation or your
education or your training oryour class or whatever you call
it, that should be a livingdocument that is always updating
and always changing.
And maybe you start doingorientations and you realize
people don't have questionsabout this page.
(39:40):
I don't need to spend twominutes on this page.
I can spend 30 seconds on thatpage and then move on, because
people don't have questionsabout that, and so be aware of
that.
We talked about class sizes.
Don't let it get too big,because then you lose the
camaraderie of the orientation,which is what you really want to
hone in on and let people feellike they're a part of this
group, and so, yeah, don't letthem get too big.
(40:02):
Try to make sure there's enoughpeople there so that there's
conversation.
But there can still be value inan orientation.
That's two people, as long asthere's engagement there and
they're tracking andunderstanding what they're being
taught.
And then the last thing I haveon my list here is just host
burnout.
Jordan (40:18):
Yeah.
Priscilla (40:21):
Be aware of the person who is hosting these.
It can take a lot of energy tosit there with a new group of
people every week and have anexciting personality and engage
with everyone.
It can be tough over time.
Oh yeah, and so you want tocheck in with your host and talk
with them about hey, how areyou feeling?
Do you need to take, you know,a week break?
Do you need someone to fill infor you?
Like, talk with them, be awareof that burnout, because what
(40:43):
you don't want to do is push,push, push, start doing so many
of these over a week and thenhave it just hit a wall and then
your host is like, listen, Ican't do this anymore and no one
else is trained and ready toback them up.
Do you have any other pitfalls,Cara, as someone who really led
the charge on this project?
Cara (41:01):
I would say like, just don't put too much pressure on
yourself to be perfect the firsttime.
It is live.
But one thing I always startout with when I do the
orientation is just because wework in the podcasting industry
doesn't mean that my audio isgoing to be perfect.
So if I have a glitch, pleaselet me know.
We are not immune.
And so just being real, likejust viewing it as you are a
real person, and especially witha discovery project, if you're
(41:23):
just implementing it.
We did a lot of ups and downsand trial and error, so just
keep looking forward and don'tadd so much pressure on yourself
to be perfect the first time.
Your customers will teach youthe right fit and you'll work
that out as you continue to trythings out.
Priscilla (41:38):
Great advice that is really good advice, yeah, so key
takeaway, I think, from thisepisode is that education is
proactive support, and proactivesupport is remarkable support,
and so taking the time to investin this kind of training
strategy, this proactive supportstrategy, can really result in
a remarkable experience for yourcustomers 100% worth the
(42:01):
investment.
Cara (42:02):
Yeah, not only for the customers but for us as a team.
That knowledge base and justeducating our customers is going
to help everybody.
It's going to help uscommunicate, it's going to help
build confidence, both for thecustomer and then as we're
troubleshooting things.
So, absolutely, and also theconnection, the human connection
is the biggest part, just beingable to say, yep, we're here on
(42:25):
this journey with you, we'rehere to support you.
Priscilla (42:27):
I love it.
Yeah, if you have launched aneducational initiative with your
customers or if you are lookingto do it like what worked, what
didn't work, I want you toreach out to us.
You can text us directly usingthat link in the show notes and
let us know what things you didthat really worked well, or what
things you tried that maybedidn't work so well that other
(42:49):
people can avoid, and we'llshare that on a future episode
if you want to send us in yourthoughts.
Thanks for joining us for this,Cara.
It was really great to talkabout orientations with you.
It was really fun, Thank you somuch.
Cara (42:59):
Well, you know it's my passion project.
I love them, I love theorientations and they do really
fill my cup, so I'm excited toshare about it, and I really
hope that your listeners willtake this and take on the
challenge in their companies aswell.
I can't wait to hear about that.
Priscilla (43:18):
It's time for Support in Real Life, our segment where
we discuss real life supportexperiences.
So what question do you havefor us today, Jordan?
Jordan (43:27):
All right, we have a question from Support Driven
Slack that says hi y'all.
I'm curious how you mighthandle the situation where a
customer sent in a ticket, theteam verified it is a bug and
sent to the developers, but theissue will take a couple weeks
for the developers to have thefix released.
Do you keep the ticket with thecustomer open or on hold, or
let them know the date the issuefix will be released and then
(43:48):
mark the ticket as solved?
Priscilla (43:50):
It's a good question.
It is a good question.
I think that the biggest thingwhen I hear that, the biggest
thing I like take from it isthis idea that like maybe you
would let them know hey, you'reright, we see the bug that
should be released in a coupleof weeks, have a great day and
you send that.
And what you lose by doing thatand closing the ticket is the
(44:12):
connection with the customeronce the solve has been released
.
And like that win.
You know, a lot of times we'lltalk in support about like
getting the win, like you go getthe win.
Like we fixed the thing thatthey ran into.
Now go get the win.
Like don't let it fizzle out,capitalize on the fact that they
got whatever they asked forsolved, or it got released, or
(44:33):
it got updated or whatever it is.
So get the win.
And so I would highly recommendnot just closing the ticket.
So we use Help Scout and thenHelp Scout, there's a snooze
feature, and so you can snoozean email for however long you
need to and so say you know thatthe fix is going to be released
in about two weeks.
Snooze that email for two weeksand then when it pops back up,
(44:54):
you can check and see if the fixhas been released.
Then you can email the customerand say hey, this thing we
talked about two weeks ago, wehave not forgotten you.
It is live now.
You should be all set to go.
If you run into any questions,let me know, and then that
allows you to get the win.
Cara (45:08):
Oh yeah.
Priscilla (45:08):
And it makes your customer feel like, oh my gosh,
they remembered me, yeah.
Be like oh my gosh, theyremembered me, yeah.
And if you don't have a snoozeoption you know, because a lot
of people don't you can makeyourself a to-do to follow up
with them.
You can use tagging to tag thequestion and then come back to
it.
You can leave it pending andthen that way you don't lose it
but never miss the opportunityto follow up.
Cara (45:31):
Always put yourself as a customer.
What would you want?
Yeah, it would make my day tobe concerned about something and
it kind of gives a high five tolike if they're the one that
pointed out the bug.
I think they said they're theones that wrote in like thank
you so much for helping us findthis.
Like all right, we're in thistogether and so absolutely make
that connection Again.
Let them know, let yourcustomer know you're in this as
(45:53):
a team and it's fixed for you,and have a good day after that.
Then you can close it.
Priscilla (45:57):
Yeah, that just made me think like one step beyond
that.
When people have featurerequests for something and they
say I really wish like it's notnecessarily a bug, but they're
like I really wish that thisproduct or this feature could do
this thing, and you starttracking that, like in your
voice of the customer project orhowever it is that you track
feature requests, if thatbecomes a feature down the road,
(46:18):
go back to those customers andsay, hey, I know last year you
wrote in and asked about youknow whatever dynamic content.
Well, I want to let you know wejust launched it and we'd really
like you to test it out and letus know what you think.
The impact that that has onyour customer is huge because it
accurately communicates to yourcustomer that you cared about
(46:38):
them, because by thinking ofthem and keeping them like top
of mind or keeping a way to findget back to that person, that
shows that you care about themand it communicates that to them
when you reach out to them, andso we do that a lot at
Buzzsprout.
Support is whenever there's anew feature that gets launched
that we know either came from afeature request or just like
aligns with some featurerequests that we have, we will
(47:01):
say like hey, Cara, can you gotake an hour and go find some of
those people that requestedthis and let them know that it's
been launched?
One.
It allows us to have peopleusing it right away, but it also
gives us the benefit of gettingthat win with that customer who
requested that.
Cara (47:17):
Those are my favorite emails to send.
Honestly, they really are.
Priscilla (47:20):
I love them too, yeah they're so fun.
Cara (47:22):
You're like guess what yeah exactly, guess what.
Priscilla (47:26):
We did it.
I told you we might do it andwe did it.
Yeah, absolutely, those are fun.
Well, if you have a question ora support story that you would
like us to discuss, or just likea story you want us to shout
out, you can email us athappytohelp at buzzsproutcom, or
you can text the show using thetext, the show link in the
description, and we may discussyour question or story on a
future episode.
(47:46):
As always, if you liked thisepisode, please share it with
someone who works in customersupport and leave a review on
Apple Podcasts.
We would love to hear what youthink about the show.
Thank you all so much forlistening.
Now go and make someone's day.
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