September 17, 2024 • 51 mins
We are diving deep into the tricky topic of customer feedback with special guest, Chase Clemons! Chase is the Head of Customer Support at 37signals and has over 15 years of experience in customer support!
In this episode, Chase shares tips on effectively understanding and translating customer feedback and feature requests. You'll discover how 37signals approaches customer-driven product development, the best ways to identify the real needs behind feature requests, and the importance of open, honest communication with customers—even when the answer is “no.”
Chase also offers insights into the importance of balancing customer desires with company vision, and the role of support teams in relaying valuable feedback to product teams.
Whether you’re leading a small support team or working at the front lines, this episode is packed with actionable advice on improving customer interactions, turning feedback into actionable insights, and building a stronger relationship with your customers!
Check out 37signals' products: Basecamp, HEY, and ONCE!
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
- Jobs To Be Done with Bob Moesta
- Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters
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 customersupport from the people of
Buzzsprout.
I'm your host, Priscilla Brooke.
Today we're diving intocustomer feedback.
We'll talk about acceptingfeedback and feature requests
from customers, how to identifythe need beneath the feedback
and some strategies forcommunicating customer needs
outside of support.
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
(00:23):
I am so excited today for acouple reasons.
One, we're going to talk aboutcustomer feedback, which is
really exciting for me becausefor the past I don't know six to
eight weeks I've really beenthinking a lot about customer
feedback and how we handlefeature requests and feedback
from customers in the Buzzsproutsupport world.
So that's been something that'son my mind a lot recently.
(00:43):
But also because of who we haveon the show today with us.
So we have joining us ChaseClemons from 37s ignals.
Today he is the head of thecustomer support team over there
at 37s ignals and they developonline software, including
Basecamp, which is a tool thatwe use at Buzzsprout every day.
I'm in Basecamp all day, everyday.
(01:04):
So we are big fans of Basecamp,of 37signals and really just
the way that they approach onecustomer support, but, just like
leadership and their values asa whole, we are just big fans of
them, and so I'm really excited.
I feel like I have a celebrityon the podcast today, with Chase
being here.
Chase has over 15 years ofexperience in customer support
(01:27):
everything from front of linelike queue emails directly with
customers, but also leading asupport team.
I first heard of Chase but shedoesn't know this back in 2020
when 37signals did a Q&A it waspandemic times and they did a
Q&A.
It was pandemic times and theydid a Q&A with their support
team and I heard about it.
I think my boss said oh,they're going to do this, you
(01:50):
should watch it, and I watchedit.
It was a couple of people fromthe support team talking about
how they do support at 37Signals.
It was such a cool thing towatch because up until then, I
felt very much like siloed inthe work I was doing, and so it
was very cool to see one somelike reinforcements of things I
was already doing from them, butalso it gave me a ton of
(02:10):
inspiration for implementingchanges that are still things we
do today in Buzzsprout support,and so that was the first I had
ever heard of Chase, and then,a couple weeks ago, I reached
out to have him on the podcastand he's here today, so thanks
for being here, chase.
Chase (02:25):
Thanks, it's my pleasure.
Hopefully I can live up to allof that.
Priscilla (02:28):
Yeah, I mean, it's just so funny to think like it
was early 2020.
So we're all you know, we'veall gone home full time and
feeling very isolated.
And I watched it and I was like, oh my gosh, I want to watch
that again and like, take betternotes.
I felt like there was so muchgood knowledge in that Q&A that
you did, and so I'm like, oh, Ijust hope that our listeners can
(02:49):
get some of that same kind ofknowledge, because it really was
so helpful to me, as I don'teven think I was leading the
team at that point.
It was just a team of three ofus trying to figure our way
through support, and it was justso helpful for me as I started
to kind of build processes forour team.
Chase (03:05):
So, that's what we were hoping for.
You know, the pandemic hits.
We've been doing remote workfor two decades at that point.
So everybody starts turning tous and going all right, I need
Basecamp, but I need to learnhow to work from home.
Like we're scattered out allacross the place now.
Yeah.
So we just jumped right in andsaid like, let's, it's very
Kathy Sierra ish.
Right, Like it's, I'll teachthe competition essentially.
(03:26):
Yeah so.
I like to tell folks like whenyou, you know, when you buy
Basecamp, you get us too.
It's not just the product, youget all of the you know two
decades of experience that wehave to guide and suggest, to
make recommendations and allthat.
Priscilla (03:40):
So one of the things we do with this podcast, I
always like to kick it off byasking people who made your day
recently.
So we do this because, insupport, we have this ability to
make or break people's day withhow we work with them, and so I
just like the idea of shoutingout someone who really made your
day recently.
Chase (03:56):
Yeah, so this is one of the most unexpected places that
I could possibly fathom Right,so I went in to get my tags
renewed a couple of weeks agoand any trip to the.
Dmv is always a nightmare,right, because it's like do I
have the right paperwork?
Am I in the right spot when youget in the building?
Are you in the right line, evenbecause there's so many
different lines and all?
Priscilla (04:14):
that and then, 20 minutes later, you realize
you're not in the right line.
Chase (04:16):
Right, you get up to the counter and they're like, oh,
you forgot that anyway.
Yeah.
So there was a wonderfulgentleman, kevin, who was at the
door when you first walk intothe DMV and he was like hey,
what are you here for?
I said tag renewal.
And he goes all right, have yougot this?
I went yep, I've got that.
And he goes all right, linenumber two right over there,
they'll help you out.
Just that simple act of got theright stuff and B you know
(04:43):
where you're going.
Yeah, of course it makes thewhole back end process easier.
Right, like all the clerksworking up there can go faster,
since everything's right.
Yeah.
But for the person like you walkinto the DMV kind of dreading
it and then all of a sudden itturns into this like oh, that
was actually pleasant, I guess.
Priscilla (04:59):
Yeah it.
It's like that gives you theconfidence to like no, you're
not wasting your time now.
Chase (05:03):
Yeah, exactly.
Priscilla (05:04):
And it's funny because that kind of role is not
necessarily a role that has tohappen, but it's something that
will make everything run so muchsmoother.
It'll make people stop dreadinggoing to the DMV if they know
they walk in and they get put inthe right spot with someone who
is confident that they knowwhere you should be.
That's so great.
Chase (05:21):
Otherwise it's like signs at the front door right, like
it'll be a big sign that saysyou got to have A, b and C and
if you have that, go to thisline.
So you got people at the doorreading the sign, looking at
their stuff trying to figure outcan you trust the sign?
Like, am I reading the signright?
Priscilla (05:34):
They don't push it the wrong way.
Chase (05:35):
So now the arrow's turning that way no-transcript
(06:09):
studies and political scienceand that kind of fun stuff.
So I happened to graduate rightabout the time of the recession
, so like there wasn't a lot ofjobs out there at the time.
So I fell into the restaurantworld.
I had done that in high school.
My parents had ownedrestaurants, so I was like I
know this world, Like let mejust jump back into there
essentially.
So I worked for a couple ofdifferent places and got married
(06:31):
and was like I need healthinsurance.
So moved over to a chain, afranchise, called Jason's Deli.
Priscilla (06:37):
I'm familiar.
Chase (06:39):
Great restaurant, loved it, loved the owner, loved the
team that I worked with.
After doing it for about a yearand a half, though, it's like
these 50 hour weeks are killingme, like plus the one hour
commute each way, it was like OK, so, funny enough, the managers
were always given a book everycouple of months of like, hey,
this is something we want you toread to grow as a leader, grow
(07:00):
as a manager.
And they'd given us the bookRework from Jason and David.
Priscilla (07:04):
Oh, wow.
Chase (07:04):
And blitzed through it, loved it.
Got to the back and they werelike, hey, here's our website,
here's our jobs board, here'sour email, if you want to talk
to us and I was like on a fluke,let me just go look and see
what they might have.
Right, like the world of techsupport had never entered into
my framework until then.
Yeah, so I go to the website.
There's an opening for customersupport and again I'm like like
(07:30):
what's the odds?
right, I know how a computerworks, I know how online stuff
works, right, yeah, but I'venever done like customer support
, essentially.
But I put my cover letter in,send him my resume and a couple
days later I'm talking to Jasonand he's like I think you're
(07:50):
going to be a great fit here.
Like please join us.
Wow.
I was like, yes, absolutely,and that was 2011.
So fly up there, start with ateam, super small team there.
In the beginning I think I washigher number four or five.
On the support team itself yeah, higher number like mid 15, 16
range for the company.
So still really smallessentially, and fell in love
with it.
Yeah.
Not only do you get to helppeople, which I've always loved
like I've loved that all the wayback to college, thinking
(08:11):
that's why I want to be ateacher, right, but you get to
help people building theirbusinesses.
That's the cool thing withBasecamp it's made for small
businesses.
People that made their secondhire, made their third hire and
just like the business isgrowing and they need some help.
Like that is really fun peopleto work with, really interesting
problems to work with, andthat's why I've been there now
for 13, 14 years.
Priscilla (08:32):
Yeah, can you talk a little about the different
products that you support,because it's not just Basecamp.
What else do you work withdirectly?
Chase (08:38):
Oh man, we, we like building things.
Yeah, absolutely so.
Basecamp is the flagship.
That one was launched back in2004.
We've we're all the way up toBasecamp version four.
Now we have some what we calllegacy products that we we
launched and, for whateverreason you know, decided to not
offer it for new signups.
Like, if you use the productyou can still use it.
So high rise is a CRM like that, an old campfire chat, an old
(09:02):
backpack app, the big ones,basecamp, hey, is our email
service, email and calendarservice.
So if you're looking for anemail service that isn't going
to sell your data, like Gmailand the others do, then
definitely give Heycom a look.
We also do what we call ouronce products and once apps are.
Buy it once and you're good.
So if you're looking to get off, like Slack, for instance,
(09:26):
because the price is enormous,then you can buy Campfire.
It's $2.99 one time you hostedon your own server and you're
good to go.
You know, going back to kind ofthe 2000 vibes where it's like
I buy a piece of software andown it you know which is really,
really cool.
And then we got two brand newproducts coming out later this
fall which I can't talk aboutyet.
But yeah, that's a full line ofproducts.
Priscilla (09:48):
Yeah, that's awesome.
So you run the team that workson all across, all of those
products.
Chase (09:53):
Yeah, that's one of the big things, right?
So we wanted to make sure fromthe very beginning, with our
team, everybody can work acrossas many products as possible.
One it makes scheduling easier,right.
You don't have to like figureout who can do what and cover
when.
Two it just makes for a bettersupport experience because we
have customers that use multipleproducts and so you don't have
(10:14):
to bounce from one team to thenext team to the next team just
because you had a question abouta different product.
Priscilla (10:19):
Yeah, that's great.
Well, now that people know kindof where you're coming from and
what brought you to customersupport, I want to kind of jump
into customer feedback.
I've been leading theBuzzsprout support team for like
eight years and I still feellike customer feedback and
customer feature requests issomething that I just don't feel
like I've cracked the code on.
There is a very tricky balanceto find there and I know that
(10:43):
37signals has a lot of really Idon't want to say strong
opinions, but they're probablypretty strong opinions but
interesting views on customerfeedback.
So can you share a little bitof just your opinions on
customer feedback and how theyinform the way your team handles
client feedback and requests?
Chase (11:01):
So in our industry you hear a lot of buzzwords right,
are you a product driven company, are you a customer driven
company?
Or you know like, where, wheredo you fit?
And all that and that kind of asetup right.
The thing I always keep comingback to is that old quote
whatever you want to call itattributed to Henry Ford.
Right.
If you ask customers what theywant, then they're going to say
they want faster horses when inreality they want a car.
(11:22):
And that's the same thing inour world.
It's you get feature requestafter feature request after
feature request and a lot oftimes what teams will do is
they'll catalog everything.
Right, it goes into some Trelloboard or Kanban board or Jira
thing or whatever.
Right, it goes into what endsup becoming a junk drawer.
Essentially, you try to keeptrack of stuff with, like,
(11:44):
upvotes or links or labels orwhatever.
And then you're looking at thiswhole thing and you've got the
customer's perspective in all ofthis.
Right, the customer's tellingyou what they're experiencing,
but that's it.
Like you don't have a fullpicture at that point.
So you're looking at this junkdrawer, trying to make sense of
all of it and trying to figureout where to go, and eventually
(12:05):
you just kind of throw yourhands up and go well, like, we
know that X amount of customerswant Y feature, so let's build
that.
Maybe that's what they'relooking for.
Right, there's a better way?
Yeah, and this is one of thosethings that it took us a while
to find that most effective spot.
So what we do when we hear fromcustomers about the future
(12:26):
request.
Right, there's kind of a coupleof paths that that request is
going to take.
One, it could be that we'rejust not going to do it.
A customer says I need awaterfall chart report or I need
payroll budgeting numbersinside base camp.
We're just we're not going todo that.
One, we don't hear it veryoften and two, we have no
experience with any of that asfar as it being in Basecamp.
(12:47):
In those cases you just have tobe open and honest with the
customer and tell them look, I'msorry, like we don't have that,
we're likely not going to dothat, but here's some other
alternatives.
Here's some third partyintegrations that work with
Basecamp that you can look at.
We try not to leave them withlike no path forward, but we are
very clear like it's notsomething we're gonna do and we
(13:09):
don't want to give you falsehope that we might do that.
Yeah.
So if we know we're not justtell the customer right If we
think we might, or even if weknow we're going to right.
So like sometimes I know whatthe product team is thinking
about, what.
So, like sometimes I know whatthe product team is thinking
about, what they're looking formore information on, Right.
So those two second buckets, ifwe might, or we know we're
(13:29):
going to at some point.
Customer writes in about thatand we treat those differently.
We say, hey, like that isreally interesting.
My first email back to them atthat point is can you tell me
more about what just happenedthat led to you emailing us?
Yeah.
And that one question gives agood filter right, because some
customers are going to come backand say, oh well, like it was
(13:52):
nothing, really Like it was.
Just somebody walked by my deskand mentioned that it would be
cool and it's like all right,that's cool.
Like that doesn't give me anyinformation, but thank you, I
appreciate that Right.
Yeah.
Some people will write back a.
There's this good medium groundwhere somebody is like oh yeah,
like I ran into this and likeI've stumbled into it a couple
(14:14):
of times and I just finally likeit irked me enough where I just
had to tell somebody about it.
Those are the interesting ones,because there's some energy
there and I want to get on acall with them.
But that's the like initialstuff, right, it's the if we're
not going to do it, just tellthem.
If we think we're going to, orwe're pretty sure we're going to
, then we ask that secondfollow-up question so we can
(14:36):
start digging into that specificcustomer instance.
Priscilla (14:40):
Yeah, you're making these phone calls once you get
to a place where you want tolearn more.
How often are you making thosephone calls and who on your team
is kind of on the lines to dothat?
Is that just you, or are therepeople on the team that are also
jumping on those phone calls?
Chase (14:54):
Originally it was just me , which was fun.
You know, when I was doingfrontline support, this was my
one of my side projects that Iwork on.
It was, you know, really greattime.
And then, once I become thehead of the team, it was, oh, I
got to like train some otherpeople because I got more stuff
to do now, you know.
So Jane's also helping me inthis.
Now she's one of our supportreps over in the UK and then for
(15:18):
other people on the team asthey're leveling up in their
career, this is always an optionto them.
If they're interested inproduct research, if they're
interested in this, thesecustomer interviews and this
kind of jobs to be doneframework that we work with,
they have that option to join inat any time.
Priscilla (15:33):
So it mostly stays within the support team then.
Chase (15:35):
Yeah.
Priscilla (15:36):
Who's doing that research?
To learn more about thisfeedback or request that you're
getting?
Chase (15:41):
Definitely, this is one of those where, like we like to
think about feature requests,it's almost like you're a
detective going in to figure outwhat the it's not necessarily a
crime scene, right, but likefiguring out the situation.
Yeah, you've got your frontlinedetectives doing.
It's not like the cops that aredoing that.
These are like one step up,right.
These are detectives who that'stheir primary job, essentially,
and then all that gets pushedup as needed to other members of
(16:04):
the team and over into theproduct team.
You're sleuthing out the painpoints.
Sleuthing it out, exactly.
Priscilla (16:10):
Exactly With all of your knowledge and experience
from the support team, you can.
You know the questions to ask.
What kind of boundaries do youput in place for people who are
making those calls so that youdon't spend all of your days on
those phone calls?
Because I can imagine I mean assomeone who's done some phone
support there are some callsthat can take a long time and
(16:30):
you go.
I got to get off this call.
I can't spend an hour on thiscall.
So how do you, what boundariesdo you guys put in place to make
sure those are not taking solong to get accomplished?
Chase (16:39):
Yeah, there's a couple of little tricks.
So first, when we reach out tothe customer, say, hey, would
you jump on a call with us?
We use a Calendly link.
That way they can pick theirtime and everything from there.
That Calendly link sets it at20 minutes automatically.
So they know, going into itlike, hey, this is about a 20
minute block.
Now sometimes you get into aconversation you're like, oh,
there's so much good stuff andlike, yeah, you can even tell
(17:01):
the customer at that point like,look, I know, we said 20
minutes, can I have like another10 of your time?
Then they're more than gratefulto do that Right?
So that's the first.
You set that expectation thatway.
The second trick that we foundto be really effective is when
you first get on the phone callcustomers are really excited to
talk about because they're like,oh my God, somebody's listening
to me.
So the first thing that we dois we ask a question and then we
(17:22):
just kind of sit back for asecond and let them brain dump
everything out and then, oncethat is out of the way, then you
can move into the otherquestions that you have and
really get to the meat and bonesof what's going on there, but
they have to get that first likelittle thing in their head out
essentially, otherwise, yeah,that call is going to stretch
out, because that's, they justhave to get it out, you just
(17:43):
have to.
Priscilla (17:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's one of the things as
we've been navigating, you know,recording and tracking customer
feedback, one of the things Ikeep finding myself running up
against this danger of creatingbusy work for my team.
And you know there's this linewith customer feedback, like you
were saying about the fasterhorse, like you want to see it
and accept it and know it, butthere is a line of how far you
(18:06):
take it and what kind of takesyour time and what doesn't, and
so one I don't want to putprocesses in place that are just
busy work, that aren't going tobe bettering the product or the
team, and so how do youstructure the process to avoid
that pitfall of the busy work,but instead structuring these in
a way that you're getting valueout of them and it's not just
(18:27):
another phone call to check abox and move on?
Chase (18:29):
So the first trick with this is so our frontline folks,
when they see a feature requestwe've trained them to know like,
oh yeah, this is a good one,that we need to bump up to
somebody to make a call,essentially to bump up to Jane
or myself.
So what they do is theybasically take that email, get
some information for us and thenpop it into a Basecamp project.
About once a week or so, janeand I go through and look at the
things that have come in and go, oh yeah, like this is
(18:51):
interesting, this not so much.
This is one I want to know moreabout, this one Not so much.
So we start looking through andmaking a list of, like these
are the ones that we want totalk to from there, right.
And then Jane goes out and hasconversations with as many of
those folks as she can.
So by separating it out andsaying on the front line we just
want you to real quick, popthis over into the Basecamp
(19:12):
project for us.
There's not really any busywork there because it's a
post-it.
Forget it.
The front line folks move on atthat point, yeah, and then Jane
and I are really good about allright, this is work, this is
research, but this is usefulwork that, even if we don't end
up doing that feature, or if wedo five calls and they end up
being bust, that's just part ofit, that's just the accepted
(19:35):
whatever of it.
So by doing those things, youtake out the busy work.
Busy work for me is like doingall the stuff that has no value
at all.
Right, so it's the labelingthings.
Yep, I'm sorry.
If you've got one or two peoplespending enough time looking
through the requests that arecoming in, they don't need the
labels and all.
They'll know the patterns justoff the top of their head.
They'll see it.
Essentially it's not quite likeNeo and the Matrix, but kind of
(19:58):
you know.
So when you've got a bunch ofpeople looking at the data, you
need those shortcuts of thelabels.
Right, you need the shortcutsof, like, the groupings and all
the rest of it.
When it's only a couple of youdoing this, then it's going to
be easier to spot the patternsand you're going to have that
running thing in your head.
You're going to know it when yousee it.
Essentially and it takes alittle while Like I'm not going
to put somebody that's only beenon the team for six months into
(20:20):
a role like Jane's Jane's beenwith us for six, eight years,
something like that.
Yeah, so she knows what to lookfor.
Priscilla (20:27):
Yeah, when people come to you and say, hey, I want
to level up, I want to be partof this team that calls and
learns more about this, do theygo through a training before
they get put on those phonecalls?
Chase (20:37):
Yeah.
So it's a little bit of atraining, but it's also a little
bit of like you're jumping inthe pool here, right?
So, with 37 Signals, we havethis idea of being a manager of
one.
Priscilla (20:46):
So do we?
We follow that same theology.
Chase (20:49):
Yeah, you want people who are eager and run toward the
problem, run toward the fire,run toward the open space, Right
?
Not people that you're going tohave to like.
All right, you've got to dolike these five things and
that's going to be your trainingessentially, yeah.
So when somebody says, hey, youknow, Chase, I want to do this.
There's a couple of books, Isit down.
It's like these are going to bereally helpful, Like you don't
have to read the full thing, butlike skim through it,
(21:10):
essentially because we'reteaching them a basic jobs to be
done framework.
Essentially I've said that terma couple of times.
Let me explain that so forfolks that haven't seen this.
So a jobs to be done frameworkis the idea that every product
out there whether it's, you know, an actual product or a feature
in a product or a thing you buy, right has a specific job to be
(21:31):
done.
So when people come to Basecamp, typically speaking, Basecamp
is one of those things where itdoesn't matter what industry
you're in.
You're either a small businessowner who is trying to grow the
business and you need that levelup, right.
You need the Mario fire flowerto level up to the next part,
right.
Or you're like a new manager ora team leader or something, and
(21:53):
your team just missed somethingand you've got to make sure
that that doesn't happen again.
Those are the big two jobs thatBasecamp solves.
So everything out there prettymuch has a job to be done and
that's what you look for.
You look for the job.
Buying a Snickers has adifferent job than buying a
Milky Way, essentially.
So we've got to give new folkskind of a crash course into that
(22:14):
, Like you don't have to knoweverything but you need to know
some basics in here.
So we give them, you know, justa couple of quick books and
short little things to readthrough, skim through.
Bob Motessa did a really greatthing.
It was like Unboss conferenceor something like that video
about the whole thing.
That's one of the it's like anhour long thing.
We give them that video towatch so they can kind of see it
(22:34):
in action, essentially.
And then after that we say, hey,look, we are going to stick you
in a couple of calls as a whatwe call second chair.
So, like, typically, when we'redoing the interviews, you've
got a first chair, who's theprimary person, and then on
future requests it's usually oneperson.
But if we're doing like fullinterviews, you'll have two
people you have, and like fullinterviews, you'll have two
people.
You have a first chair and asecond chair.
So we're just going to stickthem with Jane, stick them with
(22:57):
myself, and have them listen toan interview and see how we go
about sleuthing it out.
And that's the big thing thatwe found with these the more
interviews that you do it's likeworking out the more reps that
you get in, the better you'regoing to be at it essentially.
So yeah, we have a little bitof a training, but it's also a
little bit of like all right,you're in the customer support
pool.
We're just going into the deepend now.
Priscilla (23:17):
Yeah, and they're probably already pretty
comfortable with that customerinteraction because they're on
the support team and they'reeager to level up.
So I'm sure there's thateagerness there too.
Yeah, it's so fun With the sinkor swim training method.
We use swim training method.
We use that a lot too.
Is you know, we want to giveyou enough information that
you're confident, but at thesame time, you're going to learn
(23:38):
the best when you're in thereand you're doing it, and so I
love that.
I love that strategy.
Chase (23:43):
Now we tell new hires that you're going to be in the
pool on day one.
You're going to be working withcustomers on day one.
You're going to have floatiesand there's going to be people
around you, but you're stillgoing to be in the pool but
you're going to be in the pool,you're going to be swimming.
Priscilla (23:53):
Yeah, I love that.
One of the things I keep comingback to is the idea that what
you're trying to get to thebottom of is the need, not so
much the feature request, butwhat they're trying to do.
So what questions do you guysask to kind of suss out that?
Chase (24:06):
Yeah, so three big ones.
The first one is always why now?
So the fact that somebody sentyou an email or a chat or
whatever today at that time isimportant because, especially if
they're an older customer, likehave been with you for a while,
what was the tipping point forthat specific time that they
were like?
You know what I'm actuallygoing to tell the company about
this.
Yeah.
(24:27):
Right, they weren't going tolike just mumble and grumble and
move on Like something wasdifferent.
Enough that they were like hey,like hey, we need to.
We need to get in touch withthem.
Second, what's the workaround?
Yeah, it's like.
What have you been doing upuntil this point?
Priscilla (24:40):
yeah, right to make this workable for you.
Chase (24:42):
Right to make this whole thing, do the thing right yeah
so, like one of the good ones.
The examples I use with basecamp is uh, to do so with.
To do's you some to do apps outthere have, like you can set
the priority of a specific thing.
In Basecamp we don't reallyhave priorities or anything like
that on a to do, but we tellfolks look, you can put an emoji
at the beginning of the to doname to give that visual pop.
(25:03):
Put a red circle or a greencircle or whatever for that,
just pop at the front.
So I was working with acustomer one day and they were
like, yeah, that's theworkaround I'm doing, like I did
the little circle thing andwhatnot, all the rest of it.
And we're like, oh cool, likewhy is that not working anymore?
And they go oh well, we hiredsomebody who's blind and that
visual cue is gone now and thescreen reader kind of picks it
(25:25):
up right.
It like tells what the emojilike as a name is essentially.
Yeah.
But that whole visual indicationis lost at that point.
Oh, okay, that makes sense.
That's why was it not working?
It's because they made a newhire.
What was the work around?
Well, that was the work around,but that doesn't work in this
situation anymore.
Priscilla (25:43):
Yeah Right.
That's such a good example ofwhy being like curious and
wanting to learn more about therequest or the feedback is so
important.
Because you can easily have anemail conversation with a
customer who's asking for a veryspecific feature and totally
miss that piece of informationthat, as the support person
(26:03):
working with them, you have toknow that in order to fully
understand why they're askingfor a priority to be there,
you're like, why not use thisworkaround?
This is great, but then gettingon the phone and giving them
the ability to share that withyou can really open up your eyes
to what they're actuallyrunning into.
I love that example so much.
That's such a good example.
Chase (26:23):
And that's the thing I tell all the folks I'm working
with right, just be curious,right, yeah.
So one of the values we have onour team is be curious, not
judgmental.
Priscilla (26:30):
Oh, I love that.
That's so good.
Chase (26:32):
Doesn't matter if, like, a customer is using Basecamp in
the weirdest way that you'vepossibly heard of, right, figure
out why they're doing it thatway, yeah, essentially.
So yeah, be curious, notjudgmental.
I think I stole that from a TedLasso episode at some point.
Priscilla (26:46):
Probably that sounds like Ted.
Yeah, it's an old Walt Whitmorequote, I think it.
Chase (26:49):
It's an old Walt Whitmore quote, I think.
Priscilla (26:52):
It's so good though.
Chase (26:53):
It is.
It is.
I mean, that's a big thing,like we actually build it into,
like our leveling, so like oneof the things we want you to get
better at as you grow in yourcareer is being curious, like
asking better questionsessentially.
So, yeah, it's the why.
Now right, like why is it notworking at this moment?
What's the workaround?
And then, if you keep doing itthat way, what's going to go
(27:13):
wrong?
Priscilla (27:14):
That's a good one too .
Chase (27:15):
Right, because there are some things where it's an
inconvenience.
Yeah.
Like, yeah, we can keep doingthis, nothing is really going to
go wrong.
Like they're not going to dropBasecamp or the product and move
on or anything.
This gives you a sense of theenergy and the urgency of it.
Yeah, right, so like ifsomebody says, oh yeah, like if
we can't figure this out, thenwe're going to keep missing
(27:36):
things, and like Basecamp, thewhole point is not to miss
anything.
Essentially, Yep.
So that you know, if you keepdoing it the current way, what's
going to go wrong.
That'll tell you the energy,it'll tell you the urgency of it
and it will also let you intotheir thinking a little bit.
Let you into their thinking alittle bit.
So, like 50-50, right.
Sometimes they will havethought that thing through and
(27:56):
they're like, oh yeah, like thiswill go wrong and like I've
already thought about that Right.
Half the other time they'relike you can see it on the zoom,
you can see them go.
Oh well, like I guess, likenothing really bad would happen,
and then all of a sudden thatjust like goes away.
Priscilla (28:08):
Essentially, yeah, it's like they convince
themselves out of it.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I've been in situationswhere I'm talking to like our
developers and I'm like you know, I really think we should have
this and they'll be like, butwhy?
Why do we want that?
And then I'm like you know, themore I talk about this with you
, the more I think maybe wedon't actually need that, maybe
the solution is somethingdifferent, or the solution is an
(28:30):
education for how the toolworks and not changing the tool
to fit.
The One of the things youtalked about earlier was some
feedback comes in, there's theyes, no, and you know in the
future, maybe.
So how do you communicate withyour team, what feature requests
are possible and then how tonavigate, figuring that answer
(28:51):
out before it gets to you?
Chase (28:53):
Yeah.
So there are a couple of thingsthat we know we're just not
going to do and we tell them aswe're training on a feature
request because, again, like, wedo feature requests differently
so we spend a morning during anew hire's training going this
is the way we want you to handleit.
We want you to be open andhonest and we want you to tell
them no if it's a no and if it'sa maybe, then here's the
question we want you to ask.
So we spend a morning coveringthis and in that we tell them
(29:15):
here's a couple of things thatwe know we're just not ever
going to do Like G, never goingto be in Basecamp.
We don't think they'refundamentally effective.
At the end of the day, basecampis about the communication and
the collaboration, the workingon the project.
It's not about the look at thisfancy reporting chart that I
can pull, so Gantt charts.
We're just not going to do.
So there are a couple of thingsthat we tell them like these
(29:37):
are ones that we 99% sure we'rejust not going to do for
whatever reason.
Another good example was customlanguages, right?
So, like Basecamp's interfaceis in English, the UI is in
English, you can type whateverlanguage you want, and you can
rename some tools that you want,but for the most part it's in
English.
Yeah.
We're probably not going to dotranslations because it's a very
(29:57):
complicated undertaking.
Yeah.
Yeah, so we tell them that andthen we tell them for everything
else, just ask like we have acampfire chat up that the entire
support team is payingattention in the day we're
dropping questions back andforth yeah, so for new hires.
You're like, hey, is thissomething that we're interested
in?
You can ask somebody and we'llsay, yeah, maybe like go ahead
or no, we're just not, and thenwe'll give them a reason why.
And it's that like learning byexperience thing like I can't
(30:20):
give you every answer You'regoing to have to be curious
enough to ask.
Priscilla (30:24):
Yeah, so take the language as one.
For example, if someonerequests that and you say, no,
that's not something we're goingto be working on, and you give
them an honest, transparentanswer that that's not where
we're going to go, and then theypush back and they get
frustrated that you've dismissedthem and you're you know, and
your goal for being transparentand treating them like a human
(30:46):
and telling them the truth istranslated as oh, you're
brushing me off and you're notgonna accept this as a real
valid thing.
How do you train your team totake that and continue with that
empathy and understandingwithout saying, okay, fine, I'll
pass it along to the team?
Chase (31:02):
Yeah, so that question comes up like 95% in the trial
customers that we have.
Yeah.
You're looking for the new thing.
Folks have boxes to check, soit's not somebody that's like
sold on us and has been with usfor a while for the most part.
So when we first sound like,hey, look, that's not something
we're likely to do, but we wantto give some option, right, so
we continue that thought with.
But you know anywhere that youcan enter text in Basecamp, you
(31:25):
can use any language that youwant, right, as long as you
don't mind the labels being inEnglish at that point.
And that gets folks 80% of theway there.
Essentially, if they do saylike, hey, look, this is a must
have requirement for the appthat I choose, okay, great,
sorry, basecamp's not the rightfit for this one.
Here's a couple of otheroptions that do have that.
Check into them.
Priscilla (31:45):
It's kind of.
I don't know if you're familiarwith improv and the rule of yes
and yes and yep.
It's kind of like the opposite,no, but you know it's like no,
we're not going to do this, buthere's some other ways you can
get that done.
Customers to that you care aboutthem more than you care about
them using your product, becausesometimes you're right, it's
not going to be that yourproduct is the right fit and
(32:07):
sometimes your product is theright fit, but there's this
third party that's going to helpthem do a workaround to achieve
what they want to achieve.
I think it can be hard asespecially someone new in the
customer support world to betold hey, you're actually going
to say no, and you go oh gosh,I'm going to tell them no, and
so, like you know no, but isgreat, like no, we're not going
(32:29):
to be able to do this, buthere's other ways.
Or, but if this is somethingthat's a deal breaker for you,
I'd be happy to help you findanother tool that's going to
solve that problem for you,knowing that.
I mean, this is how Buzzsproutis built as well.
We are built for very specifictypes of what people are looking
for and we're not trying to beeverything for everyone, and so
sometimes you're going to havepeople who aren't going to stay,
(32:51):
and that's because they'relooking for something that we're
not offering, and I think thatthat's totally valid and can be
freeing, even though it can alsofeel pretty scary to say no to
a customer.
Chase (33:00):
Yeah, and that's one of those things a lot of companies
out there will tell them like,oh, yeah, like I'll pass it on
to the team, and then thatcustomer is left hanging
essentially yeah, exactly, andso they might be in your
products, but they're not happyabout being there, and that
distrust just will build fromthere.
You know, that's why we try tobe as upfront as possible, and
for anybody that does push back,it's still a phrase from my
(33:21):
grandmother like kill them withkindness.
Yeah, just be empathetic, justbe nice, just be the helpful
neighbor that you know wants togive some advice.
Nobody's going to be mad if youdo that.
Priscilla (33:31):
Yeah, and if they are .
Sometimes we had an episode awhile back about angry customers
and sometimes people are.
They just want to be angry andsometimes people just want to be
frustrated and you're not goingto flip that with as many
options as you give them.
They want you to do it the waythey want you to do it and if
you don't, that's just it's notgoing to work for them and so
sometimes you just have to beokay with the resolution not
(33:51):
being perfect there.
So on the flip side of that,when someone writes in and they
ask you a question or ask for afeature that you are working on,
and you're like, oh yeah, thisis in development.
What do you guys do you like?
How much do you share aboutthings that are in development?
Chase (34:07):
Not a word.
Priscilla (34:08):
Yeah, not a word Not a word.
So Not even like a wink.
Chase (34:10):
Not even a wink wink, nudge, nudge.
Nothing, right, nothing CauseI've been burned before.
Yeah, so we work in six weekcycles.
I have seen features.
(34:36):
We're good to the end of thesix weeks.
It's in Q&A, it looks good, wethink we're going to ship this
thing and at the very day or twobefore we go live end of the
cycle we can pull that circuitbreaker and say, look, this does
not meet the quality that wewant to put out there.
Right, because there's nothingworse than putting a feature out
there and being like, oh no,never mind, jk, we have to take
it back.
Yeah, Essentially there havebeen times where like four or
(34:56):
five since I've been here butthere are times where you get to
the end and everything lookedgood, and if I had promised the
customer that something was inthe works, and all of a sudden
it gets called off and thattrust is broken at that point,
yep.
So yeah, we don't.
Not a word, not a mention.
Now, after it ships, we makesure to go back through and to
talk with all the customers thatwe heard that idea from.
(35:16):
It's like hey, look, here'sthis new thing.
Like glad we can make thishappen.
And customers are thrilled thatwe like close the loop.
Priscilla (35:22):
At that point, yeah, that's the most fun that follow
up with the customer once it islaunched, especially when it
like the timing works out wherethey, you know, email on a
Friday and you launch it on aMonday and then Tuesday you
could reach out and say, hey,remember me from Friday.
I have a really exciting thingto tell you.
Those are like the most funemail to follow up on because
(35:42):
you're like you know, I couldn'ttell you this on Friday, but
now you can jump in and you canuse it.
One of our podcasters wasrequesting a feature that we
ended up implementing and whenit was out we got to call her
and tell her and she was just soexcited and that's just such a
fun, rewarding thing to be ableto do, to kind of, you know,
step in for your customers inthat way.
It's great to do to kind of youknow step in for your customers
(36:04):
in that way, it's great.
So all of this so far we'vereally been talking about is
like communicating thesecustomer needs and these
requests and getting informationwithin the support team.
But the other side of that iscommunicating outside of the
support team to your productteam development team, the
things you're learning insupport, because you know in
support we're the front lines,we're working with customers,
we're hearing all the stuff.
We're learning this, we knowour customers and then we turn
(36:27):
and how do you then communicateit out to the team as a whole?
So can you give us a littleinsight into what that looks
like?
Chase (36:33):
Yeah, so after we've talked to a couple of customers,
we usually have a really goodidea of what the problem is.
Right, they might have useddifferent words to describe
everything and they probably allhad different ideas about how
to solve the problem.
But, like, we've looked at thecrime scene, we've put the
evidence together and we can nowsee like this is the smoking
gun, this is the problem.
So we'll write up basically it'sI mean, I guess you could call
(36:54):
it a brief For us.
It's like here's a summary,essentially, of what we've
learned.
We'll go in.
It's just a tech stock inBasecamp, it's literally just
like a note, and in that we'lllist out like here's the problem
, here's the different customersthat we've talked to.
Here's what those customerssaid in their words.
So we'll, like, we'll pull outtheir words from the transcript
(37:14):
and put it in there.
We'll also, since all of thesecalls are recorded, we'll put
the MP3 audio file right inthere, because it helps to hear
from the customer.
You can hear the energy in someof their questions.
So we lay out the case as bestas we can with all of that, and
then we say, look, we don't knowthe solution at this moment.
Right, but this is enough tostart working on a pitch,
(37:36):
essentially.
So we'll write all that up, westore it in a Basecamp project
and then, when the product teamis looking for what is going to
happen in the next cycle,sometimes they have their own
ideas, sometimes they havethings that they want to build,
and then sometimes it's well,what are the customer things
that we're hearing, and you cango to this library essentially
of these are the patterns thatwe've seen.
(37:57):
These are the problems that weare reasonably confident that we
need to tackle, and they'llhave that whole backstory there
with all the research done, allthe interviews done, ready to go
, and they can pick it up and goall right.
Well, that's the problem.
I can start figuring out acouple of like answers for that,
and so that flows into what wecall a pitch.
Now, the pitch is basically theproblem the solutions that we
(38:20):
think could work, and theproduct team works on that.
They'll come up with a coupleof like this is how we think
we're going to tackle it, andthen that's turned over to a
designer and a programmer to goand implement.
Now they might change somestuff in there, they might get
into the actually building outthe feature and go, yeah, like
that's not going to work exactlyin the best way, so we're going
to tweak it and do this.
Priscilla (38:41):
We're going to make a car instead of a faster horse,
right.
Chase (38:43):
Yeah, but everything's going to come back to that
original Like.
This is the problem that we'retackling.
Priscilla (38:48):
Yeah, that's very cool.
So sometimes what we will seeon our team is, you know, we
identify something that we wantto pitch, or we want to
communicate and we communicateit out and it doesn't get picked
up as a project, right, or wepitch it and it doesn't get
picked up as a project, right,or we pitch it and it doesn't
come back and developmentdoesn't work, move forward with
it.
Sometimes it's hard to do thatand have it not accepted and
(39:11):
then to feel like, oh gosh, Ijust spent all this time
advocating for this need that Ifeel strongly about, because I
wrote a pitch for it and itdidn't get picked up.
It can be hard to then go andpitch again in the future or to
pitch it again or something.
How do you, as a leader on yourteam, kind of encourage people
on your team to continueadvocating for things after
(39:32):
getting kind of like the no,we're not going to move forward
with this right now?
Chase (39:35):
Yeah, so the first thing is just set the expectation.
I tell everyone this is likeplaying a game of darts in a bar
.
If you had like two oscillatingfans in front of you blowing
different directions, right, thechances of you taking that dart
and hitting the board even is.
It's just hard.
Right, because you've got somany ideas that are coming
through, but you've only got sixweeks to work with and you've
(39:56):
got this set like these teams ofdesigners and programmers are
going to work on this, keepingin mind we also have one, two,
three, we got four products inactive development right now, so
there's a lot of competinginterest.
Yeah.
So, as part of the shape upmethod, what happens is our CEO,
our CTO, our product strategy,and then usually one of our
(40:18):
programming heads will cometogether and look at a bunch of
different pitches and say, allright, these are the four that
we're going to do out of like 50, right, these are the four,
these are the six or howevermany, these are the people we
have, this is the group right,and the rest of them go back
into the pile.
Now they can come back down theroad and we, you know, I tell
the folks that do this with me,like, look, just because it
(40:39):
doesn't get picked up on thefirst time doesn't mean it's not
going to down the road.
Sometimes we put it in the pileagain, sometimes we make a push
for it again and it gets pickedup on the second, third, fourth
time.
My deputy head of support shehad one that she pushed for for
like six months, eight months,and we all thought it was done,
and she was like just one more,like just one more push for it
and it got picked up.
(40:59):
You know, yeah, so it literallyis like playing a game of darts
with fans in your way, likesometimes the stars have to
align for you to get one throughand you have to be okay with
that.
Priscilla (41:10):
Yeah, setting those expectations ahead of time so
people know what to expect,because it can be.
I remember pitching some thingsearly on at Buzzsprout and then
not getting picked up andfeeling like, oh my gosh, I'm
never going to pitch anythingagain.
Oh gosh.
Yes, this is so embarrassing andit's so helpful to think about
it.
Like the game of darts, likeyou're saying that you're
(41:32):
throwing it out there, it mightnot land.
This time you might need to goand add some more information to
it to help you know further italong.
Maybe it's not exactly theissue you originally started
with and maybe it changes as youlearn more information over six
months while it's out there.
So I think that's so good tojust keep that in mind that it's
not a failure if it doesn't getpicked up the first time that
(41:53):
you pitch it.
Yeah, just before we wrap up,do you have any advice for
smaller support teams that arelooking to put these kind of
processes in place so that theycan start on a strong foot as a
smaller team?
Chase (42:04):
Yeah, biggest piece of advice here is just the more
interviews you do, the betteryou're going to get.
Yeah.
In the beginning, when I wasdoing these, like I thought I
knew the right questions to ask,and learn that those weren't
the right questions, right.
Yeah.
Like it's one of those.
Like you've got to get yourreps in, you've got to figure
out what works, what doesn'twork, and the only way that
(42:26):
you're going to do that isactually doing the calls,
actually doing the interviews.
Like you can sit here and lookat data all day long, you can
tag every case with whatever andgo well, we saw a 20% jump in
this feature request.
Doesn't matter, right?
What you need is people thatare actually sticking with the
crime scene metaphor, actuallygot the scene right, that have
seen this thing, and you need totalk to them and see what's
going on.
Those firsthand accounts is theonly way that you're going to
start putting together thepattern in your head.
(42:47):
I've tried it.
You're not going to get thatvia email.
Like I've tried to haveconversations like this across
just pure text via email, and itjust doesn't work out.
Like you need to be able to seethem and hear their inflections,
hear their energy to figure outwhere the next question is,
like where you need to go, andthat only comes with the more
reps that you do.
So you're going to kind of likewith podcasting.
(43:10):
You're not going to be great onthose first couple episodes but
you got to keep with it andcontinue with it and like your
skills are going to grow themore that you do it.
So if it doesn't work the firsttime or the second time or the
10th time, don't give up.
The first time or the secondtime or the 10th time, don't
give up, like this is a thingthat is, you just got to have
some perseverance and keep going.
Priscilla (43:26):
That's such good advice.
Well, thank you for sharingthis with us, chase.
It's really helpful one for me,but I'm sure, for our listeners
to learn how you find thatbalance between knowing the
customer's needs and holding onto kind of your expert knowledge
and using that as the funnelthat it's going through to get
to the team as a whole.
So I really appreciate yousharing your knowledge with us.
My pleasure.
(43:46):
So Chase is going to stickaround for our support in real
life segment, where we discussreal life support experiences
and questions from our listeners.
So, jordan, what do you havefor us today?
All?
Right, so this is a questionfrom support during Slack.
Chase (44:05):
Love them.
They're great.
Jordan (44:06):
They are great, it says.
How do you typically handlesituations where customers
request refunds forsubscriptions that were not
canceled in time?
What guiding principles orstrategies do you follow to
resolve these issues?
Priscilla (44:18):
effectively.
This is such a good question.
I think it's good for Chase andI too, because we both work in
subscription based products toan extent, and so I'm sure we
both deal with refund requestsin this specific situation with,
you know, canceled accountspretty frequently.
Chase (44:35):
Yeah, we want a happy goodbye on this one, right?
This is one of those where,like, when you email us and
you're like hey, like forgot tocancel, want a refund done, like
don't need to know why, don'tneed a reason, and we'll ask
them like hey, just out ofcuriosity, like you know, why
are you leaving us as like?
an afterthought, but thatquestion is at the bottom of the
email.
It's the.
We've refunded.
You're good to go.
(44:55):
Just kind of curious why you'releaving.
But there's no gatekeeping,there's no know like.
Well, you're locked into acontract.
It's happy, goodbye.
Here's your money.
If you need us down the road,we're here.
Yeah, yeah.
Please come back if you everwant to.
Essentially, if you don't, twothings happen.
One, they're going to hate yourcompany.
(45:15):
Yep Right, this is going to belike.
Comcast DirecTV.
Well, you're locked in for twoyears, right, sorry, so they're
going to hate you for that.
Priscilla (45:21):
And then two they're going to do a chargeback on you
anyways.
Yes, they're probably going todispute the charge.
Chase (45:24):
They're going to dispute the charge, you're going to get
hit with a chargeback fee andthey're going to get their money
back anyways.
And now they're like mad atyour company and not they're
going to bad mouth you to.
You know whoever, whenever youcome up.
So yeah, firm believer in thehappy goodbye, Got it.
Don't worry about thetechnicalities like have your
money back, come back if youneed us.
Priscilla (45:43):
The happy goodbye.
I've never heard it said likethat, but that's so good.
We are very similar in the sameboat.
You know we want to be asgenerous as possible, and if you
accidentally canceled youraccount two days later than you
should have, yeah, we'redefinitely refunding that,
there's no question.
And you know, we want to makesure that you're happy as you go
, because you don't know, youmight need to come back in the
future, and so we want you tohave a good relationship with us
(46:06):
.
And again it comes back tocaring about you more as a
person than as a customer, andit doesn't make sense for you to
pay for another month whenyou've canceled it so what makes
the most sense.
Yeah, let's give you that refund.
I remember one time I think Iwas already working with
customer support and I had, youknow, a new year's resolution to
(46:29):
learn how to speak Spanish, andso I downloaded and paid for a
year of Babbel and it lastedabout two months and then I
stopped and I was like well, Ialready paid for the year, so I
know I signed up for that.
There's no going back on that.
What I forgot to do was cancelit before the next year, and so
I paid for the second year and Iwas so frustrated with myself
because I haven't taken one ofthese classes in like eight
months, you know.
So I emailed their support teamand I was like, Listen, I'm
(46:50):
sorry, I should have canceledthis.
I did it.
It was a big charge.
Is there any way that I can geta discount or a partial refund
or anything?
And they gave me a full refundwithout any questions and it was
a big refund.
I mean that and they easilycould have said sorry, that's
your job to cancel it.
And you didn't cancel it.
Yeah, you agreed to our terms,Yep, but the fact that they did
(47:15):
it so quickly, with no questionsasked, makes me feel like, if I
get that hankering to learn anew language again which really
I would love to learn how tospeak Spanish I would go back to
Babbel because I know that theytreated me well in that moment,
and so I think that's part ofwhy we want to make sure that
we're generous to people,especially as they're leaving,
is because you never know whatpeople are going to do in the
future and you want them to havea good relationship with your
product and with you as a person, as a support team, and word of
(47:38):
mouth is so strong.
So even if they're like for us,even if they're not starting
another podcast, but maybe theyhave a friend who wants to start
a podcast, you want them tospeak well of you when they're
talking to their friends.
I think another important thingjust you know to tack on the end
is I really like empoweringeveryone on our team to make
those calls and not feeling likeI have to go get a refund
(47:59):
approved.
Yeah, so it's not always evenlike canceling, but you know,
for whatever reason likesometimes we'll have people
write in and say I was in thehospital last month, I didn't
upload any episodes, Is thereany way I could get a discount
because I didn't use the productfor that month.
I try to make sure everyone onmy team knows that they have the
power to be generous and makethat call without feeling like
(48:20):
they have to come back to me orone of the senior specialists
and say, hey, I want to get thisapproved, this $12 refund.
You know it's unnecessary.
So I think that's anotherreally important thing when
you're talking about refunds,when you're talking about being
generous to your customers, isempowering your team to make
those calls so that they feelthat confidence and that
(48:40):
empowerment and can be generousto your customers.
That's such a good point.
Chase (48:44):
You're looking for those like little, like moments of
happiness that can happen inthere right.
So like with that example,right?
So what we would have done,same thing, right it's?
Anyone on our team could havedone a refund like that right
off the rip, have your moneyback and all the rest of it, and
then you start going all right,well, what's that next level,
right?
No-transcript.
(49:06):
Like I'm so glad you're with us.
Like, if you need anything,here's my email Send flowers.
Priscilla (49:11):
You're looking for those?
Chase (49:11):
little things, because those little things are what
sets you apart from thecompetition, kind of like I said
at the our team too, exactly,and that is a like support is a
feature, it is a selling pointwith us.
So anything you can do droppinga thank you card in the mail,
you know, or get well card inthe mail, like that's a one more
little thing where it just it'sthe word of mouth, they're
(49:33):
going to spread the news aboutyou.
Priscilla (49:34):
Yeah, because the way I like to think about it is
you're building relationshipsright with your customers and if
you just learn that yourcustomer is in the hospital or
just got out of the hospitalbecause you care about them
right, you've got thisrelationship with them and
building that relationship justlike you would with a friend.
You know that kind of thing.
How can I go a little stepbeyond, like I'm going to give
them this refund?
Of course that's a given, butwhat can I do beyond that to
(49:56):
build that relationship and setus apart?
I love it so much.
Chase (49:58):
That's a whole other show right there.
Priscilla (50:00):
That's a whole other show right there, I know, really
delighting your customers.
I'm like, all right, we'll haveyou back, chase, we'll do that
episode later, but thank you somuch for being here.
I really appreciate it.
And remember that if you have astory to share or a question
for us, you can email us athappytohelpatbuzzsproutcom or
you can text the show using ourtext, the show link that's in
the show notes.
We in the show notes we willpick one question or story to
(50:22):
discuss each week, so if yousend something in, you may hear
it on a future episode.
Chase, before we go, is thereanything that you want to share
with our listeners about howthey can find you or where they
can go to learn more about whoyou are and what you're doing?
Chase (50:34):
Yeah, so easiest way I'm not big on socials or anything
like that Just drop me an email.
Chase C-H-A-S-E at heycom.
Priscilla (50:41):
At heycom.
I love it.
I love the heycom I know it'sso cute I just think it's so fun
yeah.
Chase (50:46):
So cute.
Priscilla (50:48):
H-E-Y, not H-A-Y.
Yes, yes, yes.
I want to thank Chase again forbeing here and thanks to
everyone for listening.
Now go and make someone's day.
Welcome to Happy to Help.
A podcast about customersupport from the people of
Buzzsprout.
I'm your host, Priscilla Brooke.
Today we're diving intocustomer feedback.
We'll talk about acceptingfeedback and feature requests
from customers, how to identifythe need beneath the feedback
and some strategies forcommunicating customer needs
outside of support.
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
(00:23):
I am so excited today for acouple reasons.
One, we're going to talk aboutcustomer feedback, which is
really exciting for me becausefor the past I don't know six to
eight weeks I've really beenthinking a lot about customer
feedback and how we handlefeature requests and feedback
from customers in the Buzzsproutsupport world.
So that's been something that'son my mind a lot recently.
(00:43):
But also because of who we haveon the show today with us.
So we have joining us ChaseClemons from 37s ignals.
Today he is the head of thecustomer support team over there
at 37s ignals and they developonline software, including
Basecamp, which is a tool thatwe use at Buzzsprout every day.
I'm in Basecamp all day, everyday.
(01:04):
So we are big fans of Basecamp,of 37signals and really just
the way that they approach onecustomer support, but, just like
leadership and their values asa whole, we are just big fans of
them, and so I'm really excited.
I feel like I have a celebrityon the podcast today, with Chase
being here.
Chase has over 15 years ofexperience in customer support
(01:27):
everything from front of linelike queue emails directly with
customers, but also leading asupport team.
I first heard of Chase but shedoesn't know this back in 2020
when 37signals did a Q&A it waspandemic times and they did a
Q&A.
It was pandemic times and theydid a Q&A with their support
team and I heard about it.
I think my boss said oh,they're going to do this, you
(01:50):
should watch it, and I watchedit.
It was a couple of people fromthe support team talking about
how they do support at 37Signals.
It was such a cool thing towatch because up until then, I
felt very much like siloed inthe work I was doing, and so it
was very cool to see one somelike reinforcements of things I
was already doing from them, butalso it gave me a ton of
(02:10):
inspiration for implementingchanges that are still things we
do today in Buzzsprout support,and so that was the first I had
ever heard of Chase, and then,a couple weeks ago, I reached
out to have him on the podcastand he's here today, so thanks
for being here, chase.
Chase (02:25):
Thanks, it's my pleasure.
Hopefully I can live up to allof that.
Priscilla (02:28):
Yeah, I mean, it's just so funny to think like it
was early 2020.
So we're all you know, we'veall gone home full time and
feeling very isolated.
And I watched it and I was like, oh my gosh, I want to watch
that again and like, take betternotes.
I felt like there was so muchgood knowledge in that Q&A that
you did, and so I'm like, oh, Ijust hope that our listeners can
(02:49):
get some of that same kind ofknowledge, because it really was
so helpful to me, as I don'teven think I was leading the
team at that point.
It was just a team of three ofus trying to figure our way
through support, and it was justso helpful for me as I started
to kind of build processes forour team.
Chase (03:05):
So, that's what we were hoping for.
You know, the pandemic hits.
We've been doing remote workfor two decades at that point.
So everybody starts turning tous and going all right, I need
Basecamp, but I need to learnhow to work from home.
Like we're scattered out allacross the place now.
Yeah.
So we just jumped right in andsaid like, let's, it's very
Kathy Sierra ish.
Right, Like it's, I'll teachthe competition essentially.
(03:26):
Yeah so.
I like to tell folks like whenyou, you know, when you buy
Basecamp, you get us too.
It's not just the product, youget all of the you know two
decades of experience that wehave to guide and suggest, to
make recommendations and allthat.
Priscilla (03:40):
So one of the things we do with this podcast, I
always like to kick it off byasking people who made your day
recently.
So we do this because, insupport, we have this ability to
make or break people's day withhow we work with them, and so I
just like the idea of shoutingout someone who really made your
day recently.
Chase (03:56):
Yeah, so this is one of the most unexpected places that
I could possibly fathom Right,so I went in to get my tags
renewed a couple of weeks agoand any trip to the.
Dmv is always a nightmare,right, because it's like do I
have the right paperwork?
Am I in the right spot when youget in the building?
Are you in the right line, evenbecause there's so many
different lines and all?
Priscilla (04:14):
that and then, 20 minutes later, you realize
you're not in the right line.
Chase (04:16):
Right, you get up to the counter and they're like, oh,
you forgot that anyway.
Yeah.
So there was a wonderfulgentleman, kevin, who was at the
door when you first walk intothe DMV and he was like hey,
what are you here for?
I said tag renewal.
And he goes all right, have yougot this?
I went yep, I've got that.
And he goes all right, linenumber two right over there,
they'll help you out.
Just that simple act of got theright stuff and B you know
(04:43):
where you're going.
Yeah, of course it makes thewhole back end process easier.
Right, like all the clerksworking up there can go faster,
since everything's right.
Yeah.
But for the person like you walkinto the DMV kind of dreading
it and then all of a sudden itturns into this like oh, that
was actually pleasant, I guess.
Priscilla (04:59):
Yeah it.
It's like that gives you theconfidence to like no, you're
not wasting your time now.
Chase (05:03):
Yeah, exactly.
Priscilla (05:04):
And it's funny because that kind of role is not
necessarily a role that has tohappen, but it's something that
will make everything run so muchsmoother.
It'll make people stop dreadinggoing to the DMV if they know
they walk in and they get put inthe right spot with someone who
is confident that they knowwhere you should be.
That's so great.
Chase (05:21):
Otherwise it's like signs at the front door right, like
it'll be a big sign that saysyou got to have A, b and C and
if you have that, go to thisline.
So you got people at the doorreading the sign, looking at
their stuff trying to figure outcan you trust the sign?
Like, am I reading the signright?
Priscilla (05:34):
They don't push it the wrong way.
Chase (05:35):
So now the arrow's turning that way no-transcript
(06:09):
studies and political scienceand that kind of fun stuff.
So I happened to graduate rightabout the time of the recession
, so like there wasn't a lot ofjobs out there at the time.
So I fell into the restaurantworld.
I had done that in high school.
My parents had ownedrestaurants, so I was like I
know this world, Like let mejust jump back into there
essentially.
So I worked for a couple ofdifferent places and got married
(06:31):
and was like I need healthinsurance.
So moved over to a chain, afranchise, called Jason's Deli.
Priscilla (06:37):
I'm familiar.
Chase (06:39):
Great restaurant, loved it, loved the owner, loved the
team that I worked with.
After doing it for about a yearand a half, though, it's like
these 50 hour weeks are killingme, like plus the one hour
commute each way, it was like OK, so, funny enough, the managers
were always given a book everycouple of months of like, hey,
this is something we want you toread to grow as a leader, grow
(07:00):
as a manager.
And they'd given us the bookRework from Jason and David.
Priscilla (07:04):
Oh, wow.
Chase (07:04):
And blitzed through it, loved it.
Got to the back and they werelike, hey, here's our website,
here's our jobs board, here'sour email, if you want to talk
to us and I was like on a fluke,let me just go look and see
what they might have.
Right, like the world of techsupport had never entered into
my framework until then.
Yeah, so I go to the website.
There's an opening for customersupport and again I'm like like
(07:30):
what's the odds?
right, I know how a computerworks, I know how online stuff
works, right, yeah, but I'venever done like customer support
, essentially.
But I put my cover letter in,send him my resume and a couple
days later I'm talking to Jasonand he's like I think you're
(07:50):
going to be a great fit here.
Like please join us.
Wow.
I was like, yes, absolutely,and that was 2011.
So fly up there, start with ateam, super small team there.
In the beginning I think I washigher number four or five.
On the support team itself yeah, higher number like mid 15, 16
range for the company.
So still really smallessentially, and fell in love
with it.
Yeah.
Not only do you get to helppeople, which I've always loved
like I've loved that all the wayback to college, thinking
(08:11):
that's why I want to be ateacher, right, but you get to
help people building theirbusinesses.
That's the cool thing withBasecamp it's made for small
businesses.
People that made their secondhire, made their third hire and
just like the business isgrowing and they need some help.
Like that is really fun peopleto work with, really interesting
problems to work with, andthat's why I've been there now
for 13, 14 years.
Priscilla (08:32):
Yeah, can you talk a little about the different
products that you support,because it's not just Basecamp.
What else do you work withdirectly?
Chase (08:38):
Oh man, we, we like building things.
Yeah, absolutely so.
Basecamp is the flagship.
That one was launched back in2004.
We've we're all the way up toBasecamp version four.
Now we have some what we calllegacy products that we we
launched and, for whateverreason you know, decided to not
offer it for new signups.
Like, if you use the productyou can still use it.
So high rise is a CRM like that, an old campfire chat, an old
(09:02):
backpack app, the big ones,basecamp, hey, is our email
service, email and calendarservice.
So if you're looking for anemail service that isn't going
to sell your data, like Gmailand the others do, then
definitely give Heycom a look.
We also do what we call ouronce products and once apps are.
Buy it once and you're good.
So if you're looking to get off, like Slack, for instance,
(09:26):
because the price is enormous,then you can buy Campfire.
It's $2.99 one time you hostedon your own server and you're
good to go.
You know, going back to kind ofthe 2000 vibes where it's like
I buy a piece of software andown it you know which is really,
really cool.
And then we got two brand newproducts coming out later this
fall which I can't talk aboutyet.
But yeah, that's a full line ofproducts.
Priscilla (09:48):
Yeah, that's awesome.
So you run the team that workson all across, all of those
products.
Chase (09:53):
Yeah, that's one of the big things, right?
So we wanted to make sure fromthe very beginning, with our
team, everybody can work acrossas many products as possible.
One it makes scheduling easier,right.
You don't have to like figureout who can do what and cover
when.
Two it just makes for a bettersupport experience because we
have customers that use multipleproducts and so you don't have
(10:14):
to bounce from one team to thenext team to the next team just
because you had a question abouta different product.
Priscilla (10:19):
Yeah, that's great.
Well, now that people know kindof where you're coming from and
what brought you to customersupport, I want to kind of jump
into customer feedback.
I've been leading theBuzzsprout support team for like
eight years and I still feellike customer feedback and
customer feature requests issomething that I just don't feel
like I've cracked the code on.
There is a very tricky balanceto find there and I know that
(10:43):
37signals has a lot of really Idon't want to say strong
opinions, but they're probablypretty strong opinions but
interesting views on customerfeedback.
So can you share a little bitof just your opinions on
customer feedback and how theyinform the way your team handles
client feedback and requests?
Chase (11:01):
So in our industry you hear a lot of buzzwords right,
are you a product driven company, are you a customer driven
company?
Or you know like, where, wheredo you fit?
And all that and that kind of asetup right.
The thing I always keep comingback to is that old quote
whatever you want to call itattributed to Henry Ford.
Right.
If you ask customers what theywant, then they're going to say
they want faster horses when inreality they want a car.
(11:22):
And that's the same thing inour world.
It's you get feature requestafter feature request after
feature request and a lot oftimes what teams will do is
they'll catalog everything.
Right, it goes into some Trelloboard or Kanban board or Jira
thing or whatever.
Right, it goes into what endsup becoming a junk drawer.
Essentially, you try to keeptrack of stuff with, like,
(11:44):
upvotes or links or labels orwhatever.
And then you're looking at thiswhole thing and you've got the
customer's perspective in all ofthis.
Right, the customer's tellingyou what they're experiencing,
but that's it.
Like you don't have a fullpicture at that point.
So you're looking at this junkdrawer, trying to make sense of
all of it and trying to figureout where to go, and eventually
(12:05):
you just kind of throw yourhands up and go well, like, we
know that X amount of customerswant Y feature, so let's build
that.
Maybe that's what they'relooking for.
Right, there's a better way?
Yeah, and this is one of thosethings that it took us a while
to find that most effective spot.
So what we do when we hear fromcustomers about the future
(12:26):
request.
Right, there's kind of a coupleof paths that that request is
going to take.
One, it could be that we'rejust not going to do it.
A customer says I need awaterfall chart report or I need
payroll budgeting numbersinside base camp.
We're just we're not going todo that.
One, we don't hear it veryoften and two, we have no
experience with any of that asfar as it being in Basecamp.
(12:47):
In those cases you just have tobe open and honest with the
customer and tell them look, I'msorry, like we don't have that,
we're likely not going to dothat, but here's some other
alternatives.
Here's some third partyintegrations that work with
Basecamp that you can look at.
We try not to leave them withlike no path forward, but we are
very clear like it's notsomething we're gonna do and we
(13:09):
don't want to give you falsehope that we might do that.
Yeah.
So if we know we're not justtell the customer right If we
think we might, or even if weknow we're going to right.
So like sometimes I know whatthe product team is thinking
about, what.
So, like sometimes I know whatthe product team is thinking
about, what they're looking formore information on, Right.
So those two second buckets, ifwe might, or we know we're
(13:29):
going to at some point.
Customer writes in about thatand we treat those differently.
We say, hey, like that isreally interesting.
My first email back to them atthat point is can you tell me
more about what just happenedthat led to you emailing us?
Yeah.
And that one question gives agood filter right, because some
customers are going to come backand say, oh well, like it was
(13:52):
nothing, really Like it was.
Just somebody walked by my deskand mentioned that it would be
cool and it's like all right,that's cool.
Like that doesn't give me anyinformation, but thank you, I
appreciate that Right.
Yeah.
Some people will write back a.
There's this good medium groundwhere somebody is like oh yeah,
like I ran into this and likeI've stumbled into it a couple
(14:14):
of times and I just finally likeit irked me enough where I just
had to tell somebody about it.
Those are the interesting ones,because there's some energy
there and I want to get on acall with them.
But that's the like initialstuff, right, it's the if we're
not going to do it, just tellthem.
If we think we're going to, orwe're pretty sure we're going to
, then we ask that secondfollow-up question so we can
(14:36):
start digging into that specificcustomer instance.
Priscilla (14:40):
Yeah, you're making these phone calls once you get
to a place where you want tolearn more.
How often are you making thosephone calls and who on your team
is kind of on the lines to dothat?
Is that just you, or are therepeople on the team that are also
jumping on those phone calls?
Chase (14:54):
Originally it was just me , which was fun.
You know, when I was doingfrontline support, this was my
one of my side projects that Iwork on.
It was, you know, really greattime.
And then, once I become thehead of the team, it was, oh, I
got to like train some otherpeople because I got more stuff
to do now, you know.
So Jane's also helping me inthis.
Now she's one of our supportreps over in the UK and then for
(15:18):
other people on the team asthey're leveling up in their
career, this is always an optionto them.
If they're interested inproduct research, if they're
interested in this, thesecustomer interviews and this
kind of jobs to be doneframework that we work with,
they have that option to join inat any time.
Priscilla (15:33):
So it mostly stays within the support team then.
Chase (15:35):
Yeah.
Priscilla (15:36):
Who's doing that research?
To learn more about thisfeedback or request that you're
getting?
Chase (15:41):
Definitely, this is one of those where, like we like to
think about feature requests,it's almost like you're a
detective going in to figure outwhat the it's not necessarily a
crime scene, right, but likefiguring out the situation.
Yeah, you've got your frontlinedetectives doing.
It's not like the cops that aredoing that.
These are like one step up,right.
These are detectives who that'stheir primary job, essentially,
and then all that gets pushedup as needed to other members of
(16:04):
the team and over into theproduct team.
You're sleuthing out the painpoints.
Sleuthing it out, exactly.
Priscilla (16:10):
Exactly With all of your knowledge and experience
from the support team, you can.
You know the questions to ask.
What kind of boundaries do youput in place for people who are
making those calls so that youdon't spend all of your days on
those phone calls?
Because I can imagine I mean assomeone who's done some phone
support there are some callsthat can take a long time and
(16:30):
you go.
I got to get off this call.
I can't spend an hour on thiscall.
So how do you, what boundariesdo you guys put in place to make
sure those are not taking solong to get accomplished?
Chase (16:39):
Yeah, there's a couple of little tricks.
So first, when we reach out tothe customer, say, hey, would
you jump on a call with us?
We use a Calendly link.
That way they can pick theirtime and everything from there.
That Calendly link sets it at20 minutes automatically.
So they know, going into itlike, hey, this is about a 20
minute block.
Now sometimes you get into aconversation you're like, oh,
there's so much good stuff andlike, yeah, you can even tell
(17:01):
the customer at that point like,look, I know, we said 20
minutes, can I have like another10 of your time?
Then they're more than gratefulto do that Right?
So that's the first.
You set that expectation thatway.
The second trick that we foundto be really effective is when
you first get on the phone callcustomers are really excited to
talk about because they're like,oh my God, somebody's listening
to me.
So the first thing that we dois we ask a question and then we
(17:22):
just kind of sit back for asecond and let them brain dump
everything out and then, oncethat is out of the way, then you
can move into the otherquestions that you have and
really get to the meat and bonesof what's going on there, but
they have to get that first likelittle thing in their head out
essentially, otherwise, yeah,that call is going to stretch
out, because that's, they justhave to get it out, you just
(17:43):
have to.
Priscilla (17:44):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's one of the things as
we've been navigating, you know,recording and tracking customer
feedback, one of the things Ikeep finding myself running up
against this danger of creatingbusy work for my team.
And you know there's this linewith customer feedback, like you
were saying about the fasterhorse, like you want to see it
and accept it and know it, butthere is a line of how far you
(18:06):
take it and what kind of takesyour time and what doesn't, and
so one I don't want to putprocesses in place that are just
busy work, that aren't going tobe bettering the product or the
team, and so how do youstructure the process to avoid
that pitfall of the busy work,but instead structuring these in
a way that you're getting valueout of them and it's not just
(18:27):
another phone call to check abox and move on?
Chase (18:29):
So the first trick with this is so our frontline folks,
when they see a feature requestwe've trained them to know like,
oh yeah, this is a good one,that we need to bump up to
somebody to make a call,essentially to bump up to Jane
or myself.
So what they do is theybasically take that email, get
some information for us and thenpop it into a Basecamp project.
About once a week or so, janeand I go through and look at the
things that have come in and go, oh yeah, like this is
(18:51):
interesting, this not so much.
This is one I want to know moreabout, this one Not so much.
So we start looking through andmaking a list of, like these
are the ones that we want totalk to from there, right.
And then Jane goes out and hasconversations with as many of
those folks as she can.
So by separating it out andsaying on the front line we just
want you to real quick, popthis over into the Basecamp
(19:12):
project for us.
There's not really any busywork there because it's a
post-it.
Forget it.
The front line folks move on atthat point, yeah, and then Jane
and I are really good about allright, this is work, this is
research, but this is usefulwork that, even if we don't end
up doing that feature, or if wedo five calls and they end up
being bust, that's just part ofit, that's just the accepted
(19:35):
whatever of it.
So by doing those things, youtake out the busy work.
Busy work for me is like doingall the stuff that has no value
at all.
Right, so it's the labelingthings.
Yep, I'm sorry.
If you've got one or two peoplespending enough time looking
through the requests that arecoming in, they don't need the
labels and all.
They'll know the patterns justoff the top of their head.
They'll see it.
Essentially it's not quite likeNeo and the Matrix, but kind of
(19:58):
you know.
So when you've got a bunch ofpeople looking at the data, you
need those shortcuts of thelabels.
Right, you need the shortcutsof, like, the groupings and all
the rest of it.
When it's only a couple of youdoing this, then it's going to
be easier to spot the patternsand you're going to have that
running thing in your head.
You're going to know it when yousee it.
Essentially and it takes alittle while Like I'm not going
to put somebody that's only beenon the team for six months into
(20:20):
a role like Jane's Jane's beenwith us for six, eight years,
something like that.
Yeah, so she knows what to lookfor.
Priscilla (20:27):
Yeah, when people come to you and say, hey, I want
to level up, I want to be partof this team that calls and
learns more about this, do theygo through a training before
they get put on those phonecalls?
Chase (20:37):
Yeah.
So it's a little bit of atraining, but it's also a little
bit of like you're jumping inthe pool here, right?
So, with 37 Signals, we havethis idea of being a manager of
one.
Priscilla (20:46):
So do we?
We follow that same theology.
Chase (20:49):
Yeah, you want people who are eager and run toward the
problem, run toward the fire,run toward the open space, Right
?
Not people that you're going tohave to like.
All right, you've got to dolike these five things and
that's going to be your trainingessentially, yeah.
So when somebody says, hey, youknow, Chase, I want to do this.
There's a couple of books, Isit down.
It's like these are going to bereally helpful, Like you don't
have to read the full thing, butlike skim through it,
(21:10):
essentially because we'reteaching them a basic jobs to be
done framework.
Essentially I've said that terma couple of times.
Let me explain that so forfolks that haven't seen this.
So a jobs to be done frameworkis the idea that every product
out there whether it's, you know, an actual product or a feature
in a product or a thing you buy, right has a specific job to be
(21:31):
done.
So when people come to Basecamp, typically speaking, Basecamp
is one of those things where itdoesn't matter what industry
you're in.
You're either a small businessowner who is trying to grow the
business and you need that levelup, right.
You need the Mario fire flowerto level up to the next part,
right.
Or you're like a new manager ora team leader or something, and
(21:53):
your team just missed somethingand you've got to make sure
that that doesn't happen again.
Those are the big two jobs thatBasecamp solves.
So everything out there prettymuch has a job to be done and
that's what you look for.
You look for the job.
Buying a Snickers has adifferent job than buying a
Milky Way, essentially.
So we've got to give new folkskind of a crash course into that
(22:14):
, Like you don't have to knoweverything but you need to know
some basics in here.
So we give them, you know, justa couple of quick books and
short little things to readthrough, skim through.
Bob Motessa did a really greatthing.
It was like Unboss conferenceor something like that video
about the whole thing.
That's one of the it's like anhour long thing.
We give them that video towatch so they can kind of see it
(22:34):
in action, essentially.
And then after that we say, hey,look, we are going to stick you
in a couple of calls as a whatwe call second chair.
So, like, typically, when we'redoing the interviews, you've
got a first chair, who's theprimary person, and then on
future requests it's usually oneperson.
But if we're doing like fullinterviews, you'll have two
people you have, and like fullinterviews, you'll have two
people.
You have a first chair and asecond chair.
So we're just going to stickthem with Jane, stick them with
(22:57):
myself, and have them listen toan interview and see how we go
about sleuthing it out.
And that's the big thing thatwe found with these the more
interviews that you do it's likeworking out the more reps that
you get in, the better you'regoing to be at it essentially.
So yeah, we have a little bitof a training, but it's also a
little bit of like all right,you're in the customer support
pool.
We're just going into the deepend now.
Priscilla (23:17):
Yeah, and they're probably already pretty
comfortable with that customerinteraction because they're on
the support team and they'reeager to level up.
So I'm sure there's thateagerness there too.
Yeah, it's so fun With the sinkor swim training method.
We use swim training method.
We use that a lot too.
Is you know, we want to giveyou enough information that
you're confident, but at thesame time, you're going to learn
(23:38):
the best when you're in thereand you're doing it, and so I
love that.
I love that strategy.
Chase (23:43):
Now we tell new hires that you're going to be in the
pool on day one.
You're going to be working withcustomers on day one.
You're going to have floatiesand there's going to be people
around you, but you're stillgoing to be in the pool but
you're going to be in the pool,you're going to be swimming.
Priscilla (23:53):
Yeah, I love that.
One of the things I keep comingback to is the idea that what
you're trying to get to thebottom of is the need, not so
much the feature request, butwhat they're trying to do.
So what questions do you guysask to kind of suss out that?
Chase (24:06):
Yeah, so three big ones.
The first one is always why now?
So the fact that somebody sentyou an email or a chat or
whatever today at that time isimportant because, especially if
they're an older customer, likehave been with you for a while,
what was the tipping point forthat specific time that they
were like?
You know what I'm actuallygoing to tell the company about
this.
Yeah.
(24:27):
Right, they weren't going tolike just mumble and grumble and
move on Like something wasdifferent.
Enough that they were like hey,like hey, we need to.
We need to get in touch withthem.
Second, what's the workaround?
Yeah, it's like.
What have you been doing upuntil this point?
Priscilla (24:40):
yeah, right to make this workable for you.
Chase (24:42):
Right to make this whole thing, do the thing right yeah
so, like one of the good ones.
The examples I use with basecamp is uh, to do so with.
To do's you some to do apps outthere have, like you can set
the priority of a specific thing.
In Basecamp we don't reallyhave priorities or anything like
that on a to do, but we tellfolks look, you can put an emoji
at the beginning of the to doname to give that visual pop.
(25:03):
Put a red circle or a greencircle or whatever for that,
just pop at the front.
So I was working with acustomer one day and they were
like, yeah, that's theworkaround I'm doing, like I did
the little circle thing andwhatnot, all the rest of it.
And we're like, oh cool, likewhy is that not working anymore?
And they go oh well, we hiredsomebody who's blind and that
visual cue is gone now and thescreen reader kind of picks it
(25:25):
up right.
It like tells what the emojilike as a name is essentially.
Yeah.
But that whole visual indicationis lost at that point.
Oh, okay, that makes sense.
That's why was it not working?
It's because they made a newhire.
What was the work around?
Well, that was the work around,but that doesn't work in this
situation anymore.
Priscilla (25:43):
Yeah Right.
That's such a good example ofwhy being like curious and
wanting to learn more about therequest or the feedback is so
important.
Because you can easily have anemail conversation with a
customer who's asking for a veryspecific feature and totally
miss that piece of informationthat, as the support person
(26:03):
working with them, you have toknow that in order to fully
understand why they're askingfor a priority to be there,
you're like, why not use thisworkaround?
This is great, but then gettingon the phone and giving them
the ability to share that withyou can really open up your eyes
to what they're actuallyrunning into.
I love that example so much.
That's such a good example.
Chase (26:23):
And that's the thing I tell all the folks I'm working
with right, just be curious,right, yeah.
So one of the values we have onour team is be curious, not
judgmental.
Priscilla (26:30):
Oh, I love that.
That's so good.
Chase (26:32):
Doesn't matter if, like, a customer is using Basecamp in
the weirdest way that you'vepossibly heard of, right, figure
out why they're doing it thatway, yeah, essentially.
So yeah, be curious, notjudgmental.
I think I stole that from a TedLasso episode at some point.
Priscilla (26:46):
Probably that sounds like Ted.
Yeah, it's an old Walt Whitmorequote, I think it.
Chase (26:49):
It's an old Walt Whitmore quote, I think.
Priscilla (26:52):
It's so good though.
Chase (26:53):
It is.
It is.
I mean, that's a big thing,like we actually build it into,
like our leveling, so like oneof the things we want you to get
better at as you grow in yourcareer is being curious, like
asking better questionsessentially.
So, yeah, it's the why.
Now right, like why is it notworking at this moment?
What's the workaround?
And then, if you keep doing itthat way, what's going to go
(27:13):
wrong?
Priscilla (27:14):
That's a good one too .
Chase (27:15):
Right, because there are some things where it's an
inconvenience.
Yeah.
Like, yeah, we can keep doingthis, nothing is really going to
go wrong.
Like they're not going to dropBasecamp or the product and move
on or anything.
This gives you a sense of theenergy and the urgency of it.
Yeah, right, so like ifsomebody says, oh yeah, like if
we can't figure this out, thenwe're going to keep missing
(27:36):
things, and like Basecamp, thewhole point is not to miss
anything.
Essentially, Yep.
So that you know, if you keepdoing it the current way, what's
going to go wrong.
That'll tell you the energy,it'll tell you the urgency of it
and it will also let you intotheir thinking a little bit.
Let you into their thinking alittle bit.
So, like 50-50, right.
Sometimes they will havethought that thing through and
(27:56):
they're like, oh yeah, like thiswill go wrong and like I've
already thought about that Right.
Half the other time they'relike you can see it on the zoom,
you can see them go.
Oh well, like I guess, likenothing really bad would happen,
and then all of a sudden thatjust like goes away.
Priscilla (28:08):
Essentially, yeah, it's like they convince
themselves out of it.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I've been in situationswhere I'm talking to like our
developers and I'm like you know, I really think we should have
this and they'll be like, butwhy?
Why do we want that?
And then I'm like you know, themore I talk about this with you
, the more I think maybe wedon't actually need that, maybe
the solution is somethingdifferent, or the solution is an
(28:30):
education for how the toolworks and not changing the tool
to fit.
The One of the things youtalked about earlier was some
feedback comes in, there's theyes, no, and you know in the
future, maybe.
So how do you communicate withyour team, what feature requests
are possible and then how tonavigate, figuring that answer
(28:51):
out before it gets to you?
Chase (28:53):
Yeah.
So there are a couple of thingsthat we know we're just not
going to do and we tell them aswe're training on a feature
request because, again, like, wedo feature requests differently
so we spend a morning during anew hire's training going this
is the way we want you to handleit.
We want you to be open andhonest and we want you to tell
them no if it's a no and if it'sa maybe, then here's the
question we want you to ask.
So we spend a morning coveringthis and in that we tell them
(29:15):
here's a couple of things thatwe know we're just not ever
going to do Like G, never goingto be in Basecamp.
We don't think they'refundamentally effective.
At the end of the day, basecampis about the communication and
the collaboration, the workingon the project.
It's not about the look at thisfancy reporting chart that I
can pull, so Gantt charts.
We're just not going to do.
So there are a couple of thingsthat we tell them like these
(29:37):
are ones that we 99% sure we'rejust not going to do for
whatever reason.
Another good example was customlanguages, right?
So, like Basecamp's interfaceis in English, the UI is in
English, you can type whateverlanguage you want, and you can
rename some tools that you want,but for the most part it's in
English.
Yeah.
We're probably not going to dotranslations because it's a very
(29:57):
complicated undertaking.
Yeah.
Yeah, so we tell them that andthen we tell them for everything
else, just ask like we have acampfire chat up that the entire
support team is payingattention in the day we're
dropping questions back andforth yeah, so for new hires.
You're like, hey, is thissomething that we're interested
in?
You can ask somebody and we'llsay, yeah, maybe like go ahead
or no, we're just not, and thenwe'll give them a reason why.
And it's that like learning byexperience thing like I can't
(30:20):
give you every answer You'regoing to have to be curious
enough to ask.
Priscilla (30:24):
Yeah, so take the language as one.
For example, if someonerequests that and you say, no,
that's not something we're goingto be working on, and you give
them an honest, transparentanswer that that's not where
we're going to go, and then theypush back and they get
frustrated that you've dismissedthem and you're you know, and
your goal for being transparentand treating them like a human
(30:46):
and telling them the truth istranslated as oh, you're
brushing me off and you're notgonna accept this as a real
valid thing.
How do you train your team totake that and continue with that
empathy and understandingwithout saying, okay, fine, I'll
pass it along to the team?
Chase (31:02):
Yeah, so that question comes up like 95% in the trial
customers that we have.
Yeah.
You're looking for the new thing.
Folks have boxes to check, soit's not somebody that's like
sold on us and has been with usfor a while for the most part.
So when we first sound like,hey, look, that's not something
we're likely to do, but we wantto give some option, right, so
we continue that thought with.
But you know anywhere that youcan enter text in Basecamp, you
(31:25):
can use any language that youwant, right, as long as you
don't mind the labels being inEnglish at that point.
And that gets folks 80% of theway there.
Essentially, if they do saylike, hey, look, this is a must
have requirement for the appthat I choose, okay, great,
sorry, basecamp's not the rightfit for this one.
Here's a couple of otheroptions that do have that.
Check into them.
Priscilla (31:45):
It's kind of.
I don't know if you're familiarwith improv and the rule of yes
and yes and yep.
It's kind of like the opposite,no, but you know it's like no,
we're not going to do this, buthere's some other ways you can
get that done.
Customers to that you care aboutthem more than you care about
them using your product, becausesometimes you're right, it's
not going to be that yourproduct is the right fit and
(32:07):
sometimes your product is theright fit, but there's this
third party that's going to helpthem do a workaround to achieve
what they want to achieve.
I think it can be hard asespecially someone new in the
customer support world to betold hey, you're actually going
to say no, and you go oh gosh,I'm going to tell them no, and
so, like you know no, but isgreat, like no, we're not going
(32:29):
to be able to do this, buthere's other ways.
Or, but if this is somethingthat's a deal breaker for you,
I'd be happy to help you findanother tool that's going to
solve that problem for you,knowing that.
I mean, this is how Buzzsproutis built as well.
We are built for very specifictypes of what people are looking
for and we're not trying to beeverything for everyone, and so
sometimes you're going to havepeople who aren't going to stay,
(32:51):
and that's because they'relooking for something that we're
not offering, and I think thatthat's totally valid and can be
freeing, even though it can alsofeel pretty scary to say no to
a customer.
Chase (33:00):
Yeah, and that's one of those things a lot of companies
out there will tell them like,oh, yeah, like I'll pass it on
to the team, and then thatcustomer is left hanging
essentially yeah, exactly, andso they might be in your
products, but they're not happyabout being there, and that
distrust just will build fromthere.
You know, that's why we try tobe as upfront as possible, and
for anybody that does push back,it's still a phrase from my
(33:21):
grandmother like kill them withkindness.
Yeah, just be empathetic, justbe nice, just be the helpful
neighbor that you know wants togive some advice.
Nobody's going to be mad if youdo that.
Priscilla (33:31):
Yeah, and if they are .
Sometimes we had an episode awhile back about angry customers
and sometimes people are.
They just want to be angry andsometimes people just want to be
frustrated and you're not goingto flip that with as many
options as you give them.
They want you to do it the waythey want you to do it and if
you don't, that's just it's notgoing to work for them and so
sometimes you just have to beokay with the resolution not
(33:51):
being perfect there.
So on the flip side of that,when someone writes in and they
ask you a question or ask for afeature that you are working on,
and you're like, oh yeah, thisis in development.
What do you guys do you like?
How much do you share aboutthings that are in development?
Chase (34:07):
Not a word.
Priscilla (34:08):
Yeah, not a word Not a word.
So Not even like a wink.
Chase (34:10):
Not even a wink wink, nudge, nudge.
Nothing, right, nothing CauseI've been burned before.
Yeah, so we work in six weekcycles.
I have seen features.
(34:36):
We're good to the end of thesix weeks.
It's in Q&A, it looks good, wethink we're going to ship this
thing and at the very day or twobefore we go live end of the
cycle we can pull that circuitbreaker and say, look, this does
not meet the quality that wewant to put out there.
Right, because there's nothingworse than putting a feature out
there and being like, oh no,never mind, jk, we have to take
it back.
Yeah, Essentially there havebeen times where like four or
(34:56):
five since I've been here butthere are times where you get to
the end and everything lookedgood, and if I had promised the
customer that something was inthe works, and all of a sudden
it gets called off and thattrust is broken at that point,
yep.
So yeah, we don't.
Not a word, not a mention.
Now, after it ships, we makesure to go back through and to
talk with all the customers thatwe heard that idea from.
(35:16):
It's like hey, look, here'sthis new thing.
Like glad we can make thishappen.
And customers are thrilled thatwe like close the loop.
Priscilla (35:22):
At that point, yeah, that's the most fun that follow
up with the customer once it islaunched, especially when it
like the timing works out wherethey, you know, email on a
Friday and you launch it on aMonday and then Tuesday you
could reach out and say, hey,remember me from Friday.
I have a really exciting thingto tell you.
Those are like the most funemail to follow up on because
(35:42):
you're like you know, I couldn'ttell you this on Friday, but
now you can jump in and you canuse it.
One of our podcasters wasrequesting a feature that we
ended up implementing and whenit was out we got to call her
and tell her and she was just soexcited and that's just such a
fun, rewarding thing to be ableto do, to kind of, you know,
step in for your customers inthat way.
It's great to do to kind of youknow step in for your customers
(36:04):
in that way, it's great.
So all of this so far we'vereally been talking about is
like communicating thesecustomer needs and these
requests and getting informationwithin the support team.
But the other side of that iscommunicating outside of the
support team to your productteam development team, the
things you're learning insupport, because you know in
support we're the front lines,we're working with customers,
we're hearing all the stuff.
We're learning this, we knowour customers and then we turn
(36:27):
and how do you then communicateit out to the team as a whole?
So can you give us a littleinsight into what that looks
like?
Chase (36:33):
Yeah, so after we've talked to a couple of customers,
we usually have a really goodidea of what the problem is.
Right, they might have useddifferent words to describe
everything and they probably allhad different ideas about how
to solve the problem.
But, like, we've looked at thecrime scene, we've put the
evidence together and we can nowsee like this is the smoking
gun, this is the problem.
So we'll write up basically it'sI mean, I guess you could call
(36:54):
it a brief For us.
It's like here's a summary,essentially, of what we've
learned.
We'll go in.
It's just a tech stock inBasecamp, it's literally just
like a note, and in that we'lllist out like here's the problem
, here's the different customersthat we've talked to.
Here's what those customerssaid in their words.
So we'll, like, we'll pull outtheir words from the transcript
(37:14):
and put it in there.
We'll also, since all of thesecalls are recorded, we'll put
the MP3 audio file right inthere, because it helps to hear
from the customer.
You can hear the energy in someof their questions.
So we lay out the case as bestas we can with all of that, and
then we say, look, we don't knowthe solution at this moment.
Right, but this is enough tostart working on a pitch,
(37:36):
essentially.
So we'll write all that up, westore it in a Basecamp project
and then, when the product teamis looking for what is going to
happen in the next cycle,sometimes they have their own
ideas, sometimes they havethings that they want to build,
and then sometimes it's well,what are the customer things
that we're hearing, and you cango to this library essentially
of these are the patterns thatwe've seen.
(37:57):
These are the problems that weare reasonably confident that we
need to tackle, and they'llhave that whole backstory there
with all the research done, allthe interviews done, ready to go
, and they can pick it up and goall right.
Well, that's the problem.
I can start figuring out acouple of like answers for that,
and so that flows into what wecall a pitch.
Now, the pitch is basically theproblem the solutions that we
(38:20):
think could work, and theproduct team works on that.
They'll come up with a coupleof like this is how we think
we're going to tackle it, andthen that's turned over to a
designer and a programmer to goand implement.
Now they might change somestuff in there, they might get
into the actually building outthe feature and go, yeah, like
that's not going to work exactlyin the best way, so we're going
to tweak it and do this.
Priscilla (38:41):
We're going to make a car instead of a faster horse,
right.
Chase (38:43):
Yeah, but everything's going to come back to that
original Like.
This is the problem that we'retackling.
Priscilla (38:48):
Yeah, that's very cool.
So sometimes what we will seeon our team is, you know, we
identify something that we wantto pitch, or we want to
communicate and we communicateit out and it doesn't get picked
up as a project, right, or wepitch it and it doesn't get
picked up as a project, right,or we pitch it and it doesn't
come back and developmentdoesn't work, move forward with
it.
Sometimes it's hard to do thatand have it not accepted and
(39:11):
then to feel like, oh gosh, Ijust spent all this time
advocating for this need that Ifeel strongly about, because I
wrote a pitch for it and itdidn't get picked up.
It can be hard to then go andpitch again in the future or to
pitch it again or something.
How do you, as a leader on yourteam, kind of encourage people
on your team to continueadvocating for things after
(39:32):
getting kind of like the no,we're not going to move forward
with this right now?
Chase (39:35):
Yeah, so the first thing is just set the expectation.
I tell everyone this is likeplaying a game of darts in a bar
.
If you had like two oscillatingfans in front of you blowing
different directions, right, thechances of you taking that dart
and hitting the board even is.
It's just hard.
Right, because you've got somany ideas that are coming
through, but you've only got sixweeks to work with and you've
(39:56):
got this set like these teams ofdesigners and programmers are
going to work on this, keepingin mind we also have one, two,
three, we got four products inactive development right now, so
there's a lot of competinginterest.
Yeah.
So, as part of the shape upmethod, what happens is our CEO,
our CTO, our product strategy,and then usually one of our
(40:18):
programming heads will cometogether and look at a bunch of
different pitches and say, allright, these are the four that
we're going to do out of like 50, right, these are the four,
these are the six or howevermany, these are the people we
have, this is the group right,and the rest of them go back
into the pile.
Now they can come back down theroad and we, you know, I tell
the folks that do this with me,like, look, just because it
(40:39):
doesn't get picked up on thefirst time doesn't mean it's not
going to down the road.
Sometimes we put it in the pileagain, sometimes we make a push
for it again and it gets pickedup on the second, third, fourth
time.
My deputy head of support shehad one that she pushed for for
like six months, eight months,and we all thought it was done,
and she was like just one more,like just one more push for it
and it got picked up.
(40:59):
You know, yeah, so it literallyis like playing a game of darts
with fans in your way, likesometimes the stars have to
align for you to get one throughand you have to be okay with
that.
Priscilla (41:10):
Yeah, setting those expectations ahead of time so
people know what to expect,because it can be.
I remember pitching some thingsearly on at Buzzsprout and then
not getting picked up andfeeling like, oh my gosh, I'm
never going to pitch anythingagain.
Oh gosh.
Yes, this is so embarrassing andit's so helpful to think about
it.
Like the game of darts, likeyou're saying that you're
(41:32):
throwing it out there, it mightnot land.
This time you might need to goand add some more information to
it to help you know further italong.
Maybe it's not exactly theissue you originally started
with and maybe it changes as youlearn more information over six
months while it's out there.
So I think that's so good tojust keep that in mind that it's
not a failure if it doesn't getpicked up the first time that
(41:53):
you pitch it.
Yeah, just before we wrap up,do you have any advice for
smaller support teams that arelooking to put these kind of
processes in place so that theycan start on a strong foot as a
smaller team?
Chase (42:04):
Yeah, biggest piece of advice here is just the more
interviews you do, the betteryou're going to get.
Yeah.
In the beginning, when I wasdoing these, like I thought I
knew the right questions to ask,and learn that those weren't
the right questions, right.
Yeah.
Like it's one of those.
Like you've got to get yourreps in, you've got to figure
out what works, what doesn'twork, and the only way that
(42:26):
you're going to do that isactually doing the calls,
actually doing the interviews.
Like you can sit here and lookat data all day long, you can
tag every case with whatever andgo well, we saw a 20% jump in
this feature request.
Doesn't matter, right?
What you need is people thatare actually sticking with the
crime scene metaphor, actuallygot the scene right, that have
seen this thing, and you need totalk to them and see what's
going on.
Those firsthand accounts is theonly way that you're going to
start putting together thepattern in your head.
(42:47):
I've tried it.
You're not going to get thatvia email.
Like I've tried to haveconversations like this across
just pure text via email, and itjust doesn't work out.
Like you need to be able to seethem and hear their inflections,
hear their energy to figure outwhere the next question is,
like where you need to go, andthat only comes with the more
reps that you do.
So you're going to kind of likewith podcasting.
(43:10):
You're not going to be great onthose first couple episodes but
you got to keep with it andcontinue with it and like your
skills are going to grow themore that you do it.
So if it doesn't work the firsttime or the second time or the
10th time, don't give up.
The first time or the secondtime or the 10th time, don't
give up, like this is a thingthat is, you just got to have
some perseverance and keep going.
Priscilla (43:26):
That's such good advice.
Well, thank you for sharingthis with us, chase.
It's really helpful one for me,but I'm sure, for our listeners
to learn how you find thatbalance between knowing the
customer's needs and holding onto kind of your expert knowledge
and using that as the funnelthat it's going through to get
to the team as a whole.
So I really appreciate yousharing your knowledge with us.
My pleasure.
(43:46):
So Chase is going to stickaround for our support in real
life segment, where we discussreal life support experiences
and questions from our listeners.
So, jordan, what do you havefor us today?
All?
Right, so this is a questionfrom support during Slack.
Chase (44:05):
Love them.
They're great.
Jordan (44:06):
They are great, it says.
How do you typically handlesituations where customers
request refunds forsubscriptions that were not
canceled in time?
What guiding principles orstrategies do you follow to
resolve these issues?
Priscilla (44:18):
effectively.
This is such a good question.
I think it's good for Chase andI too, because we both work in
subscription based products toan extent, and so I'm sure we
both deal with refund requestsin this specific situation with,
you know, canceled accountspretty frequently.
Chase (44:35):
Yeah, we want a happy goodbye on this one, right?
This is one of those where,like, when you email us and
you're like hey, like forgot tocancel, want a refund done, like
don't need to know why, don'tneed a reason, and we'll ask
them like hey, just out ofcuriosity, like you know, why
are you leaving us as like?
an afterthought, but thatquestion is at the bottom of the
email.
It's the.
We've refunded.
You're good to go.
(44:55):
Just kind of curious why you'releaving.
But there's no gatekeeping,there's no know like.
Well, you're locked into acontract.
It's happy, goodbye.
Here's your money.
If you need us down the road,we're here.
Yeah, yeah.
Please come back if you everwant to.
Essentially, if you don't, twothings happen.
One, they're going to hate yourcompany.
(45:15):
Yep Right, this is going to belike.
Comcast DirecTV.
Well, you're locked in for twoyears, right, sorry, so they're
going to hate you for that.
Priscilla (45:21):
And then two they're going to do a chargeback on you
anyways.
Yes, they're probably going todispute the charge.
Chase (45:24):
They're going to dispute the charge, you're going to get
hit with a chargeback fee andthey're going to get their money
back anyways.
And now they're like mad atyour company and not they're
going to bad mouth you to.
You know whoever, whenever youcome up.
So yeah, firm believer in thehappy goodbye, Got it.
Don't worry about thetechnicalities like have your
money back, come back if youneed us.
Priscilla (45:43):
The happy goodbye.
I've never heard it said likethat, but that's so good.
We are very similar in the sameboat.
You know we want to be asgenerous as possible, and if you
accidentally canceled youraccount two days later than you
should have, yeah, we'redefinitely refunding that,
there's no question.
And you know, we want to makesure that you're happy as you go
, because you don't know, youmight need to come back in the
future, and so we want you tohave a good relationship with us
(46:06):
.
And again it comes back tocaring about you more as a
person than as a customer, andit doesn't make sense for you to
pay for another month whenyou've canceled it so what makes
the most sense.
Yeah, let's give you that refund.
I remember one time I think Iwas already working with
customer support and I had, youknow, a new year's resolution to
(46:29):
learn how to speak Spanish, andso I downloaded and paid for a
year of Babbel and it lastedabout two months and then I
stopped and I was like well, Ialready paid for the year, so I
know I signed up for that.
There's no going back on that.
What I forgot to do was cancelit before the next year, and so
I paid for the second year and Iwas so frustrated with myself
because I haven't taken one ofthese classes in like eight
months, you know.
So I emailed their support teamand I was like, Listen, I'm
(46:50):
sorry, I should have canceledthis.
I did it.
It was a big charge.
Is there any way that I can geta discount or a partial refund
or anything?
And they gave me a full refundwithout any questions and it was
a big refund.
I mean that and they easilycould have said sorry, that's
your job to cancel it.
And you didn't cancel it.
Yeah, you agreed to our terms,Yep, but the fact that they did
(47:15):
it so quickly, with no questionsasked, makes me feel like, if I
get that hankering to learn anew language again which really
I would love to learn how tospeak Spanish I would go back to
Babbel because I know that theytreated me well in that moment,
and so I think that's part ofwhy we want to make sure that
we're generous to people,especially as they're leaving,
is because you never know whatpeople are going to do in the
future and you want them to havea good relationship with your
product and with you as a person, as a support team, and word of
(47:38):
mouth is so strong.
So even if they're like for us,even if they're not starting
another podcast, but maybe theyhave a friend who wants to start
a podcast, you want them tospeak well of you when they're
talking to their friends.
I think another important thingjust you know to tack on the end
is I really like empoweringeveryone on our team to make
those calls and not feeling likeI have to go get a refund
(47:59):
approved.
Yeah, so it's not always evenlike canceling, but you know,
for whatever reason likesometimes we'll have people
write in and say I was in thehospital last month, I didn't
upload any episodes, Is thereany way I could get a discount
because I didn't use the productfor that month.
I try to make sure everyone onmy team knows that they have the
power to be generous and makethat call without feeling like
(48:20):
they have to come back to me orone of the senior specialists
and say, hey, I want to get thisapproved, this $12 refund.
You know it's unnecessary.
So I think that's anotherreally important thing when
you're talking about refunds,when you're talking about being
generous to your customers, isempowering your team to make
those calls so that they feelthat confidence and that
(48:40):
empowerment and can be generousto your customers.
That's such a good point.
Chase (48:44):
You're looking for those like little, like moments of
happiness that can happen inthere right.
So like with that example,right?
So what we would have done,same thing, right it's?
Anyone on our team could havedone a refund like that right
off the rip, have your moneyback and all the rest of it, and
then you start going all right,well, what's that next level,
right?
No-transcript.
(49:06):
Like I'm so glad you're with us.
Like, if you need anything,here's my email Send flowers.
Priscilla (49:11):
You're looking for those?
Chase (49:11):
little things, because those little things are what
sets you apart from thecompetition, kind of like I said
at the our team too, exactly,and that is a like support is a
feature, it is a selling pointwith us.
So anything you can do droppinga thank you card in the mail,
you know, or get well card inthe mail, like that's a one more
little thing where it just it'sthe word of mouth, they're
(49:33):
going to spread the news aboutyou.
Priscilla (49:34):
Yeah, because the way I like to think about it is
you're building relationshipsright with your customers and if
you just learn that yourcustomer is in the hospital or
just got out of the hospitalbecause you care about them
right, you've got thisrelationship with them and
building that relationship justlike you would with a friend.
You know that kind of thing.
How can I go a little stepbeyond, like I'm going to give
them this refund?
Of course that's a given, butwhat can I do beyond that to
(49:56):
build that relationship and setus apart?
I love it so much.
Chase (49:58):
That's a whole other show right there.
Priscilla (50:00):
That's a whole other show right there, I know, really
delighting your customers.
I'm like, all right, we'll haveyou back, chase, we'll do that
episode later, but thank you somuch for being here.
I really appreciate it.
And remember that if you have astory to share or a question
for us, you can email us athappytohelpatbuzzsproutcom or
you can text the show using ourtext, the show link that's in
the show notes.
We in the show notes we willpick one question or story to
(50:22):
discuss each week, so if yousend something in, you may hear
it on a future episode.
Chase, before we go, is thereanything that you want to share
with our listeners about howthey can find you or where they
can go to learn more about whoyou are and what you're doing?
Chase (50:34):
Yeah, so easiest way I'm not big on socials or anything
like that Just drop me an email.
Chase C-H-A-S-E at heycom.
Priscilla (50:41):
At heycom.
I love it.
I love the heycom I know it'sso cute I just think it's so fun
yeah.
Chase (50:46):
So cute.
Priscilla (50:48):
H-E-Y, not H-A-Y.
Yes, yes, yes.
I want to thank Chase again forbeing here and thanks to
everyone for listening.
Now go and make someone's day.
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