September 8, 2026 • 32 mins
Priscilla and Buzzsprout support specialist Serena return from the Support Driven Expo in Chicago to share their biggest takeaways. From new opportunities for support professionals to the importance of slowing down, we’re exploring what it looks like to grow with our industry while keeping human connection at the heart of our work.
We unpack six takeaways to help you:
- Explore how your customer support role can grow beyond answering tickets
- Find your voice in technical conversations and share your team’s perspective
- Support your teammates through challenges you can’t solve
- Manage urgency so you can make better decisions and avoid burnout
- Create a team culture where it feels safe to share ideas, experiment, and fail
- Find new ways to connect with customers as AI takes on more of the inbox
Plus, we share a few memorable customer service experiences from our trip and talk about why finding your support community can remind you just how valuable your work really is.
We want to hear from you! Share your support stories and questions with us at happytohelp@buzzsprout.com!
To learn more about Buzzsprout visit Buzzsprout.com.
Thanks for listening!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Priscilla (00:00):
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer
support from the people atBuzzsprout.
I'm your host, PriscillaBrooks.
We just got back from theSupport Driven Expo in Chicago,
and after spending two days withother support professionals
talking about everything from AIand customer support to
strategies for connecting withcustomers, we're excited to
share some of our majortakeaways and highlights from
(00:21):
the event.
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
All right, so how is Chicago?
It was fantastic.
First of all, for everyonelistening, you know, we're in
Florida, and Chicago weatherright now is a beautiful,
wonderful break from the heatthat is still hanging around in
Florida.
So it was so good.
And it was really fun becausegoing to Chicago, I didn't have
(00:44):
to go by myself.
I went with Serena from ourteam.
And so I invited her to come intoday to share some of her
takeaways from the conference aswell.
So Serena's with us today.
Hey guys.
So I kind of teased it in theintro, but we just spent the
last three days in Chicago withthe support-driven community at
their expo.
(01:04):
And it was a really, reallygreat experience for us.
And so I thought it'd be reallyfun to take a few minutes and
to talk through some of our bigtakeaways while they're still
fresh on our minds.
We got back into Jacksonvillelast night after midnight.
And so here we are the nextmorning debriefing.
And so I'm really excited aboutit.
Jordan (01:21):
Yeah, I'm actually really excited to hear all about
this.
I'm gonna be living likevicariously through you because
I've actually never been to asupport-driven conference
before.
So this will be fun.
Yeah.
Priscilla (01:31):
Before we get into the support-driven of it all, we
had a really fun little trip.
I mean, it was a conference,but we also, you know, a little
trip to Chicago.
Yeah.
And we had several momentsthroughout our trip that we had
really exceptional customersupport experiences.
And so I thought it'd be reallyfun to kind of kick off our
episode, like we do with all ofour episodes, to highlight some
(01:53):
of those really good customersupport experiences.
So the first one I'll share wason the plane to Chicago, one of
our flight attendants, she cameup and offered me a drink.
And I said, Oh yes, I'd love adrink.
And she said, Well, I'd love toserve it to you.
This is a perfect match, orsomething like that.
But it was just like thiskindness.
And she was like, I'm here togive you a drink and you want to
(02:15):
accept a drink.
So this is a perfect match.
It was very sweet.
And I thought, you know, inthat moment, like that kind of
just kindness.
There was nothing super fancyabout it.
It was just a little more humanthan it, you know, needed to be
because she could have justhanded me my drink.
Yeah, it was sweet.
And it was a seven o'clockflight, right?
So we're all kind of tired andgroggy, and she brought some
(02:35):
energy first thing in themorning, and it was really
great.
And it like made that flightthat much better.
So that's like the first littlenugget of like good customer
support, really, in that moment.
Serena, do you have any storiesof good customer support that
we got while we were on thetrip?
Serena (02:50):
So Priscilla and I went to dinner at one of our favorite
places, Sunda.
And I mentioned to the waiter,oh, does this have one of my
allergens in it?
And he immediately was rattlingoff, okay, you can get this
dish.
We'll do this to it, we'll makethe adjustments that you need.
And just from like a sly littlecomment, he was trying to give
(03:11):
me the best experience despitemy allergies.
And I feel like that's rare.
It is.
Jordan (03:16):
Yeah.
Usually it's like scary to likego to restaurants when you have
allergies.
My my friend was visiting withus and she's allergic to like
everything, like sugar, gluten,onions, garlic, everything.
And she has gotten to the pointwhere she just doesn't eat out
anymore.
So when you go somewhere andyou have someone who is like
knowledgeable in what they haveand understands like this is
(03:38):
serious, and I can list off allthese other things, and we have
other options for you.
Like, that's amazing.
Serena (03:43):
Yeah, it's definitely one of my big anxieties with
traveling.
Yeah.
Priscilla (03:47):
The thing that struck me about it was how
knowledgeable he was on all thedifferent food dishes.
Because Serena said, Here aremy allergies.
These are the things that Ineed to keep separate.
And then she asked about acouple different dishes and he
literally rattled off, okay.
Well, here's how we wouldmodify this, and here's how we
would modify this, with a lot oflike confidence and clarity
(04:08):
around what would be includedand what wouldn't.
Because of course it's going tochange the dish for Serena if
you know you have to remove fiveingredients.
And so she was able to makedecisions on, well, do I still
want that dish, even though nowit doesn't have four of the five
ingredients in it, right?
I agree with Serena.
That was another one that stoodout.
One more that I really justhave to highlight because it was
(04:31):
so solid was we stayed at ahotel called the Clarage House.
It was a cute little hotel.
And the person who was at thefront desk when we got there to
check in, her name was MissCookie, and she was fantastic.
I love that.
I mean fantastic.
She was so welcoming when wegot there.
We had a great conversation aswe were checking in.
Both the rooms were under myname, so we had to make some
(04:53):
adjustments.
So that could have been astressful situation.
And she was totally chill aboutthe whole thing.
She was kind to us.
She gave us all the informationwe needed about the hotels.
She helped us get in the bestrooms.
She was so helpful and it feltlike she was a friend of ours.
So that by the time we wereleaving, we were calling her by
her first name.
(05:14):
She knew us by our first names.
She was going above and beyondfor us.
And it was just really, reallycool to have that personalized
help.
And it was a good reminderthat, like in the world right
now, there's just a lot ofopportunities for us to connect
with each other on a humanlevel, even if it's not in the
customer support role, justconnecting with people that
(05:34):
you're walking by on the street.
And that kind of connection isreally encouraging.
And I feel like we had a lot ofit on this trip to Chicago.
Jordan (05:41):
I love that.
Okay.
So for someone who has not beenlike me to a support-driven
conference, what kind of thingswould you expect from one of
those conferences?
Priscilla (05:52):
Yeah.
So for anyone who doesn't knowanything about support-driven,
I'm going to give you a quicklittle rundown.
I've been in the support-drivencommunity since 2019.
I went to a conference.
Actually, I went to thesupport-driven Expo back in 2019
when it was out in Portland andjoined their Slack community.
So the support-driven communitykind of lives in Slack and then
(06:13):
they also have a weeklynewsletter.
So when you join thesupport-driven Slack, you're
immediately connected with othersupport professionals around
the world from differentindustries and companies and
different types of supportteams.
And you immediately are kind ofthrown into this support group
kind of thing to help grow yourexperience with support, learn
(06:35):
new strategies.
It's really a very encouraginggroup.
Yeah.
Right.
We went a couple of years agoto the Elevate CX conference,
and that was a similarsituation.
Elevate is a different supportcommunity, just like
support-driven is a supportcommunity.
So these are two differentcommunities, but both are really
awesome and really supportive,for lack of a better word.
(06:55):
But support-driven is coolbecause they've got the Slack
community.
They have a weekly newsletterthat goes out, and then they
host regular events throughoutthe year.
So on their website, I waslooking to see how
support-driven describesthemselves.
They said support-driven hostscommunity-driven events that
help customer support and CXteams learn, connect, and grow
(07:16):
at every stage of their careers.
From leadership gatherings tolarge-scale conferences and
online sessions, our eventscreate space for real learning
and peer support.
You know, we just got back froma conference, and I feel like,
oh yeah, they absolutely dothat.
This conference felt so muchlike a peer support event.
I mean, you'd be sitting in atalk and the person talking
(07:37):
would be sitting next to you inthe next talk.
Yeah.
Because it wasn't like theywere splitting up speakers and
attendees.
Everyone was together andpeople were attending and they
were speaking.
It felt very peer supported.
So we went to an expo, which isone of the two types of
conferences that they host.
So the expo is like theirlarger community event.
(07:59):
They have talks acrossdifferent tracks like career
development and customerexperience and knowledge
management and that kind of athing.
And then they have theirsummits, which are much more
leadership focused.
And those are really for headsof support or heads of CX, and
they offer kind of a deeper diveinto like strategy sessions and
(08:20):
deep dive discussions andthings like that.
So they got options.
Yeah.
And they also have some virtualevents.
So if you're not part of asupport community and you want
to be a part of one, I highlyrecommend being a part of one.
And support-driven is really agreat place to start.
So I thought it'd be cool.
You know, we just got back fromthis expo, the support-driven
(08:41):
expo, and we both went to a lotof different talks while we were
there.
And so I thought it'd be goodif we kind of came up with three
main takeaways for each of usto kind of share with our
listeners as an encouragement,but also so that you get a
little sneak peek into what theexpo was like.
And then you may want to signup and go to the next one, which
(09:01):
I think they have a summitcoming up in a couple of months
for support leaders, and thenthey'll have another expo next
year.
Okay, so let's jump into someof these takeaways.
The first takeaway I had wasthat your role and
responsibilities and customersupport are changing.
One of the things that wasdiscussed a lot at the expo was
(09:23):
AI, you know, which is expected.
AI has been in the conversationfor so long.
But what was cool about thisexpo that I feel like is
changing now is that it's not somuch that we're talking about
AI in a way that's like, hey,you should be using AI.
And if you're not, you'refalling behind.
It was more like, hey, AI ishere.
Most of us are already using itin some form.
(09:44):
What does that mean about ourjobs?
What does that mean about theway things are going to shift?
And so it was less about hurryup and get on the AI train and
more about how to let AI impactyour career and real ways that
we can evolve as a customersupport team now with AI like as
(10:05):
a tool in our tool belt.
And I thought that was a coolway to look at it.
It was, it felt a little bitmore encouraging and hopeful
than, hey, you just need to geton the AI train, even if you
don't want to be.
Jordan (10:16):
Or your job is in danger.
Priscilla (10:18):
Right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So one of the talks that Ithought was really, really great
that talked about this was fromDaniel Kimber.
He's the CEO and co-founder ofBrainfish.
He had a talk, I think it wastitled The Rise of the Support
Engineer.
Oh.
And he started the talk off byasking the question basically,
(10:39):
what would you do if you didn'thave an inbox for your support
team to work through?
So let's say in a hypotheticalworld, AI is covering all of
your like tier one, tier tworequests from your clients.
So now your support teamdoesn't have an inbox to take up
60% of their time.
So what do they do?
Where do their skills go?
(11:00):
Yeah.
And it was really interestingto hear from him about where he
would allocate that time.
He talked about proactivesupport strategies, getting
ahead of customer questions.
He talked about how supportspecialists, because of our
product knowledge and ourconnection with the customers,
(11:20):
were uniquely positioned to kindof do these deep dives into
customer predictions, likebehavior predictions to get
ahead of problems before theybecome an issue.
And like one customer supportagent could own onboarding and
they would know the onboardingprocess in and out and predict
how things can go, you know,sideways in order to find fixes
(11:43):
for that.
And that could be somethingthat lives in support because
support specialists are soknowledgeable of that.
He also talked about bringingsupport team members onto
product launches earlier.
A lot of times, because supportagents are in the inbox so
much, they don't get included inthe feature launches.
Oh yeah.
But he talked about the impactthat it could have on a feature
(12:07):
launch if there was always asupport person in that team
that's launching the feature,because that person could then
come at it from a support angle.
And I thought both of thoseexamples were really cool ways
to kind of reallocate yoursupport team into your product
work a little bit more.
Serena (12:24):
Yeah.
That's really interesting.
Priscilla (12:26):
Yeah.
So I felt like this talk tookthis idea that our role is
changing as customer supportagents over the next couple of
years.
The actual jobs, day-to-daytasks that we're doing is going
to look different in the nextcouple of years as AI starts
answering more of those tierone, tier two questions.
But I felt like this talkreally made things tangible and
(12:46):
gave us some really cool ideasfor how the support team can use
the skills that we already havein our work outside of the
inbox.
Uh-huh.
And I thought that was a themekind of throughout the entire
event.
Serena (12:58):
Yeah, definitely was a refreshing take on how AI is
going to be integrated into ourlives.
Priscilla (13:03):
All right.
So, Serena, what's your firsttakeaway from the support-driven
expo?
Serena (13:08):
Okay, so this was my first conference.
And so it was reallyinteresting going into it, not
really knowing what to expect.
My takeaway was that it wascool to be invited into
conversations.
I probably would not have foundmyself included otherwise.
Jordan (13:21):
Yeah.
Serena (13:22):
But it was nice to have that insight as a support
person.
And developers don't alwaysknow exactly where our pain
points are.
And so it was cool to hear,okay, this is what we should be
looking for and how we should berelaying that feedback.
So then it could be like ahappy harmony.
Priscilla (13:38):
I really like what you said about you being in
conversations that you wouldn'ttypically be in by coming to
this conference because therewere several talks that were
very technical.
Serena (13:47):
Yes.
Priscilla (13:48):
About like how to create your own AI agent.
And I'm like, I'm not adeveloper, but part of the cool
things about AI is that it givesyou the ability to develop even
without that kind of codingknowledge.
Jordan (14:01):
Well, and there was something else that you said,
Serena, that I fully agree with.
And I think that is the valueof a conference and like
actually being in these placesis it's like all this knowledge
is distilled into like one room.
And so you get to have accessto people that you wouldn't
normally get access to.
(14:21):
Like if you were to shoot theman email, they'd be too busy to
like respond to you or somethinglike that.
And when you're at a conferenceand you're together in the same
space, like it's so much easierto have conversations with
people or even talk to thebrands that like you use on a
daily basis and things likethat.
Like it's it's awesome.
Serena (14:38):
Yeah, I feel like I try to keep up to date with what
everyone's posting about in thecompany, but I don't always
understand what these termsmean.
Oh, yeah.
I also thought that that waspretty cool hearing these
conversations, especially thefirst one where they talked
about how to build the agent andthey were framing it as like
the mind and the body and whereit needs to live, and how you
(15:01):
need a hand to do this and theeyes to do that.
And they were literally doing avisual of it as they're
explaining.
And I was like, oh, now Iunderstand.
Priscilla (15:10):
Yeah.
And it's just cool to havethose perspectives from all
people from all different typesof agencies and industries and
things like that.
Like we get really comfortablein our own little box here in
Buzzsprout, but there's so manypeople doing things different
ways outside of this.
And so it's cool to learn fromthem.
And that is just the value of aconference in general and being
able to be in community withother types of people in our
(15:31):
profession.
Okay, so moving on to the nexttakeaway.
This one, I labeled it youcan't fix everything, or I can't
fix everything.
So not all of the talks wereabout AI.
There were some that werereally more about management
style or like just interpersonalrelationship talks.
And there was one fantastictalk about how to lead through
(15:55):
difficult situations that youcan't fix as a support leader.
And it was in the managementtrack, and the speaker was
Michelle McGowan.
She's the director ofoperations at Rocket Money.
And I'm pretty sure this was myfavorite talk of the week.
I mean, I'm still likeprocessing some of these, but it
was really a fantastic talkabout how leading people is
hard.
(16:16):
And sometimes people will haveproblems that you as a leader
will want to solve for them, butthe reality is it can't be
solved.
Yeah.
And so, how do you lead someonethrough a situation that isn't
solvable while being there tosupport them without being able
to solve it for them?
And I thought this was a uniqueidea, especially because we are
(16:36):
customer support agents and wedon't like to say no.
And we don't like to not beable to find an answer to
something.
And so it was kind ofinteresting to have this talk
where the whole premise of itwas you're actually not going to
be able to solve it.
So let's start there.
It's not getting solved.
So what do you do when it's notgoing to get solved?
And how do you support yourteam even when there's no real
(16:56):
solution there?
And she gave some reallyinsightful advice to support
your team, you know, when thingsare difficult and to be there
for them and to be proactiveabout picking up what you can
pick up to take the load off ofthem as much as you can.
Um, she talked about how peoplearen't gonna let you take
something, like they're notgonna willingly give you
something difficult to carryunless you take it.
(17:19):
Like there is a little bit oflike, hey, you need to pick it
up.
And once they see you pickingit up, then they're gonna let
you take it.
But until then, they're gonnatry to hold on to it and solve
it on their end, or at leastwalk with it on their end.
And then just the consistencyof being there for people on
your team, it gave me somereally cool, insightful ideas as
far as like working with thepeople on my team and being
(17:40):
there for them in a moretangible way.
Jordan (17:42):
Oh, that sounds like a great session, Priscilla.
Serena, was there any sessionswhere you felt like you could
really also apply it to yourrole in customer support?
Serena (17:51):
Funny question, Jordan.
I went to Priscilla's talk onthe importance of managing
urgency and customer support.
We're constantly trying tosolve the customers' questions
quickly.
And we're moving through aqueue, there might be a lot of
emails building up.
And so we start moving fasterand faster, and that kind of
creates this instability wherewe're not responding as we want
(18:14):
to, and we're not putting ourbest foot forward.
And I find myself when I'mworking, I find myself starting
to slip into oh my gosh, I needto accomplish this, I need to
cross things off, I need tospeed up.
And no, calm down to work slow,because when you're working
calmly and slowly, you're makingbetter decisions, you're more
(18:35):
in line with the work you wantto put out there.
Jordan (18:37):
Yeah, and well, and I think that's actually just good
life advice too.
Serena (18:41):
Like I was telling Priscilla that she's always
saying, work from a place ofcalm, work from a place of calm.
And I will be talking to myfamily, and I'm like, guys,
we're not being calm right now.
We Yeah, I do this.
Why are we speeding up?
My mom's like, Oh, we'rerunning five minutes late.
I'm like, this isn't a place ofcalm.
Jordan (18:59):
It's so funny because I've actually taken that and
applied it to my family as well.
Like, whenever like they'replacing unwarranted urgency on
something, I'm like, guys,chill.
We're pulling the ChaseClemens, like, it's just
sandwiches.
It's just sandwiches.
Priscilla (19:12):
It's just sandwiches.
Jordan (19:13):
So we actually did an episode, and it was actually one
of my favorite episodes that wehave done.
I think it was called like thehigh cost of urgency or
something like that.
We did that on Happy to Help.
Priscilla, was this talk basedon that episode?
Yeah.
Priscilla (19:26):
Cool.
So that episode was really funto put together.
And I used our good friendsover at AI a couple months ago
to go through some of ourepisodes of Happy to Help to see
what could be kind ofrepurposed into a talk for
support driven.
And if you're a podcaster, thisis a really cool way to use AI
with your podcast.
(19:46):
Yeah.
Jordan (19:46):
I actually did it, and I'm talking next month in New
York because I took one of ourepisodes and repurposed it into
a talk too.
Priscilla (19:54):
That's so cool.
Exactly.
It's a great way to, it's agreat way to use the tool.
And so anyway, I decided tocreate a talk based on the high
cost of urgency and support.
And, you know, it's fun to hearSerena talk about her takeaways
from it because I often thinkthat we forget the perspective,
right?
When I was preparing the talk,I was like, man, this isn't
(20:14):
going to give people that muchto work with because no one, you
know, everyone knows thisstuff.
You know what I mean?
Was kind of my feeling.
But then hearing from so manypeople afterwards about, oh
yeah, things are urgent in ourcompany and we really need to do
a better job of giving peoplethe freedom to slow down or
giving people margin in theirdays to do better work.
(20:35):
And I thought, okay, good.
Like you forget that yourexperience is not everyone's
experience.
And so I thought it went reallywell and I'm glad to hear that
Serena enjoyed it.
And hopefully it encouragessome people who listen to it to
take some of those ideas andapply them to their own
companies and support teams sothat they can have a more
(20:55):
enjoyable work life because itdoesn't need to be crazy urgent
all the time.
Serena (20:59):
We don't need to be burning out.
Yes.
Priscilla (21:01):
Okay, Serena, what's your third and final takeaway of
the conference?
Serena (21:06):
Okay.
The importance of creating asafe and transparent
environment.
So everyone feels that they canspeak their mind, give an idea,
and it's okay if the ideadoesn't pan out how we wanted it
to, and it's okay to fail orsuggest or try something for a
week or two and just experiment.
(21:27):
Oh, yeah.
And that you don't have to belike the leader of the team to
throw these ideas out or topropose new things.
I felt empowered to be like,okay, it's okay to be vulnerable
and share an idea even thoughI'm not the founder or
something.
Yeah.
Priscilla (21:44):
Serena, was there a talk that you specifically went
to that talked about that?
Serena (21:47):
Yes.
The talk was building theculture where your team stays
and thrives.
And building off of theurgency, like creating a
sustainable environment whereyou can breathe and you can.
Propose new ideas and then youare feeling excited to go to
work every day.
Jordan (22:04):
It's funny because that was one of the things I
struggled with the most when Ifirst started working for
Buzzsprout is that we do have acompany culture of like, it's
okay to like try something andfail at it.
Yeah.
Because at other places it'sscary because you're like, no,
no, no, I have to be perfect allthe time.
Like everything has to beperfect.
And that pressure to be likeperfect all the time and never
(22:25):
mess up actually can make tripyou up and make you mess up
more.
And you're never gonna likereach your full potential if
you're not given the space andthe safety net of growth from
failure, right?
Like that's really cool.
Serena (22:39):
At one point, the speaker said that if a bet
doesn't land, we've all learnedtogether.
And you wanna highlight thegood and the bad.
So when something issuccessful, you want to say that
in a chat or just make sure tocelebrate the little wins.
But then also if something'snot going right, you want to be
clear with the team.
Oh, we tried this, it wasn'tthe best, but here's where we
(23:02):
pivoted, or this is what we'rethinking.
Priscilla (23:04):
Yeah.
And it's funny, we've talkedabout it, I think, a bunch on
these episodes that there's alot of value to be found in
trying stuff and failing at themand trying new things.
You know, a couple weeks of anew strategy and see how that
works and throw spaghetti at thewall and see what sticks.
And giving your team thefreedom to try things and try
new strategies.
(23:25):
And it also helps you stay outof that hamster wheel of, well,
this is how we've always doneit.
So this is how we're gonna keepdoing it.
Yep.
And I would think that that iswhat leads to these stale work
environments where people don'tfeel that they have the freedom
or ability to go outside of thebox and try something different.
So yeah, that's a really cooltalk.
I want to see if I can find anarchive of it somewhere online
(23:47):
to watch it.
Serena (23:48):
Well, I am thankful for you because you were like, oh,
she's a great speaker.
You should go to this.
And it was one of my favorites.
That's awesome.
Priscilla (23:56):
Good.
Okay.
I want to highlight one lasttalk that I really enjoyed and
the takeaway I kind of got fromthis talk and several other
little nuggets throughout theweek was that customer
connection is still important.
I think we are talking a lotabout AI and a lot about
deflection and a lot about canyou automate that workflow so
that you're not having to do itand this AI can do it for you.
(24:19):
In those conversations, it canbe easy to be like, well, maybe
the customer connection isn'tthat important anymore.
Like maybe having thatconnection with your customers
isn't something we need toprioritize.
And there were enoughconversations this week that
reminded me that customerconnection is still really
important.
And in some cases, it'sactually more important because
(24:40):
of how much AI is in the processnow that that customer
connection is even moreimportant because it's not as
easy when we had access to it inthe inbox.
And so one of the talks I wentto that I really enjoyed was by
Jill McKinney, who's thedirector of a customer service
at DScript.
Oh.
And she, yeah, which is an likein our industry, in the
(25:02):
podcasting industry.
I know this one.
Yep.
And it caught my attentionbecause the title of the talk
was When Support Gets Weird.
And I was like, okay, I gottago.
I gotta go to this talk.
This is gonna be fun.
And she kind of talked abouttwo different events.
One is a past event that theyhosted, and then one's uh event
coming up that they're hostingthat are like live in-person
(25:24):
events to connect with theircustomers.
So the previous one they didwas like a telethon.
They live streamed their teamworking and squashing bugs, and
they made it available to theircustomers to watch and like
interact with them.
They were doing like challengesduring the live stream and
sending in like featurerequests, and that was really
(25:45):
cool.
And then she talked about anupcoming event that they're
gonna have at a conferencecoming up.
They're kind of piggybackingoff of a conference and inviting
their customers to come andkind of do in-person support.
It was just really cool to hearher talk about the importance
of connecting with yourcustomers, especially with AI in
the inbox taking over so manyof the tier one and tier two
(26:07):
emails that are coming in.
There's just less of that easyaccess to connect.
And so you have to be a littlebit more intentional about it.
And so it was really cool tohear her talk about that.
And it kind of got me thinkingabout like events that we can do
for our Buzzsprout customersthat could be kind of quirky and
fun and that would connect themwith the people behind the
(26:29):
product.
Serena (26:29):
Yeah, I feel like when the conference started and we
started talking about AI, I wasgetting nervous.
But one of the speakers saidsupport is the empathy backbone
to a business.
And I wrote that down because Iwas like, at the end of the
day, a bot can't do that.
Jordan (26:45):
Yeah, you need your backbone.
Serena (26:47):
Exactly.
Exactly.
And so it was cool to kind ofshift that narrative about AI
from being like, oh, it's takingour jobs, I'm scared, to being
like, oh, what can it help withto support us so then we can put
that human touch on it so thatwe can give accurate answers,
but keep the human in it.
Jordan (27:06):
Yeah, I think that's another one of my favorite
things about like attendingconferences is sometimes you go
in with your own sort of likemisconceptions or your own ideas
about how things in yourindustry work or what the
outcome of some sort of like newtechnological advancement is
gonna be.
And then you have the expertsactually go, no, it's it's cool.
(27:26):
And then you're like, oh, thisis great.
And it's almost like you leavemore rejuvenated and more
excited for like the future ofwhere your industry is going
when you leave theseconferences.
Like I think that is such agreat benefit to attending too.
Priscilla (27:40):
Yeah, one thing they do at these conferences at the
support-driven expos that Ireally like is they have
conversation corners.
So during every session,they're also gonna have kind of
like a discussion room that'sled by a moderator, but it's not
like a talk, but as a differenttopic.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah, we went to one of thoseabout the customer connection
strategies.
And it was really cool to talkwith other people who are in the
(28:03):
industry who came with somequestions how to connect with
their customers.
And so we got to share some ofthe things that we do to connect
with customers.
And then we learned from someother people about like tools
they use to connect better andto bridge the gap when it comes
to customers writing in andtalking to different support
reps.
And so it was just really coolto have that kind of like
(28:24):
knowledge sharing.
And I think that really is whatthese expos are all about.
Yeah.
They're all about bringingtogether customer support
professionals who all havedifferent skills and different
experiences and creating anenvironment where they can share
that information with eachother in a positive, encouraging
way.
And things like AI, it's agreat example.
(28:47):
Like a lot of people are scaredabout AI, even now, a couple of
years in.
And it's not as scary now as itwas a couple of years ago, but
there's still some fear there.
And there were a lot of talksthat had to do with hey, your
job isn't going anywhere.
It's just changing, and we wantto be able to change with it.
And so it's reassuring and it'sencouraging and it's hopeful
(29:09):
for people in customer support,especially when you're kind of
siloed.
You know, you may be on a teamwith just three or four people
and you don't really know whatthis means for your job.
Being able to get into acommunity like this allows you
to be supported by people whoare doing the same kind of work
you're doing.
And I think it's reallypowerful.
And we had a really great timebeing there and having
(29:29):
conversations with other supportprofessionals and learning from
other support professionals.
So if you are not going toconferences as a customer
support professional, you reallyshould.
You should really look someout.
There are a lot to go to.
You could go to support-drivenor you could go to an Elevate
CX, or you could go to some ofthe bigger conferences, but all
(29:50):
of them are kind of that sameidea.
Like find other people in yourprofession and encourage them
and let them encourage youbecause really it makes life a
lot better when you can learnfrom other people and you can
help teach other people.
Serena (30:03):
I think that was one of the coolest things was that I
was talking to some other peoplewho were earlier on in their
career, but then I also wasturning around and talking to
CEOs of companies.
And it was like we all were inthe same room, we're all having
the same conversations, we allhave our notebook out, writing
the same things down.
And it was cool to have thatinformation sharing.
Jordan (30:24):
That's exactly my experience in like going to like
podcasting conferences andstuff like that, too.
Like you're just all together.
Yeah.
Priscilla (30:31):
It was cool.
And I think one like otherthing that just occurred to me
sometimes customer support islooked down on as a profession
because it's like, you know, alot of people are like, oh, it's
entry level, or it's just notlike a career, right?
And that can be reallydisappointing if you're working
in this profession and you loveit like we love it.
It can be disappointing to feellike, oh, no one takes my job
(30:54):
seriously.
So to go to a conference whereeveryone is taking it seriously.
The people who are there loveit and are using it as a career,
it can be really encouraging ifyou're in a place like in a
headspace where you're like, Ilove this work, but people don't
view it as valuable.
Like get yourself to aconference like this and you'll
(31:16):
be reminded how valuable thiswork is.
It's really encouraging.
Okay, so their next event isin, I think it's in New York
City, and it's in a couple ofmonths in the fall of 2026, and
it's their leadership summit.
So if you're a support leaderand you want to grow in your
leadership skills, that woulddefinitely be a conference to
(31:36):
check out.
Thank you, Serena, for comingon the episode and sharing your
takeaways with us.
This was a lot of fun.
Thanks for having me.
Serena (31:43):
I had a great time.
Priscilla (31:44):
If you have any questions or if you have a topic
that you want us discuss on afuture episode, use the send us
a text link in the show notes.
Or if there's just somethingyou want to learn more about,
like send it in.
And we'd love to make anepisode specifically about that
for you.
If you're a fan of the show,leave us a review on Apple
Podcasts.
We would love to see those.
Thank you again to Serena forjoining us on this episode.
(32:07):
Thank you all for listening.
Now go and make someone's day.
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer
support from the people atBuzzsprout.
I'm your host, PriscillaBrooks.
We just got back from theSupport Driven Expo in Chicago,
and after spending two days withother support professionals
talking about everything from AIand customer support to
strategies for connecting withcustomers, we're excited to
share some of our majortakeaways and highlights from
(00:21):
the event.
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
All right, so how is Chicago?
It was fantastic.
First of all, for everyonelistening, you know, we're in
Florida, and Chicago weatherright now is a beautiful,
wonderful break from the heatthat is still hanging around in
Florida.
So it was so good.
And it was really fun becausegoing to Chicago, I didn't have
(00:44):
to go by myself.
I went with Serena from ourteam.
And so I invited her to come intoday to share some of her
takeaways from the conference aswell.
So Serena's with us today.
Hey guys.
So I kind of teased it in theintro, but we just spent the
last three days in Chicago withthe support-driven community at
their expo.
(01:04):
And it was a really, reallygreat experience for us.
And so I thought it'd be reallyfun to take a few minutes and
to talk through some of our bigtakeaways while they're still
fresh on our minds.
We got back into Jacksonvillelast night after midnight.
And so here we are the nextmorning debriefing.
And so I'm really excited aboutit.
Jordan (01:21):
Yeah, I'm actually really excited to hear all about
this.
I'm gonna be living likevicariously through you because
I've actually never been to asupport-driven conference
before.
So this will be fun.
Yeah.
Priscilla (01:31):
Before we get into the support-driven of it all, we
had a really fun little trip.
I mean, it was a conference,but we also, you know, a little
trip to Chicago.
Yeah.
And we had several momentsthroughout our trip that we had
really exceptional customersupport experiences.
And so I thought it'd be reallyfun to kind of kick off our
episode, like we do with all ofour episodes, to highlight some
(01:53):
of those really good customersupport experiences.
So the first one I'll share wason the plane to Chicago, one of
our flight attendants, she cameup and offered me a drink.
And I said, Oh yes, I'd love adrink.
And she said, Well, I'd love toserve it to you.
This is a perfect match, orsomething like that.
But it was just like thiskindness.
And she was like, I'm here togive you a drink and you want to
(02:15):
accept a drink.
So this is a perfect match.
It was very sweet.
And I thought, you know, inthat moment, like that kind of
just kindness.
There was nothing super fancyabout it.
It was just a little more humanthan it, you know, needed to be
because she could have justhanded me my drink.
Yeah, it was sweet.
And it was a seven o'clockflight, right?
So we're all kind of tired andgroggy, and she brought some
(02:35):
energy first thing in themorning, and it was really
great.
And it like made that flightthat much better.
So that's like the first littlenugget of like good customer
support, really, in that moment.
Serena, do you have any storiesof good customer support that
we got while we were on thetrip?
Serena (02:50):
So Priscilla and I went to dinner at one of our favorite
places, Sunda.
And I mentioned to the waiter,oh, does this have one of my
allergens in it?
And he immediately was rattlingoff, okay, you can get this
dish.
We'll do this to it, we'll makethe adjustments that you need.
And just from like a sly littlecomment, he was trying to give
(03:11):
me the best experience despitemy allergies.
And I feel like that's rare.
It is.
Jordan (03:16):
Yeah.
Usually it's like scary to likego to restaurants when you have
allergies.
My my friend was visiting withus and she's allergic to like
everything, like sugar, gluten,onions, garlic, everything.
And she has gotten to the pointwhere she just doesn't eat out
anymore.
So when you go somewhere andyou have someone who is like
knowledgeable in what they haveand understands like this is
(03:38):
serious, and I can list off allthese other things, and we have
other options for you.
Like, that's amazing.
Serena (03:43):
Yeah, it's definitely one of my big anxieties with
traveling.
Yeah.
Priscilla (03:47):
The thing that struck me about it was how
knowledgeable he was on all thedifferent food dishes.
Because Serena said, Here aremy allergies.
These are the things that Ineed to keep separate.
And then she asked about acouple different dishes and he
literally rattled off, okay.
Well, here's how we wouldmodify this, and here's how we
would modify this, with a lot oflike confidence and clarity
(04:08):
around what would be includedand what wouldn't.
Because of course it's going tochange the dish for Serena if
you know you have to remove fiveingredients.
And so she was able to makedecisions on, well, do I still
want that dish, even though nowit doesn't have four of the five
ingredients in it, right?
I agree with Serena.
That was another one that stoodout.
One more that I really justhave to highlight because it was
(04:31):
so solid was we stayed at ahotel called the Clarage House.
It was a cute little hotel.
And the person who was at thefront desk when we got there to
check in, her name was MissCookie, and she was fantastic.
I love that.
I mean fantastic.
She was so welcoming when wegot there.
We had a great conversation aswe were checking in.
Both the rooms were under myname, so we had to make some
(04:53):
adjustments.
So that could have been astressful situation.
And she was totally chill aboutthe whole thing.
She was kind to us.
She gave us all the informationwe needed about the hotels.
She helped us get in the bestrooms.
She was so helpful and it feltlike she was a friend of ours.
So that by the time we wereleaving, we were calling her by
her first name.
(05:14):
She knew us by our first names.
She was going above and beyondfor us.
And it was just really, reallycool to have that personalized
help.
And it was a good reminderthat, like in the world right
now, there's just a lot ofopportunities for us to connect
with each other on a humanlevel, even if it's not in the
customer support role, justconnecting with people that
(05:34):
you're walking by on the street.
And that kind of connection isreally encouraging.
And I feel like we had a lot ofit on this trip to Chicago.
Jordan (05:41):
I love that.
Okay.
So for someone who has not beenlike me to a support-driven
conference, what kind of thingswould you expect from one of
those conferences?
Priscilla (05:52):
Yeah.
So for anyone who doesn't knowanything about support-driven,
I'm going to give you a quicklittle rundown.
I've been in the support-drivencommunity since 2019.
I went to a conference.
Actually, I went to thesupport-driven Expo back in 2019
when it was out in Portland andjoined their Slack community.
So the support-driven communitykind of lives in Slack and then
(06:13):
they also have a weeklynewsletter.
So when you join thesupport-driven Slack, you're
immediately connected with othersupport professionals around
the world from differentindustries and companies and
different types of supportteams.
And you immediately are kind ofthrown into this support group
kind of thing to help grow yourexperience with support, learn
(06:35):
new strategies.
It's really a very encouraginggroup.
Yeah.
Right.
We went a couple of years agoto the Elevate CX conference,
and that was a similarsituation.
Elevate is a different supportcommunity, just like
support-driven is a supportcommunity.
So these are two differentcommunities, but both are really
awesome and really supportive,for lack of a better word.
(06:55):
But support-driven is coolbecause they've got the Slack
community.
They have a weekly newsletterthat goes out, and then they
host regular events throughoutthe year.
So on their website, I waslooking to see how
support-driven describesthemselves.
They said support-driven hostscommunity-driven events that
help customer support and CXteams learn, connect, and grow
(07:16):
at every stage of their careers.
From leadership gatherings tolarge-scale conferences and
online sessions, our eventscreate space for real learning
and peer support.
You know, we just got back froma conference, and I feel like,
oh yeah, they absolutely dothat.
This conference felt so muchlike a peer support event.
I mean, you'd be sitting in atalk and the person talking
(07:37):
would be sitting next to you inthe next talk.
Yeah.
Because it wasn't like theywere splitting up speakers and
attendees.
Everyone was together andpeople were attending and they
were speaking.
It felt very peer supported.
So we went to an expo, which isone of the two types of
conferences that they host.
So the expo is like theirlarger community event.
(07:59):
They have talks acrossdifferent tracks like career
development and customerexperience and knowledge
management and that kind of athing.
And then they have theirsummits, which are much more
leadership focused.
And those are really for headsof support or heads of CX, and
they offer kind of a deeper diveinto like strategy sessions and
(08:20):
deep dive discussions andthings like that.
So they got options.
Yeah.
And they also have some virtualevents.
So if you're not part of asupport community and you want
to be a part of one, I highlyrecommend being a part of one.
And support-driven is really agreat place to start.
So I thought it'd be cool.
You know, we just got back fromthis expo, the support-driven
(08:41):
expo, and we both went to a lotof different talks while we were
there.
And so I thought it'd be goodif we kind of came up with three
main takeaways for each of usto kind of share with our
listeners as an encouragement,but also so that you get a
little sneak peek into what theexpo was like.
And then you may want to signup and go to the next one, which
(09:01):
I think they have a summitcoming up in a couple of months
for support leaders, and thenthey'll have another expo next
year.
Okay, so let's jump into someof these takeaways.
The first takeaway I had wasthat your role and
responsibilities and customersupport are changing.
One of the things that wasdiscussed a lot at the expo was
(09:23):
AI, you know, which is expected.
AI has been in the conversationfor so long.
But what was cool about thisexpo that I feel like is
changing now is that it's not somuch that we're talking about
AI in a way that's like, hey,you should be using AI.
And if you're not, you'refalling behind.
It was more like, hey, AI ishere.
Most of us are already using itin some form.
(09:44):
What does that mean about ourjobs?
What does that mean about theway things are going to shift?
And so it was less about hurryup and get on the AI train and
more about how to let AI impactyour career and real ways that
we can evolve as a customersupport team now with AI like as
(10:05):
a tool in our tool belt.
And I thought that was a coolway to look at it.
It was, it felt a little bitmore encouraging and hopeful
than, hey, you just need to geton the AI train, even if you
don't want to be.
Jordan (10:16):
Or your job is in danger.
Priscilla (10:18):
Right.
Exactly.
Yeah.
So one of the talks that Ithought was really, really great
that talked about this was fromDaniel Kimber.
He's the CEO and co-founder ofBrainfish.
He had a talk, I think it wastitled The Rise of the Support
Engineer.
Oh.
And he started the talk off byasking the question basically,
(10:39):
what would you do if you didn'thave an inbox for your support
team to work through?
So let's say in a hypotheticalworld, AI is covering all of
your like tier one, tier tworequests from your clients.
So now your support teamdoesn't have an inbox to take up
60% of their time.
So what do they do?
Where do their skills go?
(11:00):
Yeah.
And it was really interestingto hear from him about where he
would allocate that time.
He talked about proactivesupport strategies, getting
ahead of customer questions.
He talked about how supportspecialists, because of our
product knowledge and ourconnection with the customers,
(11:20):
were uniquely positioned to kindof do these deep dives into
customer predictions, likebehavior predictions to get
ahead of problems before theybecome an issue.
And like one customer supportagent could own onboarding and
they would know the onboardingprocess in and out and predict
how things can go, you know,sideways in order to find fixes
(11:43):
for that.
And that could be somethingthat lives in support because
support specialists are soknowledgeable of that.
He also talked about bringingsupport team members onto
product launches earlier.
A lot of times, because supportagents are in the inbox so
much, they don't get included inthe feature launches.
Oh yeah.
But he talked about the impactthat it could have on a feature
(12:07):
launch if there was always asupport person in that team
that's launching the feature,because that person could then
come at it from a support angle.
And I thought both of thoseexamples were really cool ways
to kind of reallocate yoursupport team into your product
work a little bit more.
Serena (12:24):
Yeah.
That's really interesting.
Priscilla (12:26):
Yeah.
So I felt like this talk tookthis idea that our role is
changing as customer supportagents over the next couple of
years.
The actual jobs, day-to-daytasks that we're doing is going
to look different in the nextcouple of years as AI starts
answering more of those tierone, tier two questions.
But I felt like this talkreally made things tangible and
(12:46):
gave us some really cool ideasfor how the support team can use
the skills that we already havein our work outside of the
inbox.
Uh-huh.
And I thought that was a themekind of throughout the entire
event.
Serena (12:58):
Yeah, definitely was a refreshing take on how AI is
going to be integrated into ourlives.
Priscilla (13:03):
All right.
So, Serena, what's your firsttakeaway from the support-driven
expo?
Serena (13:08):
Okay, so this was my first conference.
And so it was reallyinteresting going into it, not
really knowing what to expect.
My takeaway was that it wascool to be invited into
conversations.
I probably would not have foundmyself included otherwise.
Jordan (13:21):
Yeah.
Serena (13:22):
But it was nice to have that insight as a support
person.
And developers don't alwaysknow exactly where our pain
points are.
And so it was cool to hear,okay, this is what we should be
looking for and how we should berelaying that feedback.
So then it could be like ahappy harmony.
Priscilla (13:38):
I really like what you said about you being in
conversations that you wouldn'ttypically be in by coming to
this conference because therewere several talks that were
very technical.
Serena (13:47):
Yes.
Priscilla (13:48):
About like how to create your own AI agent.
And I'm like, I'm not adeveloper, but part of the cool
things about AI is that it givesyou the ability to develop even
without that kind of codingknowledge.
Jordan (14:01):
Well, and there was something else that you said,
Serena, that I fully agree with.
And I think that is the valueof a conference and like
actually being in these placesis it's like all this knowledge
is distilled into like one room.
And so you get to have accessto people that you wouldn't
normally get access to.
(14:21):
Like if you were to shoot theman email, they'd be too busy to
like respond to you or somethinglike that.
And when you're at a conferenceand you're together in the same
space, like it's so much easierto have conversations with
people or even talk to thebrands that like you use on a
daily basis and things likethat.
Like it's it's awesome.
Serena (14:38):
Yeah, I feel like I try to keep up to date with what
everyone's posting about in thecompany, but I don't always
understand what these termsmean.
Oh, yeah.
I also thought that that waspretty cool hearing these
conversations, especially thefirst one where they talked
about how to build the agent andthey were framing it as like
the mind and the body and whereit needs to live, and how you
(15:01):
need a hand to do this and theeyes to do that.
And they were literally doing avisual of it as they're
explaining.
And I was like, oh, now Iunderstand.
Priscilla (15:10):
Yeah.
And it's just cool to havethose perspectives from all
people from all different typesof agencies and industries and
things like that.
Like we get really comfortablein our own little box here in
Buzzsprout, but there's so manypeople doing things different
ways outside of this.
And so it's cool to learn fromthem.
And that is just the value of aconference in general and being
able to be in community withother types of people in our
(15:31):
profession.
Okay, so moving on to the nexttakeaway.
This one, I labeled it youcan't fix everything, or I can't
fix everything.
So not all of the talks wereabout AI.
There were some that werereally more about management
style or like just interpersonalrelationship talks.
And there was one fantastictalk about how to lead through
(15:55):
difficult situations that youcan't fix as a support leader.
And it was in the managementtrack, and the speaker was
Michelle McGowan.
She's the director ofoperations at Rocket Money.
And I'm pretty sure this was myfavorite talk of the week.
I mean, I'm still likeprocessing some of these, but it
was really a fantastic talkabout how leading people is
hard.
(16:16):
And sometimes people will haveproblems that you as a leader
will want to solve for them, butthe reality is it can't be
solved.
Yeah.
And so, how do you lead someonethrough a situation that isn't
solvable while being there tosupport them without being able
to solve it for them?
And I thought this was a uniqueidea, especially because we are
(16:36):
customer support agents and wedon't like to say no.
And we don't like to not beable to find an answer to
something.
And so it was kind ofinteresting to have this talk
where the whole premise of itwas you're actually not going to
be able to solve it.
So let's start there.
It's not getting solved.
So what do you do when it's notgoing to get solved?
And how do you support yourteam even when there's no real
(16:56):
solution there?
And she gave some reallyinsightful advice to support
your team, you know, when thingsare difficult and to be there
for them and to be proactiveabout picking up what you can
pick up to take the load off ofthem as much as you can.
Um, she talked about how peoplearen't gonna let you take
something, like they're notgonna willingly give you
something difficult to carryunless you take it.
(17:19):
Like there is a little bit oflike, hey, you need to pick it
up.
And once they see you pickingit up, then they're gonna let
you take it.
But until then, they're gonnatry to hold on to it and solve
it on their end, or at leastwalk with it on their end.
And then just the consistencyof being there for people on
your team, it gave me somereally cool, insightful ideas as
far as like working with thepeople on my team and being
(17:40):
there for them in a moretangible way.
Jordan (17:42):
Oh, that sounds like a great session, Priscilla.
Serena, was there any sessionswhere you felt like you could
really also apply it to yourrole in customer support?
Serena (17:51):
Funny question, Jordan.
I went to Priscilla's talk onthe importance of managing
urgency and customer support.
We're constantly trying tosolve the customers' questions
quickly.
And we're moving through aqueue, there might be a lot of
emails building up.
And so we start moving fasterand faster, and that kind of
creates this instability wherewe're not responding as we want
(18:14):
to, and we're not putting ourbest foot forward.
And I find myself when I'mworking, I find myself starting
to slip into oh my gosh, I needto accomplish this, I need to
cross things off, I need tospeed up.
And no, calm down to work slow,because when you're working
calmly and slowly, you're makingbetter decisions, you're more
(18:35):
in line with the work you wantto put out there.
Jordan (18:37):
Yeah, and well, and I think that's actually just good
life advice too.
Serena (18:41):
Like I was telling Priscilla that she's always
saying, work from a place ofcalm, work from a place of calm.
And I will be talking to myfamily, and I'm like, guys,
we're not being calm right now.
We Yeah, I do this.
Why are we speeding up?
My mom's like, Oh, we'rerunning five minutes late.
I'm like, this isn't a place ofcalm.
Jordan (18:59):
It's so funny because I've actually taken that and
applied it to my family as well.
Like, whenever like they'replacing unwarranted urgency on
something, I'm like, guys,chill.
We're pulling the ChaseClemens, like, it's just
sandwiches.
It's just sandwiches.
Priscilla (19:12):
It's just sandwiches.
Jordan (19:13):
So we actually did an episode, and it was actually one
of my favorite episodes that wehave done.
I think it was called like thehigh cost of urgency or
something like that.
We did that on Happy to Help.
Priscilla, was this talk basedon that episode?
Yeah.
Priscilla (19:26):
Cool.
So that episode was really funto put together.
And I used our good friendsover at AI a couple months ago
to go through some of ourepisodes of Happy to Help to see
what could be kind ofrepurposed into a talk for
support driven.
And if you're a podcaster, thisis a really cool way to use AI
with your podcast.
(19:46):
Yeah.
Jordan (19:46):
I actually did it, and I'm talking next month in New
York because I took one of ourepisodes and repurposed it into
a talk too.
Priscilla (19:54):
That's so cool.
Exactly.
It's a great way to, it's agreat way to use the tool.
And so anyway, I decided tocreate a talk based on the high
cost of urgency and support.
And, you know, it's fun to hearSerena talk about her takeaways
from it because I often thinkthat we forget the perspective,
right?
When I was preparing the talk,I was like, man, this isn't
(20:14):
going to give people that muchto work with because no one, you
know, everyone knows thisstuff.
You know what I mean?
Was kind of my feeling.
But then hearing from so manypeople afterwards about, oh
yeah, things are urgent in ourcompany and we really need to do
a better job of giving peoplethe freedom to slow down or
giving people margin in theirdays to do better work.
(20:35):
And I thought, okay, good.
Like you forget that yourexperience is not everyone's
experience.
And so I thought it went reallywell and I'm glad to hear that
Serena enjoyed it.
And hopefully it encouragessome people who listen to it to
take some of those ideas andapply them to their own
companies and support teams sothat they can have a more
(20:55):
enjoyable work life because itdoesn't need to be crazy urgent
all the time.
Serena (20:59):
We don't need to be burning out.
Yes.
Priscilla (21:01):
Okay, Serena, what's your third and final takeaway of
the conference?
Serena (21:06):
Okay.
The importance of creating asafe and transparent
environment.
So everyone feels that they canspeak their mind, give an idea,
and it's okay if the ideadoesn't pan out how we wanted it
to, and it's okay to fail orsuggest or try something for a
week or two and just experiment.
(21:27):
Oh, yeah.
And that you don't have to belike the leader of the team to
throw these ideas out or topropose new things.
I felt empowered to be like,okay, it's okay to be vulnerable
and share an idea even thoughI'm not the founder or
something.
Yeah.
Priscilla (21:44):
Serena, was there a talk that you specifically went
to that talked about that?
Serena (21:47):
Yes.
The talk was building theculture where your team stays
and thrives.
And building off of theurgency, like creating a
sustainable environment whereyou can breathe and you can.
Propose new ideas and then youare feeling excited to go to
work every day.
Jordan (22:04):
It's funny because that was one of the things I
struggled with the most when Ifirst started working for
Buzzsprout is that we do have acompany culture of like, it's
okay to like try something andfail at it.
Yeah.
Because at other places it'sscary because you're like, no,
no, no, I have to be perfect allthe time.
Like everything has to beperfect.
And that pressure to be likeperfect all the time and never
(22:25):
mess up actually can make tripyou up and make you mess up
more.
And you're never gonna likereach your full potential if
you're not given the space andthe safety net of growth from
failure, right?
Like that's really cool.
Serena (22:39):
At one point, the speaker said that if a bet
doesn't land, we've all learnedtogether.
And you wanna highlight thegood and the bad.
So when something issuccessful, you want to say that
in a chat or just make sure tocelebrate the little wins.
But then also if something'snot going right, you want to be
clear with the team.
Oh, we tried this, it wasn'tthe best, but here's where we
(23:02):
pivoted, or this is what we'rethinking.
Priscilla (23:04):
Yeah.
And it's funny, we've talkedabout it, I think, a bunch on
these episodes that there's alot of value to be found in
trying stuff and failing at themand trying new things.
You know, a couple weeks of anew strategy and see how that
works and throw spaghetti at thewall and see what sticks.
And giving your team thefreedom to try things and try
new strategies.
(23:25):
And it also helps you stay outof that hamster wheel of, well,
this is how we've always doneit.
So this is how we're gonna keepdoing it.
Yep.
And I would think that that iswhat leads to these stale work
environments where people don'tfeel that they have the freedom
or ability to go outside of thebox and try something different.
So yeah, that's a really cooltalk.
I want to see if I can find anarchive of it somewhere online
(23:47):
to watch it.
Serena (23:48):
Well, I am thankful for you because you were like, oh,
she's a great speaker.
You should go to this.
And it was one of my favorites.
That's awesome.
Priscilla (23:56):
Good.
Okay.
I want to highlight one lasttalk that I really enjoyed and
the takeaway I kind of got fromthis talk and several other
little nuggets throughout theweek was that customer
connection is still important.
I think we are talking a lotabout AI and a lot about
deflection and a lot about canyou automate that workflow so
that you're not having to do itand this AI can do it for you.
(24:19):
In those conversations, it canbe easy to be like, well, maybe
the customer connection isn'tthat important anymore.
Like maybe having thatconnection with your customers
isn't something we need toprioritize.
And there were enoughconversations this week that
reminded me that customerconnection is still really
important.
And in some cases, it'sactually more important because
(24:40):
of how much AI is in the processnow that that customer
connection is even moreimportant because it's not as
easy when we had access to it inthe inbox.
And so one of the talks I wentto that I really enjoyed was by
Jill McKinney, who's thedirector of a customer service
at DScript.
Oh.
And she, yeah, which is an likein our industry, in the
(25:02):
podcasting industry.
I know this one.
Yep.
And it caught my attentionbecause the title of the talk
was When Support Gets Weird.
And I was like, okay, I gottago.
I gotta go to this talk.
This is gonna be fun.
And she kind of talked abouttwo different events.
One is a past event that theyhosted, and then one's uh event
coming up that they're hostingthat are like live in-person
(25:24):
events to connect with theircustomers.
So the previous one they didwas like a telethon.
They live streamed their teamworking and squashing bugs, and
they made it available to theircustomers to watch and like
interact with them.
They were doing like challengesduring the live stream and
sending in like featurerequests, and that was really
(25:45):
cool.
And then she talked about anupcoming event that they're
gonna have at a conferencecoming up.
They're kind of piggybackingoff of a conference and inviting
their customers to come andkind of do in-person support.
It was just really cool to hearher talk about the importance
of connecting with yourcustomers, especially with AI in
the inbox taking over so manyof the tier one and tier two
(26:07):
emails that are coming in.
There's just less of that easyaccess to connect.
And so you have to be a littlebit more intentional about it.
And so it was really cool tohear her talk about that.
And it kind of got me thinkingabout like events that we can do
for our Buzzsprout customersthat could be kind of quirky and
fun and that would connect themwith the people behind the
(26:29):
product.
Serena (26:29):
Yeah, I feel like when the conference started and we
started talking about AI, I wasgetting nervous.
But one of the speakers saidsupport is the empathy backbone
to a business.
And I wrote that down because Iwas like, at the end of the
day, a bot can't do that.
Jordan (26:45):
Yeah, you need your backbone.
Serena (26:47):
Exactly.
Exactly.
And so it was cool to kind ofshift that narrative about AI
from being like, oh, it's takingour jobs, I'm scared, to being
like, oh, what can it help withto support us so then we can put
that human touch on it so thatwe can give accurate answers,
but keep the human in it.
Jordan (27:06):
Yeah, I think that's another one of my favorite
things about like attendingconferences is sometimes you go
in with your own sort of likemisconceptions or your own ideas
about how things in yourindustry work or what the
outcome of some sort of like newtechnological advancement is
gonna be.
And then you have the expertsactually go, no, it's it's cool.
(27:26):
And then you're like, oh, thisis great.
And it's almost like you leavemore rejuvenated and more
excited for like the future ofwhere your industry is going
when you leave theseconferences.
Like I think that is such agreat benefit to attending too.
Priscilla (27:40):
Yeah, one thing they do at these conferences at the
support-driven expos that Ireally like is they have
conversation corners.
So during every session,they're also gonna have kind of
like a discussion room that'sled by a moderator, but it's not
like a talk, but as a differenttopic.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah, we went to one of thoseabout the customer connection
strategies.
And it was really cool to talkwith other people who are in the
(28:03):
industry who came with somequestions how to connect with
their customers.
And so we got to share some ofthe things that we do to connect
with customers.
And then we learned from someother people about like tools
they use to connect better andto bridge the gap when it comes
to customers writing in andtalking to different support
reps.
And so it was just really coolto have that kind of like
(28:24):
knowledge sharing.
And I think that really is whatthese expos are all about.
Yeah.
They're all about bringingtogether customer support
professionals who all havedifferent skills and different
experiences and creating anenvironment where they can share
that information with eachother in a positive, encouraging
way.
And things like AI, it's agreat example.
(28:47):
Like a lot of people are scaredabout AI, even now, a couple of
years in.
And it's not as scary now as itwas a couple of years ago, but
there's still some fear there.
And there were a lot of talksthat had to do with hey, your
job isn't going anywhere.
It's just changing, and we wantto be able to change with it.
And so it's reassuring and it'sencouraging and it's hopeful
(29:09):
for people in customer support,especially when you're kind of
siloed.
You know, you may be on a teamwith just three or four people
and you don't really know whatthis means for your job.
Being able to get into acommunity like this allows you
to be supported by people whoare doing the same kind of work
you're doing.
And I think it's reallypowerful.
And we had a really great timebeing there and having
(29:29):
conversations with other supportprofessionals and learning from
other support professionals.
So if you are not going toconferences as a customer
support professional, you reallyshould.
You should really look someout.
There are a lot to go to.
You could go to support-drivenor you could go to an Elevate
CX, or you could go to some ofthe bigger conferences, but all
(29:50):
of them are kind of that sameidea.
Like find other people in yourprofession and encourage them
and let them encourage youbecause really it makes life a
lot better when you can learnfrom other people and you can
help teach other people.
Serena (30:03):
I think that was one of the coolest things was that I
was talking to some other peoplewho were earlier on in their
career, but then I also wasturning around and talking to
CEOs of companies.
And it was like we all were inthe same room, we're all having
the same conversations, we allhave our notebook out, writing
the same things down.
And it was cool to have thatinformation sharing.
Jordan (30:24):
That's exactly my experience in like going to like
podcasting conferences andstuff like that, too.
Like you're just all together.
Yeah.
Priscilla (30:31):
It was cool.
And I think one like otherthing that just occurred to me
sometimes customer support islooked down on as a profession
because it's like, you know, alot of people are like, oh, it's
entry level, or it's just notlike a career, right?
And that can be reallydisappointing if you're working
in this profession and you loveit like we love it.
It can be disappointing to feellike, oh, no one takes my job
(30:54):
seriously.
So to go to a conference whereeveryone is taking it seriously.
The people who are there loveit and are using it as a career,
it can be really encouraging ifyou're in a place like in a
headspace where you're like, Ilove this work, but people don't
view it as valuable.
Like get yourself to aconference like this and you'll
(31:16):
be reminded how valuable thiswork is.
It's really encouraging.
Okay, so their next event isin, I think it's in New York
City, and it's in a couple ofmonths in the fall of 2026, and
it's their leadership summit.
So if you're a support leaderand you want to grow in your
leadership skills, that woulddefinitely be a conference to
(31:36):
check out.
Thank you, Serena, for comingon the episode and sharing your
takeaways with us.
This was a lot of fun.
Thanks for having me.
Serena (31:43):
I had a great time.
Priscilla (31:44):
If you have any questions or if you have a topic
that you want us discuss on afuture episode, use the send us
a text link in the show notes.
Or if there's just somethingyou want to learn more about,
like send it in.
And we'd love to make anepisode specifically about that
for you.
If you're a fan of the show,leave us a review on Apple
Podcasts.
We would love to see those.
Thank you again to Serena forjoining us on this episode.
(32:07):
Thank you all for listening.
Now go and make someone's day.
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