October 14, 2025 • 42 mins
In this episode of Happy to Help, we dive into the pressure-filled world of customer support and why it’s time to shift from frantic reaction to intentional response. Learn how operating from a place of calm not only reduces mistakes but leads to better customer experiences, stronger team morale, and reduced burnout.
With real-world examples of how urgency can derail even the best support intentions, this episode is packed with strategies to help you:
- Recognize the hidden costs of urgency in the inbox
- Build a calm support culture even when customers are in crisis
- Train your team to slow down without sacrificing service
- Model healthy leadership that prioritizes quality over speed
Recommended reading: It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work
Whether you’re leading a support team or answering tickets yourself, this is your permission slip to breathe, slow down, and serve better!
We want to hear from you! Share your support stories and questions with us at happytohelp@buzzsprout.com!
To learn more about Buzzsprout visit Buzzsprout.com.
Thanks for listening!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Priscilla (00:00):
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer
support from the people ofBuzzsprout.
I'm your host, PriscillaBrooke.
Today we're talking about theurgency that comes with customer
support.
We'll look at why a calmenvironment is vital to offering
remarkable customer experiencesand some strategies you can use
to get out of the chaos andembrace the calm.
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
(00:20):
Let's get into it.
How are you doing, Jordan?
Good, it's just us today.
We haven't done a solo episodein a while.
Jordan (00:32):
Yeah, I mean it feels like it's been at least six
months since we've been just thetwo of us.
Priscilla (00:37):
Well, I'm excited that it's just us.
You know, it makes it a littlebit more casual, relaxed here.
Yes, one of the things you knowwe do every episode is the who
made our day recently.
Yeah, and it's funny because wehave a little bit of a not
conventional answer today, but Ithink we both agree that this
person made our day.
Yeah, do you want to telleveryone who we're talking
(00:58):
about?
Jordan (00:59):
I mean, we can both say it on the count of three.
We can do one, two, three.
Priscilla (01:04):
Taylor Swift, Dr Taylor Allison Swift to be
specific.
You know we always say that youcan share anyone who made your
day and, honestly, the month ofAugust has really been Taylor
making my day.
Every day it was her month.
Jordan (01:18):
More specifically, you know we're in the business of
podcasting, yeah, and we're alsoreally big fans of Taylor
Swift, so we were very, veryhappy to see her make her
podcasting debut Like thatpretty much made my month,
honestly.
Priscilla (01:34):
It's fun because she's like coming to our space
now in the podcasting world andso now there's a reason to talk
about Taylor Swift at work, whenthere wasn't before.
Really, even though I still didit, we had to work her in, it
was really hard, but it's fun,okay.
So, speaking of that podcast,the thing that I wanted to point
out she said something duringthat podcast that she did on the
(01:56):
New Heights podcast that reallystruck me.
So she was talking about buyingher master's and that whole
process and I'm not going to gointo all of the lore, that's a
different podcast but there wassomething she said that really
struck me in how it related tocustomer support.
So she was talking about kindof that like process of getting
(02:16):
them to sell her the master's inthe first place.
And she stopped herself and shesaid I'm in the business of
human emotion.
And I heard her say that and Iwent hey, me too.
We have that in common.
Jordan (02:27):
We have that in common.
Priscilla (02:28):
Because all of us who work in customer support are in
the business of human emotion,absolutely.
We really are.
We are working with humans whoare experiencing different
emotions, whether they'refrustrated because something's
not working, or they're sad andthey need encouragement.
You never know what kind ofemotion someone's coming to you
with, but there are emotionstied in with each of your
(02:50):
support emails.
And so when she said that andthen went into how she lets that
change the way she communicateswith people because she's in
the business of human emotionand how that allows her to do a
better job of communicating, itreally was cool to me to hear,
because we are in that sameworld of human emotion and we
are working with people and itwould be easy to say I'm taking
(03:11):
all the human emotion out ofsupport and I'm just going to
help people and lose all thehuman emotion.
But if we use that humanemotion, we can make our work so
much better and we can likeleverage it for ourselves.
And so enough about TaylorSwift.
We can talk about her all daylong, but I think we should
switch gears and talk abouturgency and support.
(03:33):
What do you think?
Jordan (03:34):
Let's do it, perfect segue.
Priscilla (03:37):
So I'm excited to talk about urgency and how we,
as customer supportprofessionals, should react to
urgent situations in the inbox.
I think there is such a bigfocus in our society, in our
industry, put on speed andinstant gratification and
wanting things done immediately,and if they're not done
(03:58):
immediately, then they're donepoorly because they weren't done
right away and I think we justwant things done right away.
I feel like it's not in our DNAto just be patient and yeah,
it's hard.
Jordan (04:11):
It is hard.
Priscilla (04:12):
We've been trained to not be patient, exactly, and we
get everything when we need it.
And if you have to wait for apage to load, when you go to
Google you're like, oh man, thisis taking a long time to load
and the reality is it's beenfour seconds.
Jordan (04:24):
I get annoyed if I order something on Amazon and it's
three-day shipping instead ofone Exactly, which is pretty
crazy, honestly.
Priscilla (04:31):
Yeah, or if you're sitting in a red light and
someone doesn't go immediately.
I'm like oh, I should honk atthem because they're sitting
there and they're not payingattention and it's been two
seconds and I'm like, no, Ishould not honk at them, just be
patient, it's OK.
So when we think of urgency,just as a society, I think we
kind of operate with this levelof urgency all the time, and I
(04:52):
think that shows up in thecorporate world and in customer
support a lot too.
Yeah, and I'm sure we can allthink as customer support
professionals of a time wheresomeone wrote an email to
support and maybe they were likewriting in all caps to try to
convey the urgency of thesituation, or they put the word
urgent in the subject to try toget it to the top of the queue,
(05:15):
which I could totally see whyyou might feel the need to do
that.
But what does that mean for yourcustomer support professionals
who are working that queue?
And how should we take thatkind of urgency, or sometimes
I'll say perceived urgency,because a customer might think
something's urgent when it's notactually urgent.
And so how do we as customersupport agents take that urgency
(05:38):
and respond in a way thatdoesn't reflect the urgency,
takes responsibility andownership of the sensitivity of
the question, but doesn'treflect the urgency, takes
responsibility and ownership ofthe sensitivity of the question,
but doesn't react with thishuge sense of urgency, because
the reality is, if we work atthe urgency that our customers
demand in the inbox, then ourteams are going to feel
pressured to move fast, which isgoing to cause mistakes.
(06:00):
It isn't a healthy way to workand can honestly lead to burnout
faster than if you're workingfrom a place of calm.
Jordan (06:09):
Yeah, so I worked in an accounting office for about
seven years and you know wedealt with people's finances and
taxes and that was one of thoseindustries where everyone feels
like everything is an emergencyat all times and I used to let
that get to me to where I wouldbe like splitting up my time and
(06:29):
attention.
And I remember the owner of theaccounting firm that I worked
at he told me one day he saidyou know, if everything is
urgent, nothing is urgent.
Exactly Like that's thethreshold now.
Priscilla (06:39):
Yeah, so today, what I really want to look at is how
remarkable support isn't aboutspeed at all costs.
It's about finding a healthycalm that serves your customer
and your support team.
I feel like a good place tostart is talking about the
problem with urgency in and ofitself, and we've kind of, you
(07:00):
know, chatted about it a littlebit.
But you know, urgency createsstress and it leads to mistakes,
which leads to bad experiences.
So when someone brings urgencyinto the inbox, that creates
stress for our customer supportprofessionals and it causes us
to rush.
And what happens when we'rerushing?
(07:20):
We make mistakes, yeah, and Ifeel like we've talked about a
couple of times on this podcast.
But mistakes are a natural partof life and of being human and
when mistakes are made, that canlead to a bad customer
experience.
There's ways to turn mistakesaround so that it's not a bad
customer experience, but a lotof times, if you're making
mistakes repeatedly, especiallyif you're with the same customer
(07:43):
and they're seeing that overand over and over again, then
that's just going to lead to areally bad relationship and
probably going to lead to thecustomer looking for a new
product.
Yeah, so it becomes thisdangerous cycle and you think
about the inbox and someonewriting in with a question and
we work fast to try to get itout of the inbox.
Maybe we don't answer itexactly perfectly, and then that
(08:05):
causes them to write in andsay, oh well, that's not exactly
the answer I needed, let me tryagain.
You haven't actually workedthrough that question faster,
you've just doubled your work.
And so a lot of times when youlet that urgency of the inbox
dictate the way you're working,it's actually making your inbox
busier and causing more urgencyand you get stuck in this
(08:26):
vicious cycle of urgent emailsthat you just can never get on
top of.
Yeah, all right.
So I kind of jotted down a listof some of the mistakes that
I've seen from myself when I'mworking from a place of urgency
and responding to urgent emailsin an urgent manner.
When I look at those emails, Isee that I'm not responding in
the tone that we've set for ourteam.
I'm responding really quicklyand so maybe I'm close to the
(08:50):
tone, maybe some of it's there,but it's not written to the
level that we should have everyemail written to, because I'm
working too quickly to focus ontone.
I'm not offering educationalresources.
A big indicator of remarkablecustomer support is the
educational side of things.
And so when you're workingquickly and you're trying to get
(09:11):
through these emails reallyfast and get them out of the
inbox, or you're working withsomeone who's demanding
immediate responses, you'regoing to skip that extra piece
of education.
You know you might explainsomething, but you might not say
here's a video that goes indepth or here's an article
that'll give you a little moreinformation about this, or
reverse, you might just sendthem the article without
(09:32):
explaining it, and so you'remissing that education side of
things.
When you're working quickly andnot working from a place of calm
process, okay, a big one thatI've seen in myself, that I've
seen with people on my team, iswhen we are working from a place
of urgency, when we'reresponding to emails in an
urgent manner, we are notdouble-checking account
(09:54):
information.
We are not double-checking thecontext of the situation.
If someone writes in with anurgent email about all of their
episodes getting deleted, wewant to respond as quickly as
possible and sometimes what thatmeans is we don't log into
their account and look aroundDid they actually get deleted or
were they moved somewhere wherethe podcaster wasn't aware of
(10:16):
where they got moved?
If we don't take in thatcontext the full situation,
we're not going to be respondingwith the most accurate
information, the full situation.
We're not going to beresponding with the most
accurate information and in somecases that can add to the
urgency, or the perceivedurgency, and make the situation
that much worse.
Jordan (10:32):
Yeah, well, and also it's not a fun thing for those
around you and also like theleadership when you escalate
things like that.
So let's say that you know westick to this someone saying,
oh, all my episodes are deletedstory, and then you immediately
write in to Tom and you go oh mygosh, this person's like
episodes were deleted, whathappened?
And so now you have gone toleadership and escalated it and
(10:55):
then they're going to be like ohmy gosh, this is, this must be
dire.
And then they go in and they'relike no, they created a
duplicate account and they'rejust in the wrong one.
And it would have been.
It would have taken you fiveseconds to look into it and
realize that.
Priscilla (11:08):
Right, exactly, and I think it's hard sometimes to
give yourself the freedom toslow down when someone's yelling
at you and telling you that, ohmy gosh, this is super urgent.
Yeah, but we have to takeownership of that, because we
can only control how we're goingto respond to something, and if
(11:30):
we react without going throughour steps and making sure that
we're looking at things in alogical, you know, processed
way, then it's going to be a lotharder to make sure we're
offering remarkable services.
So urgency in the inbox can looklike a customer that's saying
this is urgent and you need todeal with it right away.
It can look like a really busyinbox that you feel the urgency
to get through.
So maybe it's not urgentcustomers, but maybe it's
thousands of emails in yourinbox that you just feel this
(11:50):
urgency to get through them asquickly as possible.
Yeah, but it can also look likeurgency like you were just
talking about in escalations.
So going and taking thaturgency outside of the inbox and
passing it up the line orpassing it to other people on
your team and interrupting deepwork and having this sense of
urgency be this propeller thatyou're using as you get your
(12:13):
work done, which really isn'tsustainable in the long run.
No, I feel like a hot topic incustomer support is this idea of
burnout right?
The idea that we're carrying,as customer support
professionals, a lot ofemotional, like Taylor Swift was
saying, but like?
Jordan (12:30):
a lot of emotional weight.
Priscilla (12:32):
And so, as you pile that on, it leads to burnout
over time.
I think that's, you know,pretty common in this industry.
I think that's, you know,pretty common in this industry.
And so, adding this level ofintensity on top of it and
saying to your team hey, notonly are you needing to show
empathy and patience andkindness and all of these things
and help all these people whoare being rude to you, but you
(12:53):
also need to do it immediately.
There is no room for calm andthat is going to lead to people
on your team burning out andbeing done with this kind of
work because it's just notsustainable.
Yeah, and I think that in thebeginning, if you are focusing
on like a really fast responsetime, and in the beginning that
might feel like productivity,you're like, yes, we are so
(13:15):
productive, we're getting somany emails out so fast.
This is great.
But over time, what you realizeis that intense culture that
you're building is notproductivity.
Or someone writes in and saysthis is urgent and then you're
(13:44):
like, man, I solved that problemin 10 minutes, that's so great.
But then you don't realize thatthey write back a week later
when it wasn't solved, becausethey didn't understand the
answer.
And so it feels productive, butreally it's just building, you
know, even more intensity downthe line.
And it's not a sustainablefeeling to treat everything like
it's urgent.
So you and I clearly agree thatthere's an issue with letting
(14:07):
that urgency dictate the way youmove and support yeah.
So what do you do about it?
How do you make sure thatyou're working in a calm
environment, even when you havea chaotic inbox, even when you
have people writing in withurgent in the subject line?
Jordan (14:21):
because it can be really hard, yeah, or a supervisor who
believes in the urgency is adriving force.
Priscilla (14:28):
And that's a whole facet of this that is so much
harder If you are working for acompany that is putting emphasis
on the urgency, or putting allthe emphasis of your team and
your success on response times.
It's very hard to not operate inthat way.
If you're working in a culturethat is like that and hopefully
(14:49):
if you're stuck in a culturewhere that's the way they're
working, you can use some ofthese strategies.
You can show some of thesebenefits to your supervisors to
encourage everyone to work froma place of calm.
But I hope that if you're aleader listening to this, you
can take some of these and startto build a culture that is not
focused on letting the urgencyor the perceived urgency from
(15:12):
the inbox push your team toreact with an urgent response,
because that's not going to leadto anything good.
No, you might have a greatresponse time, but you might not
have many happy customers ifthey have to write in six times
in order to get the informationthey really need.
Yep, okay, so we know thaturgency can be a problem, but
what about the power of calm?
(15:33):
So a couple episodes ago, wehad Chase Clemons on and he
talked about a phrase that heused to use when he was working
in the food service, where hewould say things are just
sandwiches.
Jordan (15:45):
We have used that so many times, so many times In so
many different contexts.
Priscilla (15:48):
I love it so much.
It's just sandwiches.
I need to get it like needlepointed on a pillow and put it
like on my office chair orsomething, because it's so good.
Jordan (15:58):
Yeah.
Priscilla (15:58):
But it is a really important thing when you're
trying to work from a place ofcalm to kind of keep that
perspective.
And just for anyone who doesn'tknow where the phrase came
from, chase used to tell it tohis team when he was working in
the food industry as a way tokind of ground them and bring
them back down.
When someone was either actingwith a ton of urgency or being
really frustrated, he would say,hey, it's just sandwiches.
(16:20):
We can keep perspective on thisbecause these are just
sandwiches and as leaders we canmodel what a calm environment
looks like.
And sometimes what that meansis reminding our team that it's
just podcasting, or it's just ahotel room if you're in the
hospitality world, or it's justhome internet, because the
(16:41):
reality is it really is justthose things.
And I'm not trying to diminishthe importance of our work or
the importance of your product,because of course It'll have an
effect.
Yeah, yeah exactly, butperspective is a really healthy
thing and if you want to havepeople on your team who are
healthy and able to attack eachday with the best work possible
(17:03):
and the best experience possiblefor your customers and for the
people on your team, then youreally want to help them build
those healthy mindsets and thatperspective is going to help
keep things calm.
Jordan (17:15):
If you think about it emergency room surgeons they
have possibly the most importantjob in the world.
Priscilla (17:22):
And the most urgent, the most actually urgent job,
literally urgent, literally lifeor death.
Jordan (17:28):
But if they get panicked and they get into a space of
their urgency is overwhelming tothem, then they can't do their
job.
And so if those people can havesteady hands and do a
three-hour surgery whensomeone's going to die, you can
write back to an email in alittle bit it's fine.
Priscilla (17:48):
Well, and think about an ER.
I think that's a great example.
Someone comes into the ER andthey are like bleeding or
whatever, having issues.
They need to go and havesurgery.
The doctor is not going to go.
Let's get them into the ORright now and not check their
blood pressure and not checktheir vitals and do the things
that you need to do before youcan go into surgery.
We don't need to worry aboutanesthesia, we're just going to
(18:09):
get him in.
No, you can't do that, becauseif you do that and you skip
those very important steps,you're going to end up in a much
worse situation than you werebefore.
Yep, that would be the doctortaking the urgency of the
situation and letting it bedictating how he responds.
They have to respond in a waythat is methodical and calm,
(18:31):
even though the situation is notnecessarily calm, and so I
think that's a really goodexample of what we're talking
about here.
I mean, think about I'm justrunning with this, but think
about if someone came in with abruised finger and it hurts a
lot and they're like man, Ithink my finger's broken, I need
you to set it.
And then the doctor goes OK,yeah, let's set it, but really
(18:51):
it's just a bruise or maybe itwas.
You know, they got stung by abee or something.
Yeah, it wasn't actuallybroken.
But they never checked to seeif it was broken.
They just said it because theylet the urgency of the person
that came in dictate it.
But sometimes, in support, Imean, I've experienced where
people say I need you to do X,I'm experiencing this and I need
you to do X, and my response isokay, I'll do X sometimes, but
(19:14):
what really needs to happen iswhy.
But what happens is we take theurgency that the person is
writing in with and we taketheir information as true,
without double checking it andgoing no, actually your finger's
not broken, it's a bee stingand we're going to treat it a
different way.
Yeah, okay.
So when you're working from acalm environment, how does that
show up in your emails?
(19:35):
We talked about what it lookslike to work in an urgent
environment.
So when I see myself or thepeople on my team working from a
place of calm, I see thoroughresponses that take in all of
the context of the situation.
I see intentionalcommunication.
So you know we've talked aboutin previous episodes how to
write well in emails to conveythe correct intention that you
(19:58):
have.
If you are working from a placeof urgency, you don't have time
to craft a really intentionalresponse.
But if you have a calmenvironment and you're working
from a place of calm, that meansthat you're able to take the
time to craft a response that'sgoing to give you the best shot
to respond in the correct way,in the way that you intend to
respond and have the bestoutcome.
(20:20):
When they read your responseespecially when you're working
with someone who's frustratedright and you're trying to be
really careful about how yourespond to them it will show up
in emails that are aligned withour tone, that have accurate
information, you'll seeconfidence in problem solving.
Right, yeah, because if someonehas time to go through the
different troubleshooting stepsthat they are supposed to take
(20:42):
and they have the time toproblem solve, then when they
come back they'll haveconfidence in that.
And even if your customer saysno, no, no, no, that's not
right.
It's definitely this If they'vealready taken the time to go
through and do the problemsolving, they can stand on that
in confidence that they knowwhat they're talking about.
And it allows you to includepersonalization and focus on the
(21:02):
relationship side of things.
We talk a lot in this podcastabout how the human side of
support is so important and howit can level up the work you're
doing.
And if you are working from aplace of urgency or if you're
encouraging your team to onlylook at response time as the
thing to chase after, you're notgiving them the ability to
(21:25):
bring in that personalization,which is what's going to make
your loyal customers.
Yeah, all of these qualities ofremarkable customer support can
only happen if you giveyourself time to do them.
So if you're always pushingyourself to work faster and more
urgently, then it's going to beharder to provide these
remarkable experiences Notnever.
You still might see some ofthem, but it's not going to be
(21:47):
as consistent.
So it's really hard as acustomer support professional,
as a leader of a team, to notlet the craziness of the inbox
or the urgency of every emaildictate your movements.
But as a leader of the supportteam, it's vital to model
calmness and to show our teamthat they're allowed to operate
(22:07):
from a place of calm.
They're allowed to take theirtime.
When people say this is urgent,respond immediately.
They're allowed to take abreak, take a breather, reread
an email and approach it in aresponse instead of just a
reaction.
If we don't model that asleaders, then our team is never
going to feel comfortable doingthat on their end.
(22:27):
You were talking earlier abouttaking the urgency of someone's
email and then escalating it tosomeone else on the team.
Yeah, the amount of times Ihave done that in the nine years
that I have been withBuzzsprout, I cannot count for
you the amount of times thatI've gone to one of our
developers with this sense ofurgency only to then go wait, is
this urgent, or am I just beingtricked into thinking it is
(22:49):
urgent?
It's really tough, and nineyears into it it's still tough.
I still catch myself lettingthe urgency of someone in an
email push me to react in anurgent way.
Oh yeah.
Jordan (23:01):
If I see someone posting on social media about a
problem, that's a great example.
Yeah, because it's public, soeveryone can see it, and they're
also kind of making our othercustomers go wait what?
And it makes me feel like, oh,this has to be fixed immediately
because it's like it's thispublic facing sort of thing.
(23:21):
But really it can wait, it'snot a huge deal.
Priscilla (23:24):
And sometimes things are urgent, and so I don't want
people to hear this and be like,oh, you just work with like a
nonchalance every day.
No, no, but it's our job tofigure out what's urgent and
what's not urgent.
Yes, and sometimes like thesocial media is a great example
Someone will post something thatthey feel is urgent in that
moment and then I always feellike other people are looking at
(23:46):
the post, going man, it's beenfour minutes and they haven't
responded, and the reality isit's going to take time to read
through it, to do the researchon what's going on and to post
an update.
Yeah, that's going to take alittle time and if you rush
that, you are putting injeopardy the entire outcome
because you could respond tooquickly without knowing the
whole situation.
Anyway, we've gone through allof that.
(24:06):
So it's really important towork from a place of calm and,
like I was saying, I have beendoing this for nine years and
still feel like I struggle withthat sometimes, and so these are
some of the things that I dointentionally every day and I
remind our team to do every dayto help us stay focused on calm
and stay focused on working froma calm environment.
(24:29):
Okay.
So first take a beat before yourespond.
Right, read an email a secondtime, put the email in
perspective, consider thecontext of the situation.
If you make all of those thingspart of your process, it's
going to force you to slow down.
Got to go and you skip thosesteps.
It's not going to turn outwell.
But if you go, okay, this isurgent.
(24:58):
I'm going to go through mysteps and I'm still going to
make sure I have all myinformation before I respond,
and I'm going to be verymethodical about that, but I'm
still going to do it right away.
Right, I'm doing it now becauseI'm in this email, looking at
it, but I'm not going to letmyself rush through the steps.
It'll force you to slow down Ifyou feel an urgency pushing
your conversations, like, let'ssay, you're in an email with
someone and it's just notcalming down.
(25:18):
You're trying to calm it andit's not calming.
Jordan (25:20):
You start feeling like the heat rising in your face.
Priscilla (25:23):
Yeah, exactly, and you're like I can't solve this.
What's going on?
You can bring someone else in.
I mean I think that's one of mybiggest strategies that I tell
everyone in like every sensehey, if you need to bring
someone else on the team in,there's no reason not to share
the load.
If you're feeling the urgencyof something and you're having a
hard time seeing it from anoutside perspective or a place
(25:45):
of calm, bring someone else inwho can come in and help you
with that.
Yeah, okay, we talked about oneof the reasons that there's
urgency in the inbox being thatyou might have a very full
inbox, one thing that we used todo.
We don't do it as much anymorebecause I think we've gotten a
little bit better about beingcalm regardless of the number of
emails, but we used tophysically cover up how many
(26:07):
emails were in the inbox.
Jordan (26:10):
Like with a piece of paper.
Yes, with a sticky note.
Priscilla (26:13):
I would put it on my screen on top of the part where
it says how many emails are inthe inbox, and that way I'm only
focusing on the email that isin front of me.
Jordan (26:21):
That was one of the tricks that my like second grade
teacher taught us to learn howto read and stay on the correct
line.
So what you do is you take likean index card or a ruler and
you would put it over the pageand it would force you to just
focus on the one line.
So it's like that.
Priscilla (26:40):
Yeah, think about it.
You have 150 emails in theinbox and you're writing an
email and while you're takingthe time to work on that email,
four more emails come in.
You're going to go.
I don't have time to spend 10minutes on this email, but the
reality is, if you shortchangeyourself on the email you're
working on, that's going to turninto four emails after you send
it.
Absolutely Cover up that numberif that's causing you to rush.
Jordan (27:03):
I love that tip.
That's a good one.
Priscilla (27:05):
Okay.
Another thing that we will puta lot of emphasis on is training
and how.
When you invest in the trainingof the people on your team,
that builds their confidence andunderstanding of the product,
which allows them to, like wewere talking about earlier,
decide what's urgent and what'snot and accurately figure that
out.
So if someone is writing inbecause they've misunderstood
(27:27):
something in your product, ifyou don't understand how the
feature that they're talkingabout works, you're going to
adopt their urgency.
Because you don't understandhow the feature that they're
talking about works, you'regoing to adopt their urgency
because you don't understand.
That's not really urgent, it'sperceived urgency.
But if you are comfortable,confident in your knowledge of
the product, you're going to beable to approach that with a
level of calm and go thateducational route and explain
(27:49):
why things aren't as dire asthey seem.
So investing in confidence, orinvesting in that knowledge
piece and the training, is goingto build your confidence.
Jordan (27:58):
Well, and having that confidence is going to translate
over to the customer, and thenthey're going to have confidence
that you are, in fact, takingcare of them Exactly, yeah.
Priscilla (28:06):
If you're a support team and you're trying to figure
out ways as a team to have thiscalm culture, what can you do
in those cases?
Transparency around how quicklya customer should expect a
response.
If you're trying to get yourteam to work from a place of
calm, but you're tellingcustomers they're going to get a
response in 10 minutes, that'snot going to work.
(28:28):
Yeah, because no one is goingto believe you.
They're going to feel like Ihave to get this answer out in
10 minutes.
How can I work from a place ofcalm and so be transparent with
your customers, push thoseboundaries back a little bit and
say, ok, we are actually goingto try to respond to people
within 30 minutes or within anhour or whatever it is for your
traffic.
Yeah, so that you're givingyour team the ability and the
(28:49):
freedom to work from a place ofcalm.
Jordan (28:52):
I love it because when I get tagged in support emails
maybe it's an equipment questionor something that is in like my
lane of expertise Wheneversomeone in the support team tags
me in it, I see them respondingto the customer saying hey, I'm
actually going to send this toour expert on this.
This is Jordan.
She's a podcast producer andshe will get back to you in the
(29:14):
next 24 hours.
Wow, 24 hours.
I get a whole day to researchthis and reach out to them.
It is phenomenal.
Yeah, 10 times out of 10, thecustomer is like wow, you're
setting me up Great.
Yeah, I can wait untiltomorrow.
Priscilla (29:29):
Yeah, exactly, and we do that to protect your calm
and because we know that you'renot sitting at your desk waiting
for a support email to pop up.
Right, you're doing your work,and we don't want to say, hey,
you actually have to dropeverything right now and jump
into the inbox and answer thisin 10 minutes, and if you don't,
then this is going to be badcustomer support.
(29:49):
And so it's the same kind ofthing in communicating to your
customers when they are likethat first response into
support, be transparent.
If it's an hour, say it's anhour, that's okay.
Another thing you can do as ateam to make sure that things
are staying calm is have a clearescalation path for things that
are actually urgent, becausesome things are going to be
(30:10):
urgent and you need to make sureto move them along quickly so
they can get handled in a timesensitive manner.
It's kind of like with that ERsituation.
The ER is set up in a way tomove people through quickly, in
a way that people can get towhere they need to be, so the
people that are in the more diresituations can go through
quicker than the people whoaren't, can go through quicker
(30:35):
than the people who aren't.
So having that escalation planreally clear before you're in
the middle of it is another wayto keep things calm, because
when things get a little bitchaotic, having calm in any way
that you can find it is going tobe really beneficial.
We talked about metrics a littlebit already, but make sure
you're placing value on qualityover speed and that when you
celebrate your team forsomething, you're celebrating
(30:56):
the actions that you want toencourage.
So a good example of this, juston the Buzzsprout team, was
years ago probably, you know,2019, 2020, we had been, you
know, we were still kind of inthis growth phase, figuring out
what our support team lookedlike, and we always focused on
the response time metric.
We were like man, we got ourresponse time down to 20
(31:18):
minutes.
Oh my gosh.
People are always saying howfast we are, that's so great,
that's all we talked about, andwhen.
That's all you talk about,that's all you think is
important when you're working insupport.
And so what does that do?
It just adds to urgency.
It adds to the feeling of Ihave to get this out as quickly
as possible at all costs.
Whether that's my own sanity,whether that's accuracy,
(31:40):
whatever it is, I just need toget this out quickly, because I
need our response time to below.
If you're celebrating that,then that's where people are
going to put the value.
So, when you're trying to getyour team to work from a place
of calm, celebrate the thingsthat encourage that.
So talk about the quality.
Talk about why the quality isgood.
What did they do in that emailthat made it really good?
(32:02):
Praise people when they getthat full context or when they
send a really thorough email, orwhen it has good education in
it.
It's not bad to look at theresponse time, because that is
part of the whole puzzle when itcomes to good, remarkable
support, but it shouldn't be theonly thing that you look at,
and it can be really detrimentalto the way your support is run
(32:22):
if the only thing you're worriedabout is how quickly an email
is sent out, ok.
So the last thing I want totalk about is, as leaders, what
can we do for our team to allowthem to work from a place of
calm?
The biggest thing is modelingit right.
If you, as a leader, are tellingpeople to be calm but you're
not operating out of a place ofcalm, that's going to be a
(32:42):
problem right, because your teamis going to look at you and go
yeah well, you're telling us towork from a place of calm, but
you keep interrupting me all thetime when I'm trying to work on
whatever project or inbox oremail that I'm working on.
And so be respectful of thetime of the people on your team
and model that kind of calm andwhen you send them a ping, say
(33:03):
hey, if you're in the middle ofsomething, I don't need you to
respond right away.
Especially as you're trying tobuild this idea of calm, use
phrases like that.
Let them know, point blank youdon't need to respond today, I
don't expect you to respondright away, but I want you to
think about this or whatever itis.
Eventually, they'll startrealizing that that's the
default is that they don't haveto respond immediately.
But it's a really good thing tomodel, especially when it comes
(33:26):
to emails.
When you get an email that'sescalated to you, that feels
urgent, respond in a calm wayand show that behavior to your
team that I'm going to respondto this in a way that is not
adopting the urgency thatthey're writing in with, but
responding in a calm way tobring it back down and to offer
a remarkable service.
And then the last thing I wouldsay is take time to debrief
(33:48):
after crazy chaotic situations,because sometimes there are
going to be times that get alittle bit crazy.
That's the nature of the job.
So we're trying to find calm asoften as we can and work from a
place of calm, but occasionallythere's going to be some
urgency that pops up or somechaos that pops up.
That's the nature of it.
So once that happens, step backwith your team and take a
(34:10):
minute to go through what workedand what didn't work and how we
can stay more calm next timeand how we can handle things in
a more methodical way next timebecause, that is going to be a
huge part of that learningexperience and will encourage
that calm approach the next timesomething blows up.
Okay, so, before we wrap up, Ijust want to share a couple of
(34:31):
final thoughts here, because Ithink you know we've talked
about this urgency, we've talkedabout calm, but there's a
couple things I want you to takeaway.
I don't want you to hear thisand think that calmness is the
same thing as laziness or thesame thing as slowness or the
same thing I said it before asnonchalance or apathy Exactly
(34:55):
nonchalant or apathy.
Exactly when I'm talking aboutcalm, I'm talking about
intentionally remaining calm toraise the standard of your work.
Yes, I really think that ERexample you gave us is such a
good one and I'm going to keepgoing back to it.
But you would never look at acool, collected surgeon working
in an ER and say, oh, they'reworking slow and they're not
taking this seriously.
They literally don't care aboutthis obviously you wouldn't say
(35:16):
that.
No, they are staying calm sothat they can do the best work
possible, and that is how weneed to be looking at it.
In our work, in the supportinbox, we want to be staying
calm.
We want to operate from a placeof calm, not because we value
slow and not because we are OKwith laziness, but because calm
(35:37):
allows us to be intentional, andwhen you're intentional, the
standard of your work is goingto go up.
Yeah, so as a leader, youshould be creating a calm
environment for your team,giving them the freedom to
respond to tough situationsinstead of just reacting to
them.
To respond to tough situationsinstead of just reacting to
them.
Focus on metrics that alignwith the values you're trying to
(35:58):
promote and then don't let thecustomer's perceived urgency or
a busy inbox dictate how you'regoing to approach a problem.
As a support professional,remember that calm support is
not slow support.
It's intentional, it'sconfident and it's remarkable.
And if you're looking for morestrategies and ways and reasons
to have a calm environment, likeyou were saying earlier,
(36:19):
jordan, what if you're workingin a company that's not calm and
you're trying to infuse as muchcalm as possible?
There is a great book called itDoesn't have to Be Crazy at
Work.
Aptly named, yes, written bythe people over at Basecamp and
it really is a great resourcefor anyone who is running a team
or running a company to keep inmind that life doesn't have to
(36:40):
be insane, that work doesn'thave to be insane.
It can be calm, yes, and wehave the freedom to let it be
and the benefits of that.
So if you want to dig deeperinto this and take it out of
just the support context, Ihighly recommend it Doesn't have
to be Crazy at Work.
Jordan (36:55):
Yeah, I think that's on the required reading list.
Here at Buzzsprout we have awhole bunch of books by the
people at Basecamp and I thinkit's on everyone's shelf.
I have it right behind me.
Priscilla (37:07):
Yeah, it's a great book, so I highly recommend
that.
All right, it's time forSupport in real life, our
segment where we discuss reallife support experiences Jordan.
What question do we have today?
Jordan (37:21):
So this is from support driven slack and this is
paraphrased.
It says I lead a small supportteam and I'm considering setting
up short daily meetings foragents to bring challenging
support tickets.
This could be a good way for usto learn from each other, but I
wonder how effective it wouldbe, since things move fast in
the support inbox.
How would you organize thesemeetings?
Priscilla (37:43):
This is a great question for this episode.
Oh yeah, we've been talkingabout this whole time and not
letting you know.
The urgency of things dictatehow you respond, and this is
specifically about how do I stepback and train my team.
And I think what you'rereferring to is the one-on-ones
that we were talking about withErica and about how sometimes
(38:06):
those can feel monotonous ifthey're just happening for the
sake of happening for the sakeof happening.
So I think this is a great idea.
First of all, to the person whohad this question about doing
these daily short kind ofmeetings to bring in emails and
to learn from them, I think it'sa really good strategy.
It kind of allows you to taketime out of the quote unquote
chaos of the inbox to sharpenyour skills and to get better as
(38:29):
a team.
There's a couple of things thatI would be careful about if I
was trying to implement thesekind of meetings.
Two things.
One is is the group setting theright way to do it?
Because while there's benefitscertainly in a group setting
where everyone's reading anemail together and then
reviewing it together or talkingabout the feature and how it
(38:50):
works and the best way to handlethat question it also can be
dangerous if you're trying tocorrect behavior, because doing
that in a group setting cansometimes lead to shame and
sometimes it can be tough.
So just be careful about thatand, depending on the size of
your team, you might not be ableto do it in a group setting.
It might get too big to be ableto really use that time well.
(39:13):
So consider maybe one-on-onesbeing a better way to go through
that.
The other kind of warning I haveis about doing daily meetings.
Daily meetings can be reallygood, right?
If you're like we're going todo 15 minutes, it's just going
to be a quick 15 minutes.
Everyone bring what they havequestions about the day before.
We're going to do quick.
(39:37):
But the problem with dailymeetings is they're going to
become routine and they're goingto become monotonous and then
you're going to start losing.
Am I doing these meetingsbecause we have emails to talk
about?
Or am I coming up with emailsto talk about because we have
this meeting?
And then you can turn into whatI hate so much about one on
ones, which is having them justfor the sake of having them,
with no real benefit and valuethere.
Yeah, and so maybe you don'tstart with daily meetings, or
(39:57):
maybe you start with dailymeetings and you're really aware
about the value that's comingout of them and how long they're
taking, and if they're takingmore than you want them to take,
or if they don't bring thevalue anymore, you step back and
you find a new cadence.
I think there's a lot of reallygood training that can happen
when you get out of the inboxand as a team, you come together
and talk through things.
(40:18):
But I don't think it always hasto be synchronous.
I don't think it always has tobe like a daily situation and I
don't think it always has to bein a group.
Jordan (40:26):
Yeah.
So we actually in the marketingteam we have one-on-ones
weekly, but I get to decide whatthe agenda for that one-on-one
is.
I get to decide if we have thatone-on-one.
So if I don't have anything tocheck in about, I don't have to
do it.
I don't have to do theone-on-one.
It's not going to reflectpoorly on me.
(40:47):
So I think another thing thatyou could do is have this be an
optional daily thing.
Like maybe you just have someslots in a calendar and if your
support team has anexceptionally difficult ticket,
they can actually just go in andtake up one of those slots and
meet with you about it justfirst thing in the morning and
then say, okay, great, I feelconfident going into this and
(41:07):
then they're done.
But it's completely optional,they don't have to do it.
Priscilla (41:11):
Especially if you have a really big team and you
want to give people the abilityto have a face-to-face,
one-on-one with you to talkabout something more
complicated, giving them theability to book a 10-minute
check-in is a great strategy.
Another thing that we do a lotover here is case studies.
So I'll find particularlyeither emails that are difficult
(41:35):
or ones that didn't go as wehad planned, or ones that went
really well are really alignedwith how we want to work.
I will take those emails andI'll break them down and point
out where things went well,where things could have been
better, what things went off therails.
Yeah, and have that be in anasynchronous situation, because
sometimes you just don't havethe ability or the freedom to
always be meeting with everyoneand, depending on the size of
(41:56):
your team, it can be reallyhard, really fast, and so what
we will do is these casestudies.
As a way.
It still facilitatesconversation because you can
comment on them and discussthem, but it doesn't have to
happen in a synchronous way.
It can be asynchronous, which Ithink can be really valuable to
some bigger teams, absolutely.
So if you have a question or asupport story or situation that
(42:16):
you would like us to discuss orshout out text the show by using
the.
Send us a text link in theepisode description and we might
feature that question or yourstory on a future episode.
As always, if you like thisepisode, please share it with
someone you know who works incustomer support and leave us a
review on Apple Podcasts.
And thanks to everyone forlistening.
(42:37):
Now go and make someone's day.
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer
support from the people ofBuzzsprout.
I'm your host, PriscillaBrooke.
Today we're talking about theurgency that comes with customer
support.
We'll look at why a calmenvironment is vital to offering
remarkable customer experiencesand some strategies you can use
to get out of the chaos andembrace the calm.
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
(00:20):
Let's get into it.
How are you doing, Jordan?
Good, it's just us today.
We haven't done a solo episodein a while.
Jordan (00:32):
Yeah, I mean it feels like it's been at least six
months since we've been just thetwo of us.
Priscilla (00:37):
Well, I'm excited that it's just us.
You know, it makes it a littlebit more casual, relaxed here.
Yes, one of the things you knowwe do every episode is the who
made our day recently.
Yeah, and it's funny because wehave a little bit of a not
conventional answer today, but Ithink we both agree that this
person made our day.
Yeah, do you want to telleveryone who we're talking
(00:58):
about?
Jordan (00:59):
I mean, we can both say it on the count of three.
We can do one, two, three.
Priscilla (01:04):
Taylor Swift, Dr Taylor Allison Swift to be
specific.
You know we always say that youcan share anyone who made your
day and, honestly, the month ofAugust has really been Taylor
making my day.
Every day it was her month.
Jordan (01:18):
More specifically, you know we're in the business of
podcasting, yeah, and we're alsoreally big fans of Taylor
Swift, so we were very, veryhappy to see her make her
podcasting debut Like thatpretty much made my month,
honestly.
Priscilla (01:34):
It's fun because she's like coming to our space
now in the podcasting world andso now there's a reason to talk
about Taylor Swift at work, whenthere wasn't before.
Really, even though I still didit, we had to work her in, it
was really hard, but it's fun,okay.
So, speaking of that podcast,the thing that I wanted to point
out she said something duringthat podcast that she did on the
(01:56):
New Heights podcast that reallystruck me.
So she was talking about buyingher master's and that whole
process and I'm not going to gointo all of the lore, that's a
different podcast but there wassomething she said that really
struck me in how it related tocustomer support.
So she was talking about kindof that like process of getting
(02:16):
them to sell her the master's inthe first place.
And she stopped herself and shesaid I'm in the business of
human emotion.
And I heard her say that and Iwent hey, me too.
We have that in common.
Jordan (02:27):
We have that in common.
Priscilla (02:28):
Because all of us who work in customer support are in
the business of human emotion,absolutely.
We really are.
We are working with humans whoare experiencing different
emotions, whether they'refrustrated because something's
not working, or they're sad andthey need encouragement.
You never know what kind ofemotion someone's coming to you
with, but there are emotionstied in with each of your
(02:50):
support emails.
And so when she said that andthen went into how she lets that
change the way she communicateswith people because she's in
the business of human emotionand how that allows her to do a
better job of communicating, itreally was cool to me to hear,
because we are in that sameworld of human emotion and we
are working with people and itwould be easy to say I'm taking
(03:11):
all the human emotion out ofsupport and I'm just going to
help people and lose all thehuman emotion.
But if we use that humanemotion, we can make our work so
much better and we can likeleverage it for ourselves.
And so enough about TaylorSwift.
We can talk about her all daylong, but I think we should
switch gears and talk abouturgency and support.
(03:33):
What do you think?
Jordan (03:34):
Let's do it, perfect segue.
Priscilla (03:37):
So I'm excited to talk about urgency and how we,
as customer supportprofessionals, should react to
urgent situations in the inbox.
I think there is such a bigfocus in our society, in our
industry, put on speed andinstant gratification and
wanting things done immediately,and if they're not done
(03:58):
immediately, then they're donepoorly because they weren't done
right away and I think we justwant things done right away.
I feel like it's not in our DNAto just be patient and yeah,
it's hard.
Jordan (04:11):
It is hard.
Priscilla (04:12):
We've been trained to not be patient, exactly, and we
get everything when we need it.
And if you have to wait for apage to load, when you go to
Google you're like, oh man, thisis taking a long time to load
and the reality is it's beenfour seconds.
Jordan (04:24):
I get annoyed if I order something on Amazon and it's
three-day shipping instead ofone Exactly, which is pretty
crazy, honestly.
Priscilla (04:31):
Yeah, or if you're sitting in a red light and
someone doesn't go immediately.
I'm like oh, I should honk atthem because they're sitting
there and they're not payingattention and it's been two
seconds and I'm like, no, Ishould not honk at them, just be
patient, it's OK.
So when we think of urgency,just as a society, I think we
kind of operate with this levelof urgency all the time, and I
(04:52):
think that shows up in thecorporate world and in customer
support a lot too.
Yeah, and I'm sure we can allthink as customer support
professionals of a time wheresomeone wrote an email to
support and maybe they were likewriting in all caps to try to
convey the urgency of thesituation, or they put the word
urgent in the subject to try toget it to the top of the queue,
(05:15):
which I could totally see whyyou might feel the need to do
that.
But what does that mean for yourcustomer support professionals
who are working that queue?
And how should we take thatkind of urgency, or sometimes
I'll say perceived urgency,because a customer might think
something's urgent when it's notactually urgent.
And so how do we as customersupport agents take that urgency
(05:38):
and respond in a way thatdoesn't reflect the urgency,
takes responsibility andownership of the sensitivity of
the question, but doesn'treflect the urgency, takes
responsibility and ownership ofthe sensitivity of the question,
but doesn't react with thishuge sense of urgency, because
the reality is, if we work atthe urgency that our customers
demand in the inbox, then ourteams are going to feel
pressured to move fast, which isgoing to cause mistakes.
(06:00):
It isn't a healthy way to workand can honestly lead to burnout
faster than if you're workingfrom a place of calm.
Jordan (06:09):
Yeah, so I worked in an accounting office for about
seven years and you know wedealt with people's finances and
taxes and that was one of thoseindustries where everyone feels
like everything is an emergencyat all times and I used to let
that get to me to where I wouldbe like splitting up my time and
(06:29):
attention.
And I remember the owner of theaccounting firm that I worked
at he told me one day he saidyou know, if everything is
urgent, nothing is urgent.
Exactly Like that's thethreshold now.
Priscilla (06:39):
Yeah, so today, what I really want to look at is how
remarkable support isn't aboutspeed at all costs.
It's about finding a healthycalm that serves your customer
and your support team.
I feel like a good place tostart is talking about the
problem with urgency in and ofitself, and we've kind of, you
(07:00):
know, chatted about it a littlebit.
But you know, urgency createsstress and it leads to mistakes,
which leads to bad experiences.
So when someone brings urgencyinto the inbox, that creates
stress for our customer supportprofessionals and it causes us
to rush.
And what happens when we'rerushing?
(07:20):
We make mistakes, yeah, and Ifeel like we've talked about a
couple of times on this podcast.
But mistakes are a natural partof life and of being human and
when mistakes are made, that canlead to a bad customer
experience.
There's ways to turn mistakesaround so that it's not a bad
customer experience, but a lotof times, if you're making
mistakes repeatedly, especiallyif you're with the same customer
(07:43):
and they're seeing that overand over and over again, then
that's just going to lead to areally bad relationship and
probably going to lead to thecustomer looking for a new
product.
Yeah, so it becomes thisdangerous cycle and you think
about the inbox and someonewriting in with a question and
we work fast to try to get itout of the inbox.
Maybe we don't answer itexactly perfectly, and then that
(08:05):
causes them to write in andsay, oh well, that's not exactly
the answer I needed, let me tryagain.
You haven't actually workedthrough that question faster,
you've just doubled your work.
And so a lot of times when youlet that urgency of the inbox
dictate the way you're working,it's actually making your inbox
busier and causing more urgencyand you get stuck in this
(08:26):
vicious cycle of urgent emailsthat you just can never get on
top of.
Yeah, all right.
So I kind of jotted down a listof some of the mistakes that
I've seen from myself when I'mworking from a place of urgency
and responding to urgent emailsin an urgent manner.
When I look at those emails, Isee that I'm not responding in
the tone that we've set for ourteam.
I'm responding really quicklyand so maybe I'm close to the
(08:50):
tone, maybe some of it's there,but it's not written to the
level that we should have everyemail written to, because I'm
working too quickly to focus ontone.
I'm not offering educationalresources.
A big indicator of remarkablecustomer support is the
educational side of things.
And so when you're workingquickly and you're trying to get
(09:11):
through these emails reallyfast and get them out of the
inbox, or you're working withsomeone who's demanding
immediate responses, you'regoing to skip that extra piece
of education.
You know you might explainsomething, but you might not say
here's a video that goes indepth or here's an article
that'll give you a little moreinformation about this, or
reverse, you might just sendthem the article without
(09:32):
explaining it, and so you'remissing that education side of
things.
When you're working quickly andnot working from a place of calm
process, okay, a big one thatI've seen in myself, that I've
seen with people on my team, iswhen we are working from a place
of urgency, when we'reresponding to emails in an
urgent manner, we are notdouble-checking account
(09:54):
information.
We are not double-checking thecontext of the situation.
If someone writes in with anurgent email about all of their
episodes getting deleted, wewant to respond as quickly as
possible and sometimes what thatmeans is we don't log into
their account and look aroundDid they actually get deleted or
were they moved somewhere wherethe podcaster wasn't aware of
(10:16):
where they got moved?
If we don't take in thatcontext the full situation,
we're not going to be respondingwith the most accurate
information, the full situation.
We're not going to beresponding with the most
accurate information and in somecases that can add to the
urgency, or the perceivedurgency, and make the situation
that much worse.
Jordan (10:32):
Yeah, well, and also it's not a fun thing for those
around you and also like theleadership when you escalate
things like that.
So let's say that you know westick to this someone saying,
oh, all my episodes are deletedstory, and then you immediately
write in to Tom and you go oh mygosh, this person's like
episodes were deleted, whathappened?
And so now you have gone toleadership and escalated it and
(10:55):
then they're going to be like ohmy gosh, this is, this must be
dire.
And then they go in and they'relike no, they created a
duplicate account and they'rejust in the wrong one.
And it would have been.
It would have taken you fiveseconds to look into it and
realize that.
Priscilla (11:08):
Right, exactly, and I think it's hard sometimes to
give yourself the freedom toslow down when someone's yelling
at you and telling you that, ohmy gosh, this is super urgent.
Yeah, but we have to takeownership of that, because we
can only control how we're goingto respond to something, and if
(11:30):
we react without going throughour steps and making sure that
we're looking at things in alogical, you know, processed
way, then it's going to be a lotharder to make sure we're
offering remarkable services.
So urgency in the inbox can looklike a customer that's saying
this is urgent and you need todeal with it right away.
It can look like a really busyinbox that you feel the urgency
to get through.
So maybe it's not urgentcustomers, but maybe it's
thousands of emails in yourinbox that you just feel this
(11:50):
urgency to get through them asquickly as possible.
Yeah, but it can also look likeurgency like you were just
talking about in escalations.
So going and taking thaturgency outside of the inbox and
passing it up the line orpassing it to other people on
your team and interrupting deepwork and having this sense of
urgency be this propeller thatyou're using as you get your
(12:13):
work done, which really isn'tsustainable in the long run.
No, I feel like a hot topic incustomer support is this idea of
burnout right?
The idea that we're carrying,as customer support
professionals, a lot ofemotional, like Taylor Swift was
saying, but like?
Jordan (12:30):
a lot of emotional weight.
Priscilla (12:32):
And so, as you pile that on, it leads to burnout
over time.
I think that's, you know,pretty common in this industry.
I think that's, you know,pretty common in this industry.
And so, adding this level ofintensity on top of it and
saying to your team hey, notonly are you needing to show
empathy and patience andkindness and all of these things
and help all these people whoare being rude to you, but you
(12:53):
also need to do it immediately.
There is no room for calm andthat is going to lead to people
on your team burning out andbeing done with this kind of
work because it's just notsustainable.
Yeah, and I think that in thebeginning, if you are focusing
on like a really fast responsetime, and in the beginning that
might feel like productivity,you're like, yes, we are so
(13:15):
productive, we're getting somany emails out so fast.
This is great.
But over time, what you realizeis that intense culture that
you're building is notproductivity.
Or someone writes in and saysthis is urgent and then you're
(13:44):
like, man, I solved that problemin 10 minutes, that's so great.
But then you don't realize thatthey write back a week later
when it wasn't solved, becausethey didn't understand the
answer.
And so it feels productive, butreally it's just building, you
know, even more intensity downthe line.
And it's not a sustainablefeeling to treat everything like
it's urgent.
So you and I clearly agree thatthere's an issue with letting
(14:07):
that urgency dictate the way youmove and support yeah.
So what do you do about it?
How do you make sure thatyou're working in a calm
environment, even when you havea chaotic inbox, even when you
have people writing in withurgent in the subject line?
Jordan (14:21):
because it can be really hard, yeah, or a supervisor who
believes in the urgency is adriving force.
Priscilla (14:28):
And that's a whole facet of this that is so much
harder If you are working for acompany that is putting emphasis
on the urgency, or putting allthe emphasis of your team and
your success on response times.
It's very hard to not operate inthat way.
If you're working in a culturethat is like that and hopefully
(14:49):
if you're stuck in a culturewhere that's the way they're
working, you can use some ofthese strategies.
You can show some of thesebenefits to your supervisors to
encourage everyone to work froma place of calm.
But I hope that if you're aleader listening to this, you
can take some of these and startto build a culture that is not
focused on letting the urgencyor the perceived urgency from
(15:12):
the inbox push your team toreact with an urgent response,
because that's not going to leadto anything good.
No, you might have a greatresponse time, but you might not
have many happy customers ifthey have to write in six times
in order to get the informationthey really need.
Yep, okay, so we know thaturgency can be a problem, but
what about the power of calm?
(15:33):
So a couple episodes ago, wehad Chase Clemons on and he
talked about a phrase that heused to use when he was working
in the food service, where hewould say things are just
sandwiches.
Jordan (15:45):
We have used that so many times, so many times In so
many different contexts.
Priscilla (15:48):
I love it so much.
It's just sandwiches.
I need to get it like needlepointed on a pillow and put it
like on my office chair orsomething, because it's so good.
Jordan (15:58):
Yeah.
Priscilla (15:58):
But it is a really important thing when you're
trying to work from a place ofcalm to kind of keep that
perspective.
And just for anyone who doesn'tknow where the phrase came
from, chase used to tell it tohis team when he was working in
the food industry as a way tokind of ground them and bring
them back down.
When someone was either actingwith a ton of urgency or being
really frustrated, he would say,hey, it's just sandwiches.
(16:20):
We can keep perspective on thisbecause these are just
sandwiches and as leaders we canmodel what a calm environment
looks like.
And sometimes what that meansis reminding our team that it's
just podcasting, or it's just ahotel room if you're in the
hospitality world, or it's justhome internet, because the
(16:41):
reality is it really is justthose things.
And I'm not trying to diminishthe importance of our work or
the importance of your product,because of course It'll have an
effect.
Yeah, yeah exactly, butperspective is a really healthy
thing and if you want to havepeople on your team who are
healthy and able to attack eachday with the best work possible
(17:03):
and the best experience possiblefor your customers and for the
people on your team, then youreally want to help them build
those healthy mindsets and thatperspective is going to help
keep things calm.
Jordan (17:15):
If you think about it emergency room surgeons they
have possibly the most importantjob in the world.
Priscilla (17:22):
And the most urgent, the most actually urgent job,
literally urgent, literally lifeor death.
Jordan (17:28):
But if they get panicked and they get into a space of
their urgency is overwhelming tothem, then they can't do their
job.
And so if those people can havesteady hands and do a
three-hour surgery whensomeone's going to die, you can
write back to an email in alittle bit it's fine.
Priscilla (17:48):
Well, and think about an ER.
I think that's a great example.
Someone comes into the ER andthey are like bleeding or
whatever, having issues.
They need to go and havesurgery.
The doctor is not going to go.
Let's get them into the ORright now and not check their
blood pressure and not checktheir vitals and do the things
that you need to do before youcan go into surgery.
We don't need to worry aboutanesthesia, we're just going to
(18:09):
get him in.
No, you can't do that, becauseif you do that and you skip
those very important steps,you're going to end up in a much
worse situation than you werebefore.
Yep, that would be the doctortaking the urgency of the
situation and letting it bedictating how he responds.
They have to respond in a waythat is methodical and calm,
(18:31):
even though the situation is notnecessarily calm, and so I
think that's a really goodexample of what we're talking
about here.
I mean, think about I'm justrunning with this, but think
about if someone came in with abruised finger and it hurts a
lot and they're like man, Ithink my finger's broken, I need
you to set it.
And then the doctor goes OK,yeah, let's set it, but really
(18:51):
it's just a bruise or maybe itwas.
You know, they got stung by abee or something.
Yeah, it wasn't actuallybroken.
But they never checked to seeif it was broken.
They just said it because theylet the urgency of the person
that came in dictate it.
But sometimes, in support, Imean, I've experienced where
people say I need you to do X,I'm experiencing this and I need
you to do X, and my response isokay, I'll do X sometimes, but
(19:14):
what really needs to happen iswhy.
But what happens is we take theurgency that the person is
writing in with and we taketheir information as true,
without double checking it andgoing no, actually your finger's
not broken, it's a bee stingand we're going to treat it a
different way.
Yeah, okay.
So when you're working from acalm environment, how does that
show up in your emails?
(19:35):
We talked about what it lookslike to work in an urgent
environment.
So when I see myself or thepeople on my team working from a
place of calm, I see thoroughresponses that take in all of
the context of the situation.
I see intentionalcommunication.
So you know we've talked aboutin previous episodes how to
write well in emails to conveythe correct intention that you
(19:58):
have.
If you are working from a placeof urgency, you don't have time
to craft a really intentionalresponse.
But if you have a calmenvironment and you're working
from a place of calm, that meansthat you're able to take the
time to craft a response that'sgoing to give you the best shot
to respond in the correct way,in the way that you intend to
respond and have the bestoutcome.
(20:20):
When they read your responseespecially when you're working
with someone who's frustratedright and you're trying to be
really careful about how yourespond to them it will show up
in emails that are aligned withour tone, that have accurate
information, you'll seeconfidence in problem solving.
Right, yeah, because if someonehas time to go through the
different troubleshooting stepsthat they are supposed to take
(20:42):
and they have the time toproblem solve, then when they
come back they'll haveconfidence in that.
And even if your customer saysno, no, no, no, that's not
right.
It's definitely this If they'vealready taken the time to go
through and do the problemsolving, they can stand on that
in confidence that they knowwhat they're talking about.
And it allows you to includepersonalization and focus on the
(21:02):
relationship side of things.
We talk a lot in this podcastabout how the human side of
support is so important and howit can level up the work you're
doing.
And if you are working from aplace of urgency or if you're
encouraging your team to onlylook at response time as the
thing to chase after, you're notgiving them the ability to
(21:25):
bring in that personalization,which is what's going to make
your loyal customers.
Yeah, all of these qualities ofremarkable customer support can
only happen if you giveyourself time to do them.
So if you're always pushingyourself to work faster and more
urgently, then it's going to beharder to provide these
remarkable experiences Notnever.
You still might see some ofthem, but it's not going to be
(21:47):
as consistent.
So it's really hard as acustomer support professional,
as a leader of a team, to notlet the craziness of the inbox
or the urgency of every emaildictate your movements.
But as a leader of the supportteam, it's vital to model
calmness and to show our teamthat they're allowed to operate
(22:07):
from a place of calm.
They're allowed to take theirtime.
When people say this is urgent,respond immediately.
They're allowed to take abreak, take a breather, reread
an email and approach it in aresponse instead of just a
reaction.
If we don't model that asleaders, then our team is never
going to feel comfortable doingthat on their end.
(22:27):
You were talking earlier abouttaking the urgency of someone's
email and then escalating it tosomeone else on the team.
Yeah, the amount of times Ihave done that in the nine years
that I have been withBuzzsprout, I cannot count for
you the amount of times thatI've gone to one of our
developers with this sense ofurgency only to then go wait, is
this urgent, or am I just beingtricked into thinking it is
(22:49):
urgent?
It's really tough, and nineyears into it it's still tough.
I still catch myself lettingthe urgency of someone in an
email push me to react in anurgent way.
Oh yeah.
Jordan (23:01):
If I see someone posting on social media about a
problem, that's a great example.
Yeah, because it's public, soeveryone can see it, and they're
also kind of making our othercustomers go wait what?
And it makes me feel like, oh,this has to be fixed immediately
because it's like it's thispublic facing sort of thing.
(23:21):
But really it can wait, it'snot a huge deal.
Priscilla (23:24):
And sometimes things are urgent, and so I don't want
people to hear this and be like,oh, you just work with like a
nonchalance every day.
No, no, but it's our job tofigure out what's urgent and
what's not urgent.
Yes, and sometimes like thesocial media is a great example
Someone will post something thatthey feel is urgent in that
moment and then I always feellike other people are looking at
(23:46):
the post, going man, it's beenfour minutes and they haven't
responded, and the reality isit's going to take time to read
through it, to do the researchon what's going on and to post
an update.
Yeah, that's going to take alittle time and if you rush
that, you are putting injeopardy the entire outcome
because you could respond tooquickly without knowing the
whole situation.
Anyway, we've gone through allof that.
(24:06):
So it's really important towork from a place of calm and,
like I was saying, I have beendoing this for nine years and
still feel like I struggle withthat sometimes, and so these are
some of the things that I dointentionally every day and I
remind our team to do every dayto help us stay focused on calm
and stay focused on working froma calm environment.
(24:29):
Okay.
So first take a beat before yourespond.
Right, read an email a secondtime, put the email in
perspective, consider thecontext of the situation.
If you make all of those thingspart of your process, it's
going to force you to slow down.
Got to go and you skip thosesteps.
It's not going to turn outwell.
But if you go, okay, this isurgent.
(24:58):
I'm going to go through mysteps and I'm still going to
make sure I have all myinformation before I respond,
and I'm going to be verymethodical about that, but I'm
still going to do it right away.
Right, I'm doing it now becauseI'm in this email, looking at
it, but I'm not going to letmyself rush through the steps.
It'll force you to slow down Ifyou feel an urgency pushing
your conversations, like, let'ssay, you're in an email with
someone and it's just notcalming down.
(25:18):
You're trying to calm it andit's not calming.
Jordan (25:20):
You start feeling like the heat rising in your face.
Priscilla (25:23):
Yeah, exactly, and you're like I can't solve this.
What's going on?
You can bring someone else in.
I mean I think that's one of mybiggest strategies that I tell
everyone in like every sensehey, if you need to bring
someone else on the team in,there's no reason not to share
the load.
If you're feeling the urgencyof something and you're having a
hard time seeing it from anoutside perspective or a place
(25:45):
of calm, bring someone else inwho can come in and help you
with that.
Yeah, okay, we talked about oneof the reasons that there's
urgency in the inbox being thatyou might have a very full
inbox, one thing that we used todo.
We don't do it as much anymorebecause I think we've gotten a
little bit better about beingcalm regardless of the number of
emails, but we used tophysically cover up how many
(26:07):
emails were in the inbox.
Jordan (26:10):
Like with a piece of paper.
Yes, with a sticky note.
Priscilla (26:13):
I would put it on my screen on top of the part where
it says how many emails are inthe inbox, and that way I'm only
focusing on the email that isin front of me.
Jordan (26:21):
That was one of the tricks that my like second grade
teacher taught us to learn howto read and stay on the correct
line.
So what you do is you take likean index card or a ruler and
you would put it over the pageand it would force you to just
focus on the one line.
So it's like that.
Priscilla (26:40):
Yeah, think about it.
You have 150 emails in theinbox and you're writing an
email and while you're takingthe time to work on that email,
four more emails come in.
You're going to go.
I don't have time to spend 10minutes on this email, but the
reality is, if you shortchangeyourself on the email you're
working on, that's going to turninto four emails after you send
it.
Absolutely Cover up that numberif that's causing you to rush.
Jordan (27:03):
I love that tip.
That's a good one.
Priscilla (27:05):
Okay.
Another thing that we will puta lot of emphasis on is training
and how.
When you invest in the trainingof the people on your team,
that builds their confidence andunderstanding of the product,
which allows them to, like wewere talking about earlier,
decide what's urgent and what'snot and accurately figure that
out.
So if someone is writing inbecause they've misunderstood
(27:27):
something in your product, ifyou don't understand how the
feature that they're talkingabout works, you're going to
adopt their urgency.
Because you don't understandhow the feature that they're
talking about works, you'regoing to adopt their urgency
because you don't understand.
That's not really urgent, it'sperceived urgency.
But if you are comfortable,confident in your knowledge of
the product, you're going to beable to approach that with a
level of calm and go thateducational route and explain
(27:49):
why things aren't as dire asthey seem.
So investing in confidence, orinvesting in that knowledge
piece and the training, is goingto build your confidence.
Jordan (27:58):
Well, and having that confidence is going to translate
over to the customer, and thenthey're going to have confidence
that you are, in fact, takingcare of them Exactly, yeah.
Priscilla (28:06):
If you're a support team and you're trying to figure
out ways as a team to have thiscalm culture, what can you do
in those cases?
Transparency around how quicklya customer should expect a
response.
If you're trying to get yourteam to work from a place of
calm, but you're tellingcustomers they're going to get a
response in 10 minutes, that'snot going to work.
(28:28):
Yeah, because no one is goingto believe you.
They're going to feel like Ihave to get this answer out in
10 minutes.
How can I work from a place ofcalm and so be transparent with
your customers, push thoseboundaries back a little bit and
say, ok, we are actually goingto try to respond to people
within 30 minutes or within anhour or whatever it is for your
traffic.
Yeah, so that you're givingyour team the ability and the
(28:49):
freedom to work from a place ofcalm.
Jordan (28:52):
I love it because when I get tagged in support emails
maybe it's an equipment questionor something that is in like my
lane of expertise Wheneversomeone in the support team tags
me in it, I see them respondingto the customer saying hey, I'm
actually going to send this toour expert on this.
This is Jordan.
She's a podcast producer andshe will get back to you in the
(29:14):
next 24 hours.
Wow, 24 hours.
I get a whole day to researchthis and reach out to them.
It is phenomenal.
Yeah, 10 times out of 10, thecustomer is like wow, you're
setting me up Great.
Yeah, I can wait untiltomorrow.
Priscilla (29:29):
Yeah, exactly, and we do that to protect your calm
and because we know that you'renot sitting at your desk waiting
for a support email to pop up.
Right, you're doing your work,and we don't want to say, hey,
you actually have to dropeverything right now and jump
into the inbox and answer thisin 10 minutes, and if you don't,
then this is going to be badcustomer support.
(29:49):
And so it's the same kind ofthing in communicating to your
customers when they are likethat first response into
support, be transparent.
If it's an hour, say it's anhour, that's okay.
Another thing you can do as ateam to make sure that things
are staying calm is have a clearescalation path for things that
are actually urgent, becausesome things are going to be
(30:10):
urgent and you need to make sureto move them along quickly so
they can get handled in a timesensitive manner.
It's kind of like with that ERsituation.
The ER is set up in a way tomove people through quickly, in
a way that people can get towhere they need to be, so the
people that are in the more diresituations can go through
quicker than the people whoaren't, can go through quicker
(30:35):
than the people who aren't.
So having that escalation planreally clear before you're in
the middle of it is another wayto keep things calm, because
when things get a little bitchaotic, having calm in any way
that you can find it is going tobe really beneficial.
We talked about metrics a littlebit already, but make sure
you're placing value on qualityover speed and that when you
celebrate your team forsomething, you're celebrating
(30:56):
the actions that you want toencourage.
So a good example of this, juston the Buzzsprout team, was
years ago probably, you know,2019, 2020, we had been, you
know, we were still kind of inthis growth phase, figuring out
what our support team lookedlike, and we always focused on
the response time metric.
We were like man, we got ourresponse time down to 20
(31:18):
minutes.
Oh my gosh.
People are always saying howfast we are, that's so great,
that's all we talked about, andwhen.
That's all you talk about,that's all you think is
important when you're working insupport.
And so what does that do?
It just adds to urgency.
It adds to the feeling of Ihave to get this out as quickly
as possible at all costs.
Whether that's my own sanity,whether that's accuracy,
(31:40):
whatever it is, I just need toget this out quickly, because I
need our response time to below.
If you're celebrating that,then that's where people are
going to put the value.
So, when you're trying to getyour team to work from a place
of calm, celebrate the thingsthat encourage that.
So talk about the quality.
Talk about why the quality isgood.
What did they do in that emailthat made it really good?
(32:02):
Praise people when they getthat full context or when they
send a really thorough email, orwhen it has good education in
it.
It's not bad to look at theresponse time, because that is
part of the whole puzzle when itcomes to good, remarkable
support, but it shouldn't be theonly thing that you look at,
and it can be really detrimentalto the way your support is run
(32:22):
if the only thing you're worriedabout is how quickly an email
is sent out, ok.
So the last thing I want totalk about is, as leaders, what
can we do for our team to allowthem to work from a place of
calm?
The biggest thing is modelingit right.
If you, as a leader, are tellingpeople to be calm but you're
not operating out of a place ofcalm, that's going to be a
(32:42):
problem right, because your teamis going to look at you and go
yeah well, you're telling us towork from a place of calm, but
you keep interrupting me all thetime when I'm trying to work on
whatever project or inbox oremail that I'm working on.
And so be respectful of thetime of the people on your team
and model that kind of calm andwhen you send them a ping, say
(33:03):
hey, if you're in the middle ofsomething, I don't need you to
respond right away.
Especially as you're trying tobuild this idea of calm, use
phrases like that.
Let them know, point blank youdon't need to respond today, I
don't expect you to respondright away, but I want you to
think about this or whatever itis.
Eventually, they'll startrealizing that that's the
default is that they don't haveto respond immediately.
But it's a really good thing tomodel, especially when it comes
(33:26):
to emails.
When you get an email that'sescalated to you, that feels
urgent, respond in a calm wayand show that behavior to your
team that I'm going to respondto this in a way that is not
adopting the urgency thatthey're writing in with, but
responding in a calm way tobring it back down and to offer
a remarkable service.
And then the last thing I wouldsay is take time to debrief
(33:48):
after crazy chaotic situations,because sometimes there are
going to be times that get alittle bit crazy.
That's the nature of the job.
So we're trying to find calm asoften as we can and work from a
place of calm, but occasionallythere's going to be some
urgency that pops up or somechaos that pops up.
That's the nature of it.
So once that happens, step backwith your team and take a
(34:10):
minute to go through what workedand what didn't work and how we
can stay more calm next timeand how we can handle things in
a more methodical way next timebecause, that is going to be a
huge part of that learningexperience and will encourage
that calm approach the next timesomething blows up.
Okay, so, before we wrap up, Ijust want to share a couple of
(34:31):
final thoughts here, because Ithink you know we've talked
about this urgency, we've talkedabout calm, but there's a
couple things I want you to takeaway.
I don't want you to hear thisand think that calmness is the
same thing as laziness or thesame thing as slowness or the
same thing I said it before asnonchalance or apathy Exactly
(34:55):
nonchalant or apathy.
Exactly when I'm talking aboutcalm, I'm talking about
intentionally remaining calm toraise the standard of your work.
Yes, I really think that ERexample you gave us is such a
good one and I'm going to keepgoing back to it.
But you would never look at acool, collected surgeon working
in an ER and say, oh, they'reworking slow and they're not
taking this seriously.
They literally don't care aboutthis obviously you wouldn't say
(35:16):
that.
No, they are staying calm sothat they can do the best work
possible, and that is how weneed to be looking at it.
In our work, in the supportinbox, we want to be staying
calm.
We want to operate from a placeof calm, not because we value
slow and not because we are OKwith laziness, but because calm
(35:37):
allows us to be intentional, andwhen you're intentional, the
standard of your work is goingto go up.
Yeah, so as a leader, youshould be creating a calm
environment for your team,giving them the freedom to
respond to tough situationsinstead of just reacting to
them.
To respond to tough situationsinstead of just reacting to
them.
Focus on metrics that alignwith the values you're trying to
(35:58):
promote and then don't let thecustomer's perceived urgency or
a busy inbox dictate how you'regoing to approach a problem.
As a support professional,remember that calm support is
not slow support.
It's intentional, it'sconfident and it's remarkable.
And if you're looking for morestrategies and ways and reasons
to have a calm environment, likeyou were saying earlier,
(36:19):
jordan, what if you're workingin a company that's not calm and
you're trying to infuse as muchcalm as possible?
There is a great book called itDoesn't have to Be Crazy at
Work.
Aptly named, yes, written bythe people over at Basecamp and
it really is a great resourcefor anyone who is running a team
or running a company to keep inmind that life doesn't have to
(36:40):
be insane, that work doesn'thave to be insane.
It can be calm, yes, and wehave the freedom to let it be
and the benefits of that.
So if you want to dig deeperinto this and take it out of
just the support context, Ihighly recommend it Doesn't have
to be Crazy at Work.
Jordan (36:55):
Yeah, I think that's on the required reading list.
Here at Buzzsprout we have awhole bunch of books by the
people at Basecamp and I thinkit's on everyone's shelf.
I have it right behind me.
Priscilla (37:07):
Yeah, it's a great book, so I highly recommend
that.
All right, it's time forSupport in real life, our
segment where we discuss reallife support experiences Jordan.
What question do we have today?
Jordan (37:21):
So this is from support driven slack and this is
paraphrased.
It says I lead a small supportteam and I'm considering setting
up short daily meetings foragents to bring challenging
support tickets.
This could be a good way for usto learn from each other, but I
wonder how effective it wouldbe, since things move fast in
the support inbox.
How would you organize thesemeetings?
Priscilla (37:43):
This is a great question for this episode.
Oh yeah, we've been talkingabout this whole time and not
letting you know.
The urgency of things dictatehow you respond, and this is
specifically about how do I stepback and train my team.
And I think what you'rereferring to is the one-on-ones
that we were talking about withErica and about how sometimes
(38:06):
those can feel monotonous ifthey're just happening for the
sake of happening for the sakeof happening.
So I think this is a great idea.
First of all, to the person whohad this question about doing
these daily short kind ofmeetings to bring in emails and
to learn from them, I think it'sa really good strategy.
It kind of allows you to taketime out of the quote unquote
chaos of the inbox to sharpenyour skills and to get better as
(38:29):
a team.
There's a couple of things thatI would be careful about if I
was trying to implement thesekind of meetings.
Two things.
One is is the group setting theright way to do it?
Because while there's benefitscertainly in a group setting
where everyone's reading anemail together and then
reviewing it together or talkingabout the feature and how it
(38:50):
works and the best way to handlethat question it also can be
dangerous if you're trying tocorrect behavior, because doing
that in a group setting cansometimes lead to shame and
sometimes it can be tough.
So just be careful about thatand, depending on the size of
your team, you might not be ableto do it in a group setting.
It might get too big to be ableto really use that time well.
(39:13):
So consider maybe one-on-onesbeing a better way to go through
that.
The other kind of warning I haveis about doing daily meetings.
Daily meetings can be reallygood, right?
If you're like we're going todo 15 minutes, it's just going
to be a quick 15 minutes.
Everyone bring what they havequestions about the day before.
We're going to do quick.
(39:37):
But the problem with dailymeetings is they're going to
become routine and they're goingto become monotonous and then
you're going to start losing.
Am I doing these meetingsbecause we have emails to talk
about?
Or am I coming up with emailsto talk about because we have
this meeting?
And then you can turn into whatI hate so much about one on
ones, which is having them justfor the sake of having them,
with no real benefit and valuethere.
Yeah, and so maybe you don'tstart with daily meetings, or
(39:57):
maybe you start with dailymeetings and you're really aware
about the value that's comingout of them and how long they're
taking, and if they're takingmore than you want them to take,
or if they don't bring thevalue anymore, you step back and
you find a new cadence.
I think there's a lot of reallygood training that can happen
when you get out of the inboxand as a team, you come together
and talk through things.
(40:18):
But I don't think it always hasto be synchronous.
I don't think it always has tobe like a daily situation and I
don't think it always has to bein a group.
Jordan (40:26):
Yeah.
So we actually in the marketingteam we have one-on-ones
weekly, but I get to decide whatthe agenda for that one-on-one
is.
I get to decide if we have thatone-on-one.
So if I don't have anything tocheck in about, I don't have to
do it.
I don't have to do theone-on-one.
It's not going to reflectpoorly on me.
(40:47):
So I think another thing thatyou could do is have this be an
optional daily thing.
Like maybe you just have someslots in a calendar and if your
support team has anexceptionally difficult ticket,
they can actually just go in andtake up one of those slots and
meet with you about it justfirst thing in the morning and
then say, okay, great, I feelconfident going into this and
(41:07):
then they're done.
But it's completely optional,they don't have to do it.
Priscilla (41:11):
Especially if you have a really big team and you
want to give people the abilityto have a face-to-face,
one-on-one with you to talkabout something more
complicated, giving them theability to book a 10-minute
check-in is a great strategy.
Another thing that we do a lotover here is case studies.
So I'll find particularlyeither emails that are difficult
(41:35):
or ones that didn't go as wehad planned, or ones that went
really well are really alignedwith how we want to work.
I will take those emails andI'll break them down and point
out where things went well,where things could have been
better, what things went off therails.
Yeah, and have that be in anasynchronous situation, because
sometimes you just don't havethe ability or the freedom to
always be meeting with everyoneand, depending on the size of
(41:56):
your team, it can be reallyhard, really fast, and so what
we will do is these casestudies.
As a way.
It still facilitatesconversation because you can
comment on them and discussthem, but it doesn't have to
happen in a synchronous way.
It can be asynchronous, which Ithink can be really valuable to
some bigger teams, absolutely.
So if you have a question or asupport story or situation that
(42:16):
you would like us to discuss orshout out text the show by using
the.
Send us a text link in theepisode description and we might
feature that question or yourstory on a future episode.
As always, if you like thisepisode, please share it with
someone you know who works incustomer support and leave us a
review on Apple Podcasts.
And thanks to everyone forlistening.
(42:37):
Now go and make someone's day.
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