August 20, 2024 • 47 mins
Balancing inbox coverage with important outbox tasks can be challenging, but it's the key to improving your customer experience!
In this episode, we give tips for the best ways to schedule support coverage while allowing margin for other projects and development. We highlight the significance of allowing for deep work, taking intentional breaks from the inbox, and setting clear expectations to foster a productive, yet flexible, support environment. These dynamic approaches will create a more efficient and enjoyable support experience for both your team and your customers!
We want to hear from you! Share your support stories and questions with us at happytohelp@buzzsprout.com!
To learn more about Buzzsprout visit Buzzsprout.com.
Thanks for listening!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Priscilla (00:00):
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer
support from the people atBuzzsprout.
I'm your host, priscilla Brooke.
Today we're talking schedules,specifically the best way to
schedule coverage of yoursupport inbox.
We'll discuss how our coveragestrategies have changed over the
years, how to prioritize timein and out of the inbox and some
tips on getting out of thequeue.
(00:21):
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
Okay, jordan, it's just you andme.
How are you doing today?
Jordan (00:30):
I'm good.
Priscilla (00:30):
How are you?
I'm good.
I just got back from a vacationin South Georgia, which isn't
that far from where we are andwhere I am in Jacksonville, but
it was nice to get away and wekind of hung out on the lake and
it was just a really nice timewith family.
So I'm like back into it,excited to talk about support
(00:51):
schedules.
Yes, but before we get there,since we don't have a guest
today, I thought you and I couldanswer our question of who has
made your day this week.
Do you have an answer for me?
Jordan (01:05):
this week.
Do you have an answer for me?
Absolutely I do.
We decided to transfer mydaughter, isley, to public
school, and the school districtshut down a bunch of schools
this year and didn't put downthe new boundary lines until
like a couple of weeks beforeschool started.
Yeah.
So I had to fill out paperwork,making an educated guess about
where the boundary line was, andthe school that's like
technically closest to us islike brand new, super fancy.
(01:27):
And so my daughter was stoked,like she was like yes, I cannot
wait to go to school.
This is going to be amazing,it's so nice.
So a month goes by and I finallyget a registration email, but
it's from the wrong school.
Oh no, and it's a school that'slike literally across town.
Oh no, yeah.
And so I was thinking likethere's gotta be some sort of
like mix up.
(01:48):
And so I write the secretaryand I'm like, oh no, she's,
she's not going to your school,like she's registered for this
one and there's been a mistake.
She replies and she's like no,you're in our boundary and you
can apply for like openenrollment, but the schools are
full up.
So basically, you know, it'sprobably not likely, yeah.
And so I was like all right,thinking like great, now I have
(02:09):
to talk to my daughter and shewas so excited I have to tell
her no, you're going to thisdifferent school.
And so I talked to her and shelooks at the school.
She gives it like a goog andshe's like oh, she gives it a
quick goog, she's like, oh, like, these school colors are so
much better and I like thesesports uniforms better.
(02:29):
And so she was cool with it, itwasn't a big deal, and I was
like great.
So then, like a few minuteslater, I get another phone call
and it's a secretary for theschool I originally had applied
for, and apparently thesecretary at the school that I
was like hey, this has been amix up shot, an email to her
just to check to see if we couldget in at the school that I was
like, hey, this has been amix-up shot, an email to her
just to check to see if we couldget in at the school.
She didn't have to do thatbecause I was like, okay, that
(02:51):
makes sense.
And she's like hey, I justwanted to like clear things up
for you.
I know you applied for ourschool, but like the boundary
lines you're in this one and youknow I'm so sorry that we
couldn't make it work and and Iwas like no, no, it's okay, like
my daughter's all on board forlike black and green for her
school.
So you know it's not a big deal.
(03:11):
And she was like.
Oh, I'm so happy to hear thatLike, oh, she has a wonderful
school year.
And I was just thinking likeman, half the school district is
in absolute disarray.
They're all new studentsbecause they shut down so many
schools that it's all gettinglike shifted around and we're
like a couple of weeks beforeschool starts and I was like
these ladies did not need togive me the time of day.
Priscilla (03:32):
That's a great example of someone going out of
their way in a customer servicerole to make the customer I
guess for you know, for lack ofa better word, but like you are
the customer there to make youfeel better about the situation,
and so, yeah, that's great.
Shout out to them for handlingthat well, even though the
situation itself had potentialto be very frustrating.
(03:52):
Oh absolutely so what's yours?
So, like I mentioned, last weekI was on a vacation, a family
vacation, and I had the task ofgoing and getting all the
groceries for our trip, which isa large task.
When you're buying groceriesfor a week for 15 people, oh my
gosh.
And so I had gone to Costcoearlier in the day, I had driven
(04:13):
to where we were, where we werestaying, which was like five
hour drive, and the last thing Ihad to do was go to the Publix
and get some more things and foranyone not in the South, publix
is our like grocery store.
You know, it's the end of theday, I'm tired, I'm ready to be
done shopping for food and Ineeded some like sandwich meat
at the deli counter and so Iwent to the deli counter to get
(04:36):
this food.
I was exhausted but the womanbehind the counter had so much
energy and she was so kind andshe was just like, had a very
personable personality and shewas so like friendly and in some
situations I feel like it couldhave come off like whoa, take a
step back, this is too much.
(04:56):
But she did it in a way thatlike energized me and it really
made that last bit groceries toget.
That was kind of like I wasdreading a little bit.
That whole trip was made betterbecause she was just positive
and encouraging and kind and itwas so simple.
But I feel like it changed thatgrocery store run.
(05:16):
But it's infectious and it was,and I felt like my energy got
boosted because of her energy,and so I don't know her name,
but she was the woman behind thecounter at the Publix Deli and
she is clearly in the right rolebecause she really just made my
day and it kicked the eveningoff and I had a lot more energy
(05:38):
and it was wonderful.
Jordan (05:39):
So those are the types of people that you see all the
time on.
I think of, like TikTok orInstagram reels, you know, when
people make, like ice creamcones, but they make it fun and
I mean there's just, it's sofunny because it's a simple
thing, like they're makingcotton candy, they're making ice
cream, they're they're buildingsandwiches, they're making
pizzas, but they're doing it insuch a fun and infectious way
(05:59):
that, like, brings joy to people.
You can make it magical.
Priscilla (06:03):
Yeah, you can, and it's just like with support.
Like if you're working in asupport inbox, you have the
ability to make somethingmagical for someone else.
Yes, so why not do that?
And so you're right, you're notdoing a job.
That's like changing the worldand you have to have a crazy
amount of experience in order todo it.
You're not running a country,but you're running a deli
(06:24):
counter or you're handling anemail in an inbox and you have
the ability to make the person'sday better on the other side of
that, and so shout out to herfor doing a great job.
That's awesome.
For the last couple of episodes,we have been kind of
encouraging people to text theshow and to let us know what
they think about the show andwhat we could be doing better,
(06:44):
and so I thought I'd take aminute on this episode, since
it's just the two of us, to readthrough a couple of our we call
them fan mail messages.
But from some of our listenersoh, I can't wait.
Yeah, I'm excited.
So we have a listener inColorado who wrote in and they
said these episodes just keepgetting better and better.
I love hearing the valuesbehind your support interactions
(07:05):
.
Looking forward to the nextepisode.
That's awesome, which is sokind.
And we had another listenerfrom Australia who said loved
the episode with Kevin Finn andJordan.
Of course, every Buzzsproutsupport I've used has been 100%.
Thank you, david John Clark.
Aka the Late Bloomer ActorPodcast, which I am guessing
that he wrote in because he is alistener of Buzzcast.
Yes, aka the Late Bloomer ActorPodcast, which I am guessing
(07:25):
that he wrote in because he is alistener of Buzzcast.
Jordan (07:28):
Yes, yeah.
Priscilla (07:29):
And Kevin did a nice little plug on an episode of
Buzzcast for Happy to Help, andso I would guess he came over
from that plug.
Yeah, and that's why he wassaying he enjoyed the episode
with Kevin and with Jordan.
Thanks, david, for listening.
Jordan (07:42):
Yes, david's awesome.
He writes in to Buzzcast allthe time too, so I always look
forward to hearing from him.
Priscilla (07:47):
Well, we can plug his podcast.
It's called the Late BloomerActor Podcast, so if that sounds
interesting to you, go check itout.
Yeah, and then we had Walterfrom Florida write in.
They said I'm really lovingthis podcast.
I feel inspired to be moreintentional about having empathy
, patience and being a managerof one throughout my workday
Cool.
Which is so like, it's so niceto hear that from someone,
(08:10):
because that is the goal withthis podcast is to encourage
people to want to do better andbe better when it comes to
having empathy and patience andworking well with customers and
striving toward that remarkableexperience.
Jordan (08:24):
So when someone writes in and they basically repeat
your mission statement back toyou like this is how this has
made me feel, like that'ssuccess.
Priscilla (08:32):
It's so nice.
Yeah, I love it.
So thank you to these threepeople for writing in and being
so encouraging.
It really makes us feel sogreat to hear this and if you're
listening, you can write intous.
Let us know what you think.
It doesn't have to be positive,it can be.
You know a note of.
You know a request if you wantus to focus on something more,
(08:53):
or you can let us know whatwe're doing right or what you'd
like to hear more of, and wewould love to hear that.
So you can just click the text,the show link in the
description if you want to sendthat in.
So today we're going to talkthrough scheduling coverage of
your inbox.
This isn't the most glamoroustopic, but I think it's really
important, especially if youwant to have a team that's
balanced and healthy.
(09:14):
Yeah, but I want to kind ofdefine what I mean by inbox time
, because for some people, aninbox is not going to be like an
email inbox like we have.
An inbox is not going to belike an email inbox like we have
.
You might have a support systemwhere you offer chat support or
phone support or in-personsupport yeah, so when I say
inbox time, I'm really referringto that customer facing
(09:35):
experience that you are givingas a support specialist.
So back in 2017, before we haddedicated support, the inbox
wasn't a sole focus for anyone.
There were some people whospent dedicated support.
The inbox wasn't a sole focusfor anyone.
There were some people whospent more time in the inbox
than others, but it wasn'tsomeone's main priority.
But when I came on the team, itstarted to become a little bit
more consistent because I washired as the sole support person
(09:59):
.
So in the early years, when itwas just me in the inbox, I
would spend all of my time inthe inbox queue.
I was answering emails all day,and if I got to the end of the
queue if not always when, but ifI got to the end of the queue
by the end of the day then Iwould have some time to work on
other things.
Afterthought, it was not asituation where I would leave
(10:26):
the inbox with emails to go workon something else and then come
back to them.
It was if I got through all ofthe emails, then I would go and
do some kind of like proactivework, and so that was really the
process there for a while.
And then, when we hired morepeople onto the team and we grew
by a couple people the reasonwe were hiring people is because
our traffic in the inbox wasgrowing and we needed to make
sure to have coverage.
So even in those situations, itwas still that same process of
(10:50):
working through all the emailsand once you got to the clear
inbox, then you had the abilityto go do things outside of the
inbox.
But you really didn't have alot of time because the inbox
would fill up pretty quickly andyou'd have to jump back in and
keep working on it, would fillup pretty quickly and you'd have
to jump back in and keepworking on it, and so it really
made it difficult for us as asmall team to focus on anything
other than that direct customercommunication.
(11:12):
Yeah, and so that's where westarted to notice I don't want
to say it was an issue, but itdefinitely was something that
was blocking us from growing asa team and from improving the
quality of our work, because wewere so down in the weeds all
day that we had a hard timegetting out of that.
So I remember havingconversations with one of the
(11:33):
Buzzsprout co-founders, tomRossi, who you might remember
from the Perfection episode thatwe had a while ago.
I remember having thisconversation and he was
encouraging me to schedule anhour a day to leave the inbox
and to focus on something else.
Wow, I remember pushing backit's crazy to think like one
hour but I remember pushing backand saying Tom, like I can't
(11:54):
leave emails in the inbox andnot work on them.
I need to get those out andonce they're out, then I can
focus on other things.
And he was like, let's just tryit, let's see how it goes.
And that was one of the biggestimprovements, when I look back
of like times that our supportreally jumped and became better
was when we started prioritizingbreaks from the inbox,
(12:17):
regardless of what the inboxlooked like, and so what we
would do for a while there waswe would schedule an hour a day
at the beginning of the day andsay, ok, this is the hour that
I'm going to take out of theinbox and I'm going to go work
on something outside of theinbox.
I'm not going to let the numberof emails in the inbox stop me
from doing that, because I'mgoing to recognize the
importance of being out of theinbox and working on something
(12:39):
other than direct client facingemails or phone calls.
And when we startedprioritizing that, we started
realizing that that hour that wewere spending outside of the
inbox was bringing so muchbenefit to the team and it was
bringing so much benefit to theproduct and it was giving us the
ability to step back and lookat things from just a different
(13:00):
angle, instead of being rightdown in it with the customer in
the trenches and working throughproblems and not following up
on them and things like that.
Yeah, but one of the things Irealized was that the inbox is
going to take the time you giveit.
So let's say you have an hourto work in the inbox and you
have five emails.
You can spend an hour workingon five emails.
You can research them, you canshape your writing, you can try
(13:23):
to perfect the email, each email, and send it out and send out
five really fantastic emails.
But if you have 20 emails in aninbox and an hour to clear them,
you can also send 20 emailsthat are pretty good and may be
remarkable support, but they'retaking less time because the
inbox will take the time thatyou give it?
Yeah, and you know, I recentlyfound out there's a name for
(13:46):
this, which I've been sayingthis now for years and didn't
know this was like a real thing,but it's called Parkinson's law
, which is basically that workexpands to fill your available
time.
Oh my gosh.
Yes, and I mean I think youknow I think, jordan, we've
mentioned this before but youhave several podcasts that you
edit every week.
Yeah, this before, but you haveseveral podcasts that you edit
(14:07):
every week.
Yeah, do you feel like thisapplies to?
Jordan (14:08):
editing too.
I feel like this definitelywould apply to editing no joke
the weeks that we record early.
I will spend that many extradays editing this episode that
we recorded early.
But sometimes we have to recordlate and so it's under like a
lot more um right Pressure and Ionly have like one day instead
of three to edit it.
(14:28):
Does it get done?
Yes, does it sound exactly thesame to the listener?
Probably, it probably soundsexactly the same.
Yeah, I only spent one dayinstead of three days on this
episode, and it's so funnybecause I try to trick myself
into like achieving thesedeadlines.
But for whatever reason, I justsometimes slip into that again
where I'm like, well, I have thetime to spend on cleaning up
(14:51):
every tiny thing.
Priscilla (14:53):
So why not?
So why not spend it?
Yeah, well, and I think it'simportant to like find a balance
there.
Yeah, and you know we'll talkabout this a little bit more
later, but it's important tofind that balance, because what
you don't want to do is waituntil the very last minute and
rush your work and squeeze it inand burn yourself out yes, but
you also don't want to giveyourself so much time that
(15:14):
you're almost wasting timeperfecting things that you don't
need to perfect, or that whereyour time could be more valuable
in other places.
And so, yeah, I think it's justinteresting to think about it
in the world of support whenwe're talking about finding time
outside of the inbox and insideof the inbox.
If you focus on time, I'm goingto spend an hour in the inbox
(15:35):
and I'm going to answer as manyemails as I can, as remarkably
as I can, and at the end of thehour, whatever the inbox looks
like, I'm going to jump out andfocus on this other priority
instead of letting the inboxdictate my priorities.
Jordan (15:49):
And it takes a bit of self-discipline to be able to do
that.
Definitely, yeah, just a lot oflike self-talk, like this is
what I'm giving myself and youknow what it is, what it is, and
I think a lot of peoplestruggle with that.
Priscilla (16:01):
Yeah, definitely, and that's why you, as a leader of
a team, want to make sure you'resetting up the expectations and
making it very clear what isexpected of the people on your
team, so that they don't feellike they're doing something
wrong when they leave an inboxthat has 50 emails in it to go
and do something that might feelless urgent, but the reality is
, it might be more importantthan having X amount of people
(16:24):
covering an inbox at one time.
When we started adding thosehour breaks into our days
intentionally, that's when wewere really seeing that like
benefit brought to the team.
Like I was saying, we werespending time working through
difficult problems or analyzingcustomer feedback or brushing up
on industry knowledge all ofthese things that you don't do
(16:45):
if you don't make intentionaltime for it.
And so you know, if you thinkback to some of the episodes
we've done in the past here,we've talked about developing a
support tone for your team orsetting those communication
goals.
All of those things don'thappen if you're constantly in
the inbox and you're nevergetting time out of it, and so
(17:05):
if you're on a small team,especially with like one or two
people, it can be really hard todo that, but the benefit that
your team will get from havingthat time outside of the inbox
is really, really, really good,and it allows you time to make
your support better, whichultimately is going to make
things more enjoyable and moreremarkable for your customers.
(17:27):
And so at that point we startedthinking, as we were hiring
people, it kind of changed howwe were hiring, because now we
weren't hiring people just forinbox coverage, we're hiring
people so that we had more thanenough coverage to give people
the ability to have margin intheir day.
Wow, and so it changed the waywe hired people and how quickly
(17:48):
we brought people on the team,because now we weren't just
hiring because we needed morepeople to answer emails, we
wanted to make sure everyone hadtime in their days to do other
things.
Yeah, and so now our currentkind of setup is that everyone
on the team kind of has two hourinbox shifts broken up
throughout the day with one ortwo hour outbox shifts, and so
(18:09):
it allows us the ability to, inone eight hour day, have about
75% in the inbox, because that'sstill like the priority right
is customers.
And so we still want to spendthe most of our time in the
inbox working with customers,but it also sets apart these
dedicated chunks of time for usto get deep work into things to
(18:30):
help make our work better, yeah,and so that's really, really
important, and so we've set upour schedule specifically to do
that, so that we're not in aplace where we're just
constantly in the inbox withoutbeing able to get out of the
inbox throughout the day,throughout the week, throughout
the month and so on.
So maybe the biggest benefit toworking breaks into your
schedule or outbox time intoyour day is that it gives your
(18:52):
team time to switch gears.
I think we have established onthis podcast that it can be
difficult to work with customersall day, every day, and to
constantly give out patience andempathy and understanding.
For eight hours is reallydraining, and I mean, I am a
very outgoing person and inthose early years when I was
(19:13):
just working in the inbox, thoseeight hour days were so
draining and it was just so much.
By the end of the day, it'slike being in a meeting or
running a meeting for eighthours, like it's just it is a
lot.
And when we started pulling inthese intentional hour breaks
throughout the day, you startedto realize, oh, this is giving
(19:35):
me the ability to like, build upmy patience again, or to not
get so personally frustratedwith someone who's yelling at me
or whatever it is.
It lets you have that time awayto switch gears and to work on
something else and then comeback to the inbox with renewed
patience and empathy.
And all of that I mean.
If you were to go back to thattime when I was just doing eight
(19:56):
hour shifts straight through,you would definitely notice that
, like, the emails I sent inhour one were way more
empathetic and way moreunderstanding than the emails I
sent at hour eight, because bythen I am fully run out of
patience and empathy.
Yeah, and so, putting thesebreaks in, I started to realize,
oh, I'm enjoying the work morewhen I get to take breaks like
(20:19):
this, but also the customers aregetting a better experience
when I'm able to take breaks.
So that is really a hugebenefit to incorporating these
into your daily schedules foryour team.
And when I say like takingbreaks, I don't mean like, ok,
I'm going to take a 10 minutebreak and go outside and get
some fresh air.
Yeah, I mean like taking a oneto two hour break to work on
(20:42):
something that is not a customerfacing project.
So it might be learning a newfeature that has just been
rolled out, or it might beworking on a project that you've
been given to write a new helparticle something else that's
not going to be the same asworking directly with a customer
.
It's kind of going to allow youto step back from that customer
(21:04):
facing time of your day.
Yeah, and the goal is for it tobe a long enough break that it
allows you to get into deep workin that other lane, instead of
something quick that you justhave to jump over, do really
fast and then come back to theinbox.
You want to make sure that whenyou're building these in,
they're long enough for someoneto get good quality, deep work
out of it.
Jordan (21:24):
Yeah, and it's hard to build that in.
They're long enough for someoneto get good quality, deep work
out of it.
Yeah, and it's hard to buildthat in, but I mean it does make
sense.
It's like when you're looking ata screen too long you can start
getting that like eye fatigueand you get like ocular
migraines and you get your yourbody starts feeling gross and
you don't feel great and you getbrain foggy, like if you're
just like sitting there staringat a screen all day every day.
(21:47):
Like if you're just likesitting there staring at a
screen all day every day.
So if you're sitting theretalking to customers all day
every day, you're gonna startgetting brain foggy, you're
starting irritable.
So it totally makes sense tolike take these breaks but be
intentional about it, and youknow they're productive at the
same time.
But it is just switching gearsand it's just clicking reset in
your brain and you're going togo.
Priscilla (22:09):
Yeah, it just lets your brain take a different
route for a little bit of timebefore you come back to it.
We also find that this allows usto be more flexible as a team.
One thing that our companyreally cares a lot about is
allowing flexibility just intoour daily lives and making sure
that everyone on the team has ahealthy work life balance, which
I know is such like a clickyclickbait term, but anyone who
works in support, I think, willtell you that flexibility is not
(22:31):
really something that is seenin support a lot.
No, because you usually arescheduled for a very specific
amount of time to cover an inboxor to cover a call center or
whatever it is that you'recovering, and so flexibility
becomes a lot harder, and soallowing us to kind of schedule
in these shorter shifts reallyallows us to give our team more
(22:55):
flexibility so that they can putthat outbox time in when they
need to and when works withtheir schedule, and it doesn't
necessarily have to be duringthe day, you know, in the middle
of the two shifts they have inthe inbox.
It might be that they have twoshifts in the inbox that day and
they have a couple hours ofmargin time that they put in
first thing in the morning andthen in between those two shifts
(23:18):
they go and work out orsomething like that.
Because the reality of it isthat defining when you're going
to be in the inbox allows you tohave flexibility put in those
other places, but it stillallows us to schedule coverage
of the inbox really well so thatwe know that our customers are
being taken care of during thosehours.
Jordan (23:37):
It reminds me of.
I was working a job at a coffeeshop where sometimes they would
schedule me to close the nightbefore and then open the next
morning, and so I would out only.
But I mean, but they it wouldjust like sometimes do that and
like sometimes not, and then,like the schedules would be like
willy nilly all over the placeand honestly, it didn't offer a
(24:00):
lot of flexibility, because Ihesitated to schedule anything
in my life, because I was like Idon't know if I'm working, like
I have no idea.
Yeah, so I mean, I totally getthat, because it did feel in a
weird way there was no structureand so it prevented me from
having the flexibility of makingplans or planning trips or
something like that, cause I wasjust like I don't know if I can
(24:21):
get this off, I don't know if Ican like go to this concert
this night, cause who knows,they might put me on the
schedule.
Priscilla (24:28):
Yeah, well, and it's funny, when we first started
looking at this idea ofscheduling our hours more
specifically and less like, okay, now you're going to work an
eight hour shift in the inbox,when we started being more
specific about the schedule, itfelt at first very rigid and we
had to spend a minute with itand realize that it's actually.
(24:50):
It feels a little more rigidright now, but the more we have
used this, the more it actuallyhas shown us that you get a lot
more flexibility when you knowexactly when you're working,
because then you can be flexiblein those times that you know
you're not expected in the inbox.
It's like if you have meetingsscheduled but you don't know
when they're going to happen, soyou have to keep the whole day
(25:12):
open for the meeting.
Yeah, that doesn't provide youthe ability to go and have a
doctor's appointment in themiddle of the day because you
might or might not have ameeting.
Yes, but if you know exactlywhen those meetings are
happening, it gives you moreflexibility.
So the structure actually addsto the flexibility, which is
something that we've reallyenjoyed and has made the job
easier to navigate and easier togive your team that work-life
(25:34):
balance.
Yeah, exactly, and then alsohaving this time outside of the
inbox or outside of the queueallows you to prioritize
improvement in your team.
We kind of talked about this alittle bit, but it gives your
team time to develop processesaround so many different things,
around how you work with angrycustomers, around your tone,
(25:55):
your communication goals.
It gives you the time to stepback and to set those things up,
because that stuff is soimportant to providing
remarkable support and you'renot going to get there if you
don't have time outside of theinbox to do it.
Whether you're a leader or not,and if you're in a small team
where everyone is in the inbox,it's going to be really hard to
set up those kind of pillars orthose foundational things to
(26:19):
have everyone on the same page.
And so you have to prioritizethis time outside of the inbox
to get that done.
And so if you want your work toget better, if you want your
team to get healthier andstronger, you have to work that
into your schedules.
Let me give you a little bit ofinsight into how I actually
schedule the coverage of ourinbox, just to allow for this
(26:41):
balance of inbox and outbox time.
Yeah, so we schedule our weeksabout a week in advance, which
allows everyone on the team togive me their ideal hours for
the next week.
So what you were saying, jordan, about you know working in the
service industry and neverknowing if you're going to be
working a night shift or themorning shift or both, and how
(27:02):
that's all going to work.
We try really hard to let thespecialists on our team dictate
when they're going to work, andthen I take what they tell me
and I set up the coverage afterthat.
And so if someone wants to takea long lunch and then go do a
workout and then come back andwant to work in the afternoon,
they can build that break intotheir day and say, hey, I'm
(27:23):
going to work four hours in theearly morning and four hours in
the later afternoon today andthen that gives me the ability
to build the inbox coveragebased on their kind of ideal
schedule.
Yeah, it doesn't mean thatevery single time someone
submits a schedule that's nottraditional, that it's going to
be great and it's going to workNot always, but for the most
part we try to work around that,keeping in mind that support
(27:46):
coverage is the priority andthat that margin time or that
outbox time that can be a littlebit more flexible, of when it's
put in by the supportspecialist, when it's put in by
the support specialist, then Ibuild the schedule that allows
each support specialist to havebasically two or three hour
blocks in the inbox and then oneto two hour blocks outside of
(28:10):
the inbox a day.
So, like I said earlier, thattypically looks like a 25% of
their time is out of the inboxtime and 75 percent is in the
inbox, and that ratio can changebased on what kind of projects
they're working on.
If someone has like a reallybig project that they're working
on outside of the inbox, thenthey might end up with 50
percent outbox time and 50percent inbox time and we kind
(28:32):
of are flexible with that fromweek to week depending on what
kind of projects people have.
But it allows us the ability toprioritize inbox time and
outbox time equally, withoutfeeling like you're constantly
being pulled back into the inboxand so you don't have time to
be focused on those things thatare outside of the inbox.
Yeah, so we've tried to buildthis in a way that the structure
(28:55):
is in place to foster anenvironment of flexibility and
deep work.
But the outbox time is reallyonly as beneficial as we make it
.
So I want to kind of talkthrough some tips for making
that time really worthwhile.
Because you're out of the inboxfor two hours a day.
That's two hours that you canwork on something really cool
outside of the inbox and stepback.
But if you don't do thatintentionally, then it can also
(29:18):
be wasted time, and so you kindof have to be you know, you have
to be intentional about how youspend that time.
Jordan (29:23):
And for some people, like they don't thrive with free
time.
Yeah, exactly.
They're not good at being likeokay, like this should be a
priority to me.
Like sometimes they just likethey need direction, they need a
task.
Priscilla (29:40):
Yeah, and so it's one of the things I talk about with
new hires a lot is how to usethis time well so that they get
benefit out of it and that itbenefits the team as a whole.
Okay, so some of my tips forusing this time is schedule
communication.
So all of this starts withcommunication.
You have to communicate withyour team.
What is expected of them as theleader, with your team, what is
(30:02):
expected of them as the leader?
You want to set thatexpectation for your team as to
when they're supposed to be inthe inbox and when they're not.
So you want to post thatschedule in a place where it's
easily accessible to your teamso they always know what's
expected of them when it comesto when they're working in the
inbox with customers and whenthey're out of the inbox working
on projects, and so we justhave those schedules available
to everyone.
(30:22):
But it's your job as the leaderto make sure that's really
clear so that the specialists onyour team are not questioning
well, right now, what's thepriority?
Is the priority inbox for me,or is the priority working on
this project?
Jordan (30:36):
Yeah, you can't make assumptions that they know
exactly what to do Exactly.
Priscilla (30:40):
And so you just want to lay it out clear for them,
because I know for me, if I'msitting in a space where I see
there's a busy inbox but maybe Ishould go work on this project,
it's going to be really hardfor me to leave a busy inbox and
get out of that space to workon something else.
Jordan (30:56):
Yeah, especially if you don't think you have something
that is like more pressing,right, you know, if you have
like free time to you know,sharpen your ax and sharpen your
skills, you're going to be likeis that really more important
than just clearing the inbox?
Probably not, and so it'sreally easy to slip back into
the inbox.
Priscilla (31:13):
Exactly.
And then, before you know it,it's been eight hours that
you've been in the inbox and youhaven't taken any time to work
on anything outside of the inboxor to learn about that new
feature that's now been launchedfor two weeks and you haven't
taken the time important as theleader to clearly define when
people are in the inbox and whenthey're out, and then to
(31:42):
respect that boundary and toreally hold fast to that and say
OK, they're out of the inbox, Iam not going to bother them
with inbox things until they arescheduled to be back in the
inbox.
The second kind of side of thiscommunication is within the
team.
We as a team communicatethroughout the day, but it's
really important for us to knowwho's in the inbox at that time
(32:02):
and who's not, because we don'twant to reach out to someone
who's not in the inbox whenwe're working through a
difficult situation if they'rein deep work working on some
customer feedback, and so we arevery communicative when it
comes to who is in the inbox andwho's not in the inbox.
But I will put like one word ofwarning out there Be careful
(32:24):
not to fall into a trap ofconstant communication and
constantly like keeping eachother up to date on what you're
doing.
Yes, when we went fully remotefor the pandemic, we got into a
pretty bad habit of being verycommunicative about what we were
working on as a support team.
So, you know, if I was workingon something, I'd say, hey, this
(32:45):
is exactly what I'm working onright now and I will be doing it
for X amount of time, and whenI'm done with this, I will come
back into the inbox.
And it got really rigid, yeah,and it felt very like I got to
make sure everyone knows whatI'm working on at all times.
Jordan (32:59):
Well, and I'm picturing all like the pings and
notifications.
Priscilla (33:04):
Yeah, and it doesn't really foster an environment of
trust If you're constantlytelling everyone this is exactly
what I'm doing.
Or I left for lunch and now Iam back from lunch and it is all
very strict.
Even if it's just in a way tobe communicative, you can fall
into that trap of it being likevery, very strict, yeah.
And so we've had to be reallyintentional about stepping back
(33:25):
and saying, hey, we want to becommunicative with each other so
that we know who's in the inboxand who's not.
But the reality is, we don'tneed much more detail beyond
that.
We trust each other.
Jordan (33:37):
Yeah, that could quickly fall into like micromanagement
territory where it's just likeDefinitely Taking a bathroom
break, be back in five minutes,right?
Priscilla (33:45):
Exactly.
You don't want that.
So the communication is reallygood, especially when you're
working on a team and you're allworking out of the same inbox.
But you have to be reallycareful not to fall into a trap
of constant communication thatcan become very rigid, because
once you hit that, it's reallyhard to undo it, and then you
(34:06):
have to find the right balance.
So let's go back to theParkinson's law the inbox is
going to take the time that yougive it.
So it's important, as a leader,that you find the right balance
for your team, because you wantto make sure that your inbox is
getting the coverage it needs.
So you want to be realisticabout how many emails you're
getting or how many phone callsyou're getting or how many chats
(34:26):
you're getting or whatever formof communication your customers
use to get to you.
You want to be really aware ofwhat that is, so that you're
giving the right amount ofcoverage, because you don't want
to overload one or two orhowever many specialists that
are in your queue at a time, butyou also don't want to overload
it so that they have too manypeople in there and then you're
(34:46):
not getting the benefit of thisoutbox time.
You don't want to build insmall little breaks that don't
give you the time to do deepwork?
Yeah, but it's better to haveone two hour break in the day
than to have four half an hourbreaks or to have, you know, six
, 15 minute or whatever it is.
You want to give yourself timeto have the deep work and you
(35:07):
want to give your team time tohave deep work and you just want
to make sure that's balancedwith the priority that is the
inbox, because ultimately thatis the main role that you're
hired for.
When you're hired for a supportteam, in most situations your
main goal is that inbox time andthen plan your time with
intention.
You know and this is what I goover with our new hires a lot In
(35:30):
a typical week for someone onthe support team you're looking
I've said it a couple times butyou're looking at 75% in the
inbox and 25% out of the inboxis usually about where it falls.
But that means you usually haveabout 10 hours of dedicated
time outside of the inbox towork on projects or professional
development or any of thosekind of outside of the inbox
(35:55):
projects that you might have,and so you could easily squander
those hours away and not letthose be beneficial.
But what I will tell new hiresis like take time to plan out
what that looks like.
You know, sit down and kind ofmap out your week, say, ok, I've
got a two hour break here, I'vegot a four hour break here,
I've got a three hour break here.
What do I want to spend thosetimes doing?
(36:19):
So maybe you have a project andyou're like I'm going to use
this big chunk to work onwriting that new help document,
because I know that's going totake me time and I'm going to
need to get into some deep workfor that.
And maybe you have a smallerhour where you're like I'm going
to use that time to go watch awebinar and brush up my skills
on analytical reading.
Or I'm going to go and learnabout this new product or this
(36:41):
new feature that we justlaunched.
Building that out allows you toreally use the most of that
time instead of getting out ofthe inbox going all right, I've
got two hours, now what am Igoing to do?
That's not going to allow youto use that time efficiently,
and so, as someone who you know,you want to be a good manager
of one.
We've talked about that before.
And so, in order to do that, ittakes a little bit of planning
(37:03):
to make sure that you're usingyour time well and that you're
getting the most out of thatoutbox time for yourself, for
your own development and foryour own knowledge.
And then the last kind of tip Ihave is to respect deep work,
along with the communication ofthe team of who's in the inbox
and who's out of the inbox.
Really holding yourself to thatcommitment of not interrupting
(37:25):
someone when they're in themiddle of deep work or when
they're out of the inbox.
That's really important.
It gives your team time tofocus on the thing that they're
working on, but it also allowsyou to know that you're not
going to get interrupted whenyou're not in the inbox either.
It's kind of this give and takeof I'm respecting the time that
(37:45):
they are out of the inbox andI'm going to let them get into
their deep work and I'm notgoing to interrupt them, because
we all know that interruptionscan eat up your entire day.
And then you've lost all ofthat time.
Oh, yes, that you were going towork on whatever project you
were going to work on, and nowyou're back in the inbox and you
didn't get that work donebecause you kept getting pulled
back into some other somethingthat someone needed you to look
(38:07):
at, and so we try really hard torespect that outbox time.
So when I know someone's not inthe inbox, I try to leave them
alone as much as I can so thatthey can get that time.
Jordan (38:19):
There's times I will finally fall into that like flow
state of work and I'll juststart going, going, going and,
surely enough, two minutes afterI'm into that like deep work
state, someone pops their headin the office and they're just
like hey mom, can you, can youdo this?
Or like so-and-so is bugging meand it's just I'm out of it
again, and then it takes me like20 minutes to get back into it
(38:40):
and it does.
It eats up all your time and so, especially if you have, like,
remote workers, you don't wantto add to that as well.
Priscilla (38:50):
Yeah, and it's really hard.
I know as a leader of a team itcan be really difficult because
you want to touch base withsomeone on your team and they're
in the middle of an outboxbreak or hour of work and you
want to reach out and say, hey,do you have a minute to chat?
But even that is going to cutinto whatever it is they're
(39:10):
working on, and so you have tobe really careful about it.
I don't know who it was, but Iremember years ago going up to
someone in the office and saying, hey, can I ask you a question?
Or I said something along thelines of do you have time to
answer a question for me?
And they were like, well, yeah,now I do, because the
interruption has alreadyhappened, type of a thing, and
they weren't frustrated, itwasn't rude, but it was a good
(39:32):
reminder to me that even goingand asking and like interrupting
that time breaks the deep work,and so we just have to be
really careful as leaders thatwe're giving that ability to get
into deep work for our team,because that's when you're
really going to be able to havereally good quality work when
you're in those deep workmoments, but interrupting that
(39:55):
all the time doesn't allowanyone to get into that space.
Like you said, once you're outof it it's really hard to get
back into it, and then you'velost so much time.
It's not about getting you knowas much as possible out of
someone during that hour.
It's more about giving someonethe ability to use that hour in
a way that is going to bebeneficial to them and what
(40:15):
they're working on.
Jordan (40:16):
Well, think about how deflating it is when you have
spent the we've all.
We've all done this.
You spend the entire dayworking but you don't feel like
you got that much accomplished.
Yeah, and that is so deflatingas an employee.
But when you have a day whereyou're just in it and you're in
the zone.
You leave at the end of the daygoing, yeah, I nailed it today,
(40:41):
Like this feels great.
And then you're excited to comeback the next day because you
just got so much done.
Priscilla (40:47):
And those days feel good and you want people on your
team to have those days and youwant to have those days.
So if you model that kind ofbehavior for your team and set
their time that can be out ofthe inbox and respect that
boundary that you put in place,it's going to turn around and
they'll respect your boundariesas well and then you'll have
this ability to really get goodquality work done outside of the
(41:10):
inbox.
Ultimately, the most remarkablesupport experiences are going
to come from a healthy supportteam that has margin in their
day to succeed and get better.
So giving your team that marginoutside of the inbox it's going
to help you avoid burnout onyour team, it's going to keep
your patience and empathyreserves full and, ultimately,
(41:31):
it's going to provide your teamwith a calmer work environment
that's built for them to thrive.
Calmer work environment that'sbuilt for them to thrive.
It's time for Support in RealLife, our segment where we
discuss real life supportexperiences Jordan what is our
Support in Real Life question?
Jordan (41:49):
today we got an email from Stefan that says do you
think offering an onlinetraining for customers on how to
use your software or interfacewould decrease the demand for
support?
Priscilla (41:58):
Oh, that's a good question.
That's actually like a reallygood question based on the
conversation we just had.
Yeah, this feels like it tiesinto, like our proactive support
too a little bit yeah for sure,which we didn't really talk
about when we were talking aboutOutbox time, but all of those
kind of things that you're doingoutside of the inbox, all of
that can be considered proactivesupport and getting ahead of
(42:20):
those things, and so this is agreat example of how to use that
time.
So, yes, to answer Stefan'squestion, certainly I think
adding training or offering likean online course to use your
product to new customers isdefinitely going to impact the
support you're seeing.
Oh yeah, will it decrease thedemand?
Probably, but it'll certainlymake the questions that are
(42:43):
coming in be less basic, if thatmakes sense.
So you know you might want tocreate help videos that you put
in your help documents, or maybeyou create an online course.
Depending on the product thatyou're providing customer
support for, it might besomething where the barrier to
entry is pretty high and youhave to have a certain amount of
(43:04):
knowledge in order to use it.
Having those videos or havingan online course for new
customers to use to get in thatmindset, that can be really
helpful in answering those basicfoundational questions before
they get started.
You know we're in podcastingBuzzsprout is a podcasting
service, and so there isdefinitely an aspect of our
(43:28):
product that is necessary tohave a certain amount of
foundational knowledge aboutpodcasting in order to build on
that and have a successfulpodcast.
And so one thing that we'recurrently kind of working
through is this idea of how dowe best educate our customers
right when they get to us,before they start getting into
(43:50):
the nuts and bolts of things, sothat we can kind of build a
foundation under them so thatthey know exactly how to
accomplish what they want toaccomplish using our product.
And so I think you knowStefan's exactly right Offering
online training for yourcustomers on how to use your
service or your product candefinitely decrease your support
(44:11):
, but more so it can increasethe service that you're offering
.
I mean, think about the idea ofgetting on a one-on-one
conversation with a new clientthat you bring on.
It gives you the ability, as acustomer support representative
or specialist, to build thatrelationship with your new
(44:32):
customer right from thebeginning and set the
expectation of what your supportis going to look like.
And so when they reach out inthe future, they've already
spoken to you.
So when they reach out to you,they know oh, Jordan is on the
other side of this.
I've talked to her before.
I know she cares about me, Iknow that she's knowledgeable
and kind and here to help, andso I'm going to ask her a
(44:53):
question and I'm alreadyexpecting good service instead
of you know someone not knowingwhat to expect and they come in
hot and frustrated becausethat's how they expect support
to respond.
So no, I think this is greatand these are great projects
that can be given to yoursupport specialists to work on
outside of the inbox, Exactly.
Jordan (45:30):
Exactly.
It's actually very easy tocreate a YouTube channel and
make you know just kind of likewalk through videos or how to
get started videos, and if youmark the videos as unlisted, you
can do like a welcome email or,you know, if someone writes in
needing help, you can directthem to these unlisted videos by
dropping a link and then, sincethey have a link, they can
watch the video themselves.
But I mean, that's kind ofthing is like you're, you're
sort of weeding out the moreintensive work, because the
(45:54):
hardest part about new likesoftware or services, is usually
getting started, like justgetting started.
Sometimes just getting throughthe gate is really difficult.
Yeah, and like you said, likeyou will get more meaningful
answers because it's not someonewriting in going like what,
what do I do?
I signed up, what do I do?
You know?
Cause they, they know whatthey're doing.
But now they're going to sayyou know, I got to this step and
(46:17):
now I kind of got hung up inlike entering this data here,
what am I doing wrong?
It's going to be more pointedrather than you have to walk
them through over and over andover again for how many clients
you have.
Priscilla (46:29):
Right and it allows you to be proactive with your
new customers and it allows youto start building that
relationship right off the bat.
So yes, Stefan, you'reabsolutely right.
Having those kind of helpvideos and you know you were
talking about the unlistedYouTube videos that's Jordan
dropping some free knowledgethere about using YouTube I mean
(46:49):
that is such a good tool.
Youtube really can be a greattool when it comes to educating
your customers, and it doesn'thave to be a big public YouTube
page that you're spendingthousands and thousands of
dollars to create fancy videos.
They can be easy screen sharevideos or easy demos that you're
walking your customers throughmore complicated processes.
(47:12):
So that's a really great toolto use for sure.
Thank you for writing in thatquestion, Stefan, and remember,
if you want to share yourstories or questions with us,
you can email us at happy tohelp at buzzsproutcom.
So if you send in a question ora story of yours, we might talk
about that on a future episodeof the podcast.
That's it for today.
If you enjoyed this episode,please be sure to leave us a
(47:34):
review and follow us on Applepodcasts or anywhere else where
you get your podcasts.
Thanks for listening.
Now go and make someone's day.
Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer
support from the people atBuzzsprout.
I'm your host, priscilla Brooke.
Today we're talking schedules,specifically the best way to
schedule coverage of yoursupport inbox.
We'll discuss how our coveragestrategies have changed over the
years, how to prioritize timein and out of the inbox and some
tips on getting out of thequeue.
(00:21):
Thanks for joining us.
Let's get into it.
Okay, jordan, it's just you andme.
How are you doing today?
Jordan (00:30):
I'm good.
Priscilla (00:30):
How are you?
I'm good.
I just got back from a vacationin South Georgia, which isn't
that far from where we are andwhere I am in Jacksonville, but
it was nice to get away and wekind of hung out on the lake and
it was just a really nice timewith family.
So I'm like back into it,excited to talk about support
(00:51):
schedules.
Yes, but before we get there,since we don't have a guest
today, I thought you and I couldanswer our question of who has
made your day this week.
Do you have an answer for me?
Jordan (01:05):
this week.
Do you have an answer for me?
Absolutely I do.
We decided to transfer mydaughter, isley, to public
school, and the school districtshut down a bunch of schools
this year and didn't put downthe new boundary lines until
like a couple of weeks beforeschool started.
Yeah.
So I had to fill out paperwork,making an educated guess about
where the boundary line was, andthe school that's like
technically closest to us islike brand new, super fancy.
(01:27):
And so my daughter was stoked,like she was like yes, I cannot
wait to go to school.
This is going to be amazing,it's so nice.
So a month goes by and I finallyget a registration email, but
it's from the wrong school.
Oh no, and it's a school that'slike literally across town.
Oh no, yeah.
And so I was thinking likethere's gotta be some sort of
like mix up.
(01:48):
And so I write the secretaryand I'm like, oh no, she's,
she's not going to your school,like she's registered for this
one and there's been a mistake.
She replies and she's like no,you're in our boundary and you
can apply for like openenrollment, but the schools are
full up.
So basically, you know, it'sprobably not likely, yeah.
And so I was like all right,thinking like great, now I have
(02:09):
to talk to my daughter and shewas so excited I have to tell
her no, you're going to thisdifferent school.
And so I talked to her and shelooks at the school.
She gives it like a goog andshe's like oh, she gives it a
quick goog, she's like, oh, like, these school colors are so
much better and I like thesesports uniforms better.
(02:29):
And so she was cool with it, itwasn't a big deal, and I was
like great.
So then, like a few minuteslater, I get another phone call
and it's a secretary for theschool I originally had applied
for, and apparently thesecretary at the school that I
was like hey, this has been amix up shot, an email to her
just to check to see if we couldget in at the school that I was
like, hey, this has been amix-up shot, an email to her
just to check to see if we couldget in at the school.
She didn't have to do thatbecause I was like, okay, that
(02:51):
makes sense.
And she's like hey, I justwanted to like clear things up
for you.
I know you applied for ourschool, but like the boundary
lines you're in this one and youknow I'm so sorry that we
couldn't make it work and and Iwas like no, no, it's okay, like
my daughter's all on board forlike black and green for her
school.
So you know it's not a big deal.
(03:11):
And she was like.
Oh, I'm so happy to hear thatLike, oh, she has a wonderful
school year.
And I was just thinking likeman, half the school district is
in absolute disarray.
They're all new studentsbecause they shut down so many
schools that it's all gettinglike shifted around and we're
like a couple of weeks beforeschool starts and I was like
these ladies did not need togive me the time of day.
Priscilla (03:32):
That's a great example of someone going out of
their way in a customer servicerole to make the customer I
guess for you know, for lack ofa better word, but like you are
the customer there to make youfeel better about the situation,
and so, yeah, that's great.
Shout out to them for handlingthat well, even though the
situation itself had potentialto be very frustrating.
(03:52):
Oh absolutely so what's yours?
So, like I mentioned, last weekI was on a vacation, a family
vacation, and I had the task ofgoing and getting all the
groceries for our trip, which isa large task.
When you're buying groceriesfor a week for 15 people, oh my
gosh.
And so I had gone to Costcoearlier in the day, I had driven
(04:13):
to where we were, where we werestaying, which was like five
hour drive, and the last thing Ihad to do was go to the Publix
and get some more things and foranyone not in the South, publix
is our like grocery store.
You know, it's the end of theday, I'm tired, I'm ready to be
done shopping for food and Ineeded some like sandwich meat
at the deli counter and so Iwent to the deli counter to get
(04:36):
this food.
I was exhausted but the womanbehind the counter had so much
energy and she was so kind andshe was just like, had a very
personable personality and shewas so like friendly and in some
situations I feel like it couldhave come off like whoa, take a
step back, this is too much.
(04:56):
But she did it in a way thatlike energized me and it really
made that last bit groceries toget.
That was kind of like I wasdreading a little bit.
That whole trip was made betterbecause she was just positive
and encouraging and kind and itwas so simple.
But I feel like it changed thatgrocery store run.
(05:16):
But it's infectious and it was,and I felt like my energy got
boosted because of her energy,and so I don't know her name,
but she was the woman behind thecounter at the Publix Deli and
she is clearly in the right rolebecause she really just made my
day and it kicked the eveningoff and I had a lot more energy
(05:38):
and it was wonderful.
Jordan (05:39):
So those are the types of people that you see all the
time on.
I think of, like TikTok orInstagram reels, you know, when
people make, like ice creamcones, but they make it fun and
I mean there's just, it's sofunny because it's a simple
thing, like they're makingcotton candy, they're making ice
cream, they're they're buildingsandwiches, they're making
pizzas, but they're doing it insuch a fun and infectious way
(05:59):
that, like, brings joy to people.
You can make it magical.
Priscilla (06:03):
Yeah, you can, and it's just like with support.
Like if you're working in asupport inbox, you have the
ability to make somethingmagical for someone else.
Yes, so why not do that?
And so you're right, you're notdoing a job.
That's like changing the worldand you have to have a crazy
amount of experience in order todo it.
You're not running a country,but you're running a deli
(06:24):
counter or you're handling anemail in an inbox and you have
the ability to make the person'sday better on the other side of
that, and so shout out to herfor doing a great job.
That's awesome.
For the last couple of episodes,we have been kind of
encouraging people to text theshow and to let us know what
they think about the show andwhat we could be doing better,
(06:44):
and so I thought I'd take aminute on this episode, since
it's just the two of us, to readthrough a couple of our we call
them fan mail messages.
But from some of our listenersoh, I can't wait.
Yeah, I'm excited.
So we have a listener inColorado who wrote in and they
said these episodes just keepgetting better and better.
I love hearing the valuesbehind your support interactions
(07:05):
.
Looking forward to the nextepisode.
That's awesome, which is sokind.
And we had another listenerfrom Australia who said loved
the episode with Kevin Finn andJordan.
Of course, every Buzzsproutsupport I've used has been 100%.
Thank you, david John Clark.
Aka the Late Bloomer ActorPodcast, which I am guessing
that he wrote in because he is alistener of Buzzcast.
Yes, aka the Late Bloomer ActorPodcast, which I am guessing
(07:25):
that he wrote in because he is alistener of Buzzcast.
Jordan (07:28):
Yes, yeah.
Priscilla (07:29):
And Kevin did a nice little plug on an episode of
Buzzcast for Happy to Help, andso I would guess he came over
from that plug.
Yeah, and that's why he wassaying he enjoyed the episode
with Kevin and with Jordan.
Thanks, david, for listening.
Jordan (07:42):
Yes, david's awesome.
He writes in to Buzzcast allthe time too, so I always look
forward to hearing from him.
Priscilla (07:47):
Well, we can plug his podcast.
It's called the Late BloomerActor Podcast, so if that sounds
interesting to you, go check itout.
Yeah, and then we had Walterfrom Florida write in.
They said I'm really lovingthis podcast.
I feel inspired to be moreintentional about having empathy
, patience and being a managerof one throughout my workday
Cool.
Which is so like, it's so niceto hear that from someone,
(08:10):
because that is the goal withthis podcast is to encourage
people to want to do better andbe better when it comes to
having empathy and patience andworking well with customers and
striving toward that remarkableexperience.
Jordan (08:24):
So when someone writes in and they basically repeat
your mission statement back toyou like this is how this has
made me feel, like that'ssuccess.
Priscilla (08:32):
It's so nice.
Yeah, I love it.
So thank you to these threepeople for writing in and being
so encouraging.
It really makes us feel sogreat to hear this and if you're
listening, you can write intous.
Let us know what you think.
It doesn't have to be positive,it can be.
You know a note of.
You know a request if you wantus to focus on something more,
(08:53):
or you can let us know whatwe're doing right or what you'd
like to hear more of, and wewould love to hear that.
So you can just click the text,the show link in the
description if you want to sendthat in.
So today we're going to talkthrough scheduling coverage of
your inbox.
This isn't the most glamoroustopic, but I think it's really
important, especially if youwant to have a team that's
balanced and healthy.
(09:14):
Yeah, but I want to kind ofdefine what I mean by inbox time
, because for some people, aninbox is not going to be like an
email inbox like we have.
An inbox is not going to belike an email inbox like we have
.
You might have a support systemwhere you offer chat support or
phone support or in-personsupport yeah, so when I say
inbox time, I'm really referringto that customer facing
(09:35):
experience that you are givingas a support specialist.
So back in 2017, before we haddedicated support, the inbox
wasn't a sole focus for anyone.
There were some people whospent dedicated support.
The inbox wasn't a sole focusfor anyone.
There were some people whospent more time in the inbox
than others, but it wasn'tsomeone's main priority.
But when I came on the team, itstarted to become a little bit
more consistent because I washired as the sole support person
(09:59):
.
So in the early years, when itwas just me in the inbox, I
would spend all of my time inthe inbox queue.
I was answering emails all day,and if I got to the end of the
queue if not always when, but ifI got to the end of the queue
by the end of the day then Iwould have some time to work on
other things.
Afterthought, it was not asituation where I would leave
(10:26):
the inbox with emails to go workon something else and then come
back to them.
It was if I got through all ofthe emails, then I would go and
do some kind of like proactivework, and so that was really the
process there for a while.
And then, when we hired morepeople onto the team and we grew
by a couple people the reasonwe were hiring people is because
our traffic in the inbox wasgrowing and we needed to make
sure to have coverage.
So even in those situations, itwas still that same process of
(10:50):
working through all the emailsand once you got to the clear
inbox, then you had the abilityto go do things outside of the
inbox.
But you really didn't have alot of time because the inbox
would fill up pretty quickly andyou'd have to jump back in and
keep working on it, would fillup pretty quickly and you'd have
to jump back in and keepworking on it, and so it really
made it difficult for us as asmall team to focus on anything
other than that direct customercommunication.
(11:12):
Yeah, and so that's where westarted to notice I don't want
to say it was an issue, but itdefinitely was something that
was blocking us from growing asa team and from improving the
quality of our work, because wewere so down in the weeds all
day that we had a hard timegetting out of that.
So I remember havingconversations with one of the
(11:33):
Buzzsprout co-founders, tomRossi, who you might remember
from the Perfection episode thatwe had a while ago.
I remember having thisconversation and he was
encouraging me to schedule anhour a day to leave the inbox
and to focus on something else.
Wow, I remember pushing backit's crazy to think like one
hour but I remember pushing backand saying Tom, like I can't
(11:54):
leave emails in the inbox andnot work on them.
I need to get those out andonce they're out, then I can
focus on other things.
And he was like, let's just tryit, let's see how it goes.
And that was one of the biggestimprovements, when I look back
of like times that our supportreally jumped and became better
was when we started prioritizingbreaks from the inbox,
(12:17):
regardless of what the inboxlooked like, and so what we
would do for a while there waswe would schedule an hour a day
at the beginning of the day andsay, ok, this is the hour that
I'm going to take out of theinbox and I'm going to go work
on something outside of theinbox.
I'm not going to let the numberof emails in the inbox stop me
from doing that, because I'mgoing to recognize the
importance of being out of theinbox and working on something
(12:39):
other than direct client facingemails or phone calls.
And when we startedprioritizing that, we started
realizing that that hour that wewere spending outside of the
inbox was bringing so muchbenefit to the team and it was
bringing so much benefit to theproduct and it was giving us the
ability to step back and lookat things from just a different
(13:00):
angle, instead of being rightdown in it with the customer in
the trenches and working throughproblems and not following up
on them and things like that.
Yeah, but one of the things Irealized was that the inbox is
going to take the time you giveit.
So let's say you have an hourto work in the inbox and you
have five emails.
You can spend an hour workingon five emails.
You can research them, you canshape your writing, you can try
(13:23):
to perfect the email, each email, and send it out and send out
five really fantastic emails.
But if you have 20 emails in aninbox and an hour to clear them,
you can also send 20 emailsthat are pretty good and may be
remarkable support, but they'retaking less time because the
inbox will take the time thatyou give it?
Yeah, and you know, I recentlyfound out there's a name for
(13:46):
this, which I've been sayingthis now for years and didn't
know this was like a real thing,but it's called Parkinson's law
, which is basically that workexpands to fill your available
time.
Oh my gosh.
Yes, and I mean I think youknow I think, jordan, we've
mentioned this before but youhave several podcasts that you
edit every week.
Yeah, this before, but you haveseveral podcasts that you edit
(14:07):
every week.
Yeah, do you feel like thisapplies to?
Jordan (14:08):
editing too.
I feel like this definitelywould apply to editing no joke
the weeks that we record early.
I will spend that many extradays editing this episode that
we recorded early.
But sometimes we have to recordlate and so it's under like a
lot more um right Pressure and Ionly have like one day instead
of three to edit it.
(14:28):
Does it get done?
Yes, does it sound exactly thesame to the listener?
Probably, it probably soundsexactly the same.
Yeah, I only spent one dayinstead of three days on this
episode, and it's so funnybecause I try to trick myself
into like achieving thesedeadlines.
But for whatever reason, I justsometimes slip into that again
where I'm like, well, I have thetime to spend on cleaning up
(14:51):
every tiny thing.
Priscilla (14:53):
So why not?
So why not spend it?
Yeah, well, and I think it'simportant to like find a balance
there.
Yeah, and you know we'll talkabout this a little bit more
later, but it's important tofind that balance, because what
you don't want to do is waituntil the very last minute and
rush your work and squeeze it inand burn yourself out yes, but
you also don't want to giveyourself so much time that
(15:14):
you're almost wasting timeperfecting things that you don't
need to perfect, or that whereyour time could be more valuable
in other places.
And so, yeah, I think it's justinteresting to think about it
in the world of support whenwe're talking about finding time
outside of the inbox and insideof the inbox.
If you focus on time, I'm goingto spend an hour in the inbox
(15:35):
and I'm going to answer as manyemails as I can, as remarkably
as I can, and at the end of thehour, whatever the inbox looks
like, I'm going to jump out andfocus on this other priority
instead of letting the inboxdictate my priorities.
Jordan (15:49):
And it takes a bit of self-discipline to be able to do
that.
Definitely, yeah, just a lot oflike self-talk, like this is
what I'm giving myself and youknow what it is, what it is, and
I think a lot of peoplestruggle with that.
Priscilla (16:01):
Yeah, definitely, and that's why you, as a leader of
a team, want to make sure you'resetting up the expectations and
making it very clear what isexpected of the people on your
team, so that they don't feellike they're doing something
wrong when they leave an inboxthat has 50 emails in it to go
and do something that might feelless urgent, but the reality is
, it might be more importantthan having X amount of people
(16:24):
covering an inbox at one time.
When we started adding thosehour breaks into our days
intentionally, that's when wewere really seeing that like
benefit brought to the team.
Like I was saying, we werespending time working through
difficult problems or analyzingcustomer feedback or brushing up
on industry knowledge all ofthese things that you don't do
(16:45):
if you don't make intentionaltime for it.
And so you know, if you thinkback to some of the episodes
we've done in the past here,we've talked about developing a
support tone for your team orsetting those communication
goals.
All of those things don'thappen if you're constantly in
the inbox and you're nevergetting time out of it, and so
(17:05):
if you're on a small team,especially with like one or two
people, it can be really hard todo that, but the benefit that
your team will get from havingthat time outside of the inbox
is really, really, really good,and it allows you time to make
your support better, whichultimately is going to make
things more enjoyable and moreremarkable for your customers.
(17:27):
And so at that point we startedthinking, as we were hiring
people, it kind of changed howwe were hiring, because now we
weren't hiring people just forinbox coverage, we're hiring
people so that we had more thanenough coverage to give people
the ability to have margin intheir day.
Wow, and so it changed the waywe hired people and how quickly
(17:48):
we brought people on the team,because now we weren't just
hiring because we needed morepeople to answer emails, we
wanted to make sure everyone hadtime in their days to do other
things.
Yeah, and so now our currentkind of setup is that everyone
on the team kind of has two hourinbox shifts broken up
throughout the day with one ortwo hour outbox shifts, and so
(18:09):
it allows us the ability to, inone eight hour day, have about
75% in the inbox, because that'sstill like the priority right
is customers.
And so we still want to spendthe most of our time in the
inbox working with customers,but it also sets apart these
dedicated chunks of time for usto get deep work into things to
(18:30):
help make our work better, yeah,and so that's really, really
important, and so we've set upour schedule specifically to do
that, so that we're not in aplace where we're just
constantly in the inbox withoutbeing able to get out of the
inbox throughout the day,throughout the week, throughout
the month and so on.
So maybe the biggest benefit toworking breaks into your
schedule or outbox time intoyour day is that it gives your
(18:52):
team time to switch gears.
I think we have established onthis podcast that it can be
difficult to work with customersall day, every day, and to
constantly give out patience andempathy and understanding.
For eight hours is reallydraining, and I mean, I am a
very outgoing person and inthose early years when I was
(19:13):
just working in the inbox, thoseeight hour days were so
draining and it was just so much.
By the end of the day, it'slike being in a meeting or
running a meeting for eighthours, like it's just it is a
lot.
And when we started pulling inthese intentional hour breaks
throughout the day, you startedto realize, oh, this is giving
(19:35):
me the ability to like, build upmy patience again, or to not
get so personally frustratedwith someone who's yelling at me
or whatever it is.
It lets you have that time awayto switch gears and to work on
something else and then comeback to the inbox with renewed
patience and empathy.
And all of that I mean.
If you were to go back to thattime when I was just doing eight
(19:56):
hour shifts straight through,you would definitely notice that
, like, the emails I sent inhour one were way more
empathetic and way moreunderstanding than the emails I
sent at hour eight, because bythen I am fully run out of
patience and empathy.
Yeah, and so, putting thesebreaks in, I started to realize,
oh, I'm enjoying the work morewhen I get to take breaks like
(20:19):
this, but also the customers aregetting a better experience
when I'm able to take breaks.
So that is really a hugebenefit to incorporating these
into your daily schedules foryour team.
And when I say like takingbreaks, I don't mean like, ok,
I'm going to take a 10 minutebreak and go outside and get
some fresh air.
Yeah, I mean like taking a oneto two hour break to work on
(20:42):
something that is not a customerfacing project.
So it might be learning a newfeature that has just been
rolled out, or it might beworking on a project that you've
been given to write a new helparticle something else that's
not going to be the same asworking directly with a customer
.
It's kind of going to allow youto step back from that customer
(21:04):
facing time of your day.
Yeah, and the goal is for it tobe a long enough break that it
allows you to get into deep workin that other lane, instead of
something quick that you justhave to jump over, do really
fast and then come back to theinbox.
You want to make sure that whenyou're building these in,
they're long enough for someoneto get good quality, deep work
out of it.
Jordan (21:24):
Yeah, and it's hard to build that in.
They're long enough for someoneto get good quality, deep work
out of it.
Yeah, and it's hard to buildthat in, but I mean it does make
sense.
It's like when you're looking ata screen too long you can start
getting that like eye fatigueand you get like ocular
migraines and you get your yourbody starts feeling gross and
you don't feel great and you getbrain foggy, like if you're
just like sitting there staringat a screen all day every day.
(21:47):
Like if you're just likesitting there staring at a
screen all day every day.
So if you're sitting theretalking to customers all day
every day, you're gonna startgetting brain foggy, you're
starting irritable.
So it totally makes sense tolike take these breaks but be
intentional about it, and youknow they're productive at the
same time.
But it is just switching gearsand it's just clicking reset in
your brain and you're going togo.
Priscilla (22:09):
Yeah, it just lets your brain take a different
route for a little bit of timebefore you come back to it.
We also find that this allows usto be more flexible as a team.
One thing that our companyreally cares a lot about is
allowing flexibility just intoour daily lives and making sure
that everyone on the team has ahealthy work life balance, which
I know is such like a clickyclickbait term, but anyone who
works in support, I think, willtell you that flexibility is not
(22:31):
really something that is seenin support a lot.
No, because you usually arescheduled for a very specific
amount of time to cover an inboxor to cover a call center or
whatever it is that you'recovering, and so flexibility
becomes a lot harder, and soallowing us to kind of schedule
in these shorter shifts reallyallows us to give our team more
(22:55):
flexibility so that they can putthat outbox time in when they
need to and when works withtheir schedule, and it doesn't
necessarily have to be duringthe day, you know, in the middle
of the two shifts they have inthe inbox.
It might be that they have twoshifts in the inbox that day and
they have a couple hours ofmargin time that they put in
first thing in the morning andthen in between those two shifts
(23:18):
they go and work out orsomething like that.
Because the reality of it isthat defining when you're going
to be in the inbox allows you tohave flexibility put in those
other places, but it stillallows us to schedule coverage
of the inbox really well so thatwe know that our customers are
being taken care of during thosehours.
Jordan (23:37):
It reminds me of.
I was working a job at a coffeeshop where sometimes they would
schedule me to close the nightbefore and then open the next
morning, and so I would out only.
But I mean, but they it wouldjust like sometimes do that and
like sometimes not, and then,like the schedules would be like
willy nilly all over the placeand honestly, it didn't offer a
(24:00):
lot of flexibility, because Ihesitated to schedule anything
in my life, because I was like Idon't know if I'm working, like
I have no idea.
Yeah, so I mean, I totally getthat, because it did feel in a
weird way there was no structureand so it prevented me from
having the flexibility of makingplans or planning trips or
something like that, cause I wasjust like I don't know if I can
(24:21):
get this off, I don't know if Ican like go to this concert
this night, cause who knows,they might put me on the
schedule.
Priscilla (24:28):
Yeah, well, and it's funny, when we first started
looking at this idea ofscheduling our hours more
specifically and less like, okay, now you're going to work an
eight hour shift in the inbox,when we started being more
specific about the schedule, itfelt at first very rigid and we
had to spend a minute with itand realize that it's actually.
(24:50):
It feels a little more rigidright now, but the more we have
used this, the more it actuallyhas shown us that you get a lot
more flexibility when you knowexactly when you're working,
because then you can be flexiblein those times that you know
you're not expected in the inbox.
It's like if you have meetingsscheduled but you don't know
when they're going to happen, soyou have to keep the whole day
(25:12):
open for the meeting.
Yeah, that doesn't provide youthe ability to go and have a
doctor's appointment in themiddle of the day because you
might or might not have ameeting.
Yes, but if you know exactlywhen those meetings are
happening, it gives you moreflexibility.
So the structure actually addsto the flexibility, which is
something that we've reallyenjoyed and has made the job
easier to navigate and easier togive your team that work-life
(25:34):
balance.
Yeah, exactly, and then alsohaving this time outside of the
inbox or outside of the queueallows you to prioritize
improvement in your team.
We kind of talked about this alittle bit, but it gives your
team time to develop processesaround so many different things,
around how you work with angrycustomers, around your tone,
(25:55):
your communication goals.
It gives you the time to stepback and to set those things up,
because that stuff is soimportant to providing
remarkable support and you'renot going to get there if you
don't have time outside of theinbox to do it.
Whether you're a leader or not,and if you're in a small team
where everyone is in the inbox,it's going to be really hard to
set up those kind of pillars orthose foundational things to
(26:19):
have everyone on the same page.
And so you have to prioritizethis time outside of the inbox
to get that done.
And so if you want your work toget better, if you want your
team to get healthier andstronger, you have to work that
into your schedules.
Let me give you a little bit ofinsight into how I actually
schedule the coverage of ourinbox, just to allow for this
(26:41):
balance of inbox and outbox time.
Yeah, so we schedule our weeksabout a week in advance, which
allows everyone on the team togive me their ideal hours for
the next week.
So what you were saying, jordan, about you know working in the
service industry and neverknowing if you're going to be
working a night shift or themorning shift or both, and how
(27:02):
that's all going to work.
We try really hard to let thespecialists on our team dictate
when they're going to work, andthen I take what they tell me
and I set up the coverage afterthat.
And so if someone wants to takea long lunch and then go do a
workout and then come back andwant to work in the afternoon,
they can build that break intotheir day and say, hey, I'm
(27:23):
going to work four hours in theearly morning and four hours in
the later afternoon today andthen that gives me the ability
to build the inbox coveragebased on their kind of ideal
schedule.
Yeah, it doesn't mean thatevery single time someone
submits a schedule that's nottraditional, that it's going to
be great and it's going to workNot always, but for the most
part we try to work around that,keeping in mind that support
(27:46):
coverage is the priority andthat that margin time or that
outbox time that can be a littlebit more flexible, of when it's
put in by the supportspecialist, when it's put in by
the support specialist, then Ibuild the schedule that allows
each support specialist to havebasically two or three hour
blocks in the inbox and then oneto two hour blocks outside of
(28:10):
the inbox a day.
So, like I said earlier, thattypically looks like a 25% of
their time is out of the inboxtime and 75 percent is in the
inbox, and that ratio can changebased on what kind of projects
they're working on.
If someone has like a reallybig project that they're working
on outside of the inbox, thenthey might end up with 50
percent outbox time and 50percent inbox time and we kind
(28:32):
of are flexible with that fromweek to week depending on what
kind of projects people have.
But it allows us the ability toprioritize inbox time and
outbox time equally, withoutfeeling like you're constantly
being pulled back into the inboxand so you don't have time to
be focused on those things thatare outside of the inbox.
Yeah, so we've tried to buildthis in a way that the structure
(28:55):
is in place to foster anenvironment of flexibility and
deep work.
But the outbox time is reallyonly as beneficial as we make it
.
So I want to kind of talkthrough some tips for making
that time really worthwhile.
Because you're out of the inboxfor two hours a day.
That's two hours that you canwork on something really cool
outside of the inbox and stepback.
But if you don't do thatintentionally, then it can also
(29:18):
be wasted time, and so you kindof have to be you know, you have
to be intentional about how youspend that time.
Jordan (29:23):
And for some people, like they don't thrive with free
time.
Yeah, exactly.
They're not good at being likeokay, like this should be a
priority to me.
Like sometimes they just likethey need direction, they need a
task.
Priscilla (29:40):
Yeah, and so it's one of the things I talk about with
new hires a lot is how to usethis time well so that they get
benefit out of it and that itbenefits the team as a whole.
Okay, so some of my tips forusing this time is schedule
communication.
So all of this starts withcommunication.
You have to communicate withyour team.
What is expected of them as theleader, with your team, what is
(30:02):
expected of them as the leader?
You want to set thatexpectation for your team as to
when they're supposed to be inthe inbox and when they're not.
So you want to post thatschedule in a place where it's
easily accessible to your teamso they always know what's
expected of them when it comesto when they're working in the
inbox with customers and whenthey're out of the inbox working
on projects, and so we justhave those schedules available
to everyone.
(30:22):
But it's your job as the leaderto make sure that's really
clear so that the specialists onyour team are not questioning
well, right now, what's thepriority?
Is the priority inbox for me,or is the priority working on
this project?
Jordan (30:36):
Yeah, you can't make assumptions that they know
exactly what to do Exactly.
Priscilla (30:40):
And so you just want to lay it out clear for them,
because I know for me, if I'msitting in a space where I see
there's a busy inbox but maybe Ishould go work on this project,
it's going to be really hardfor me to leave a busy inbox and
get out of that space to workon something else.
Jordan (30:56):
Yeah, especially if you don't think you have something
that is like more pressing,right, you know, if you have
like free time to you know,sharpen your ax and sharpen your
skills, you're going to be likeis that really more important
than just clearing the inbox?
Probably not, and so it'sreally easy to slip back into
the inbox.
Priscilla (31:13):
Exactly.
And then, before you know it,it's been eight hours that
you've been in the inbox and youhaven't taken any time to work
on anything outside of the inboxor to learn about that new
feature that's now been launchedfor two weeks and you haven't
taken the time important as theleader to clearly define when
people are in the inbox and whenthey're out, and then to
(31:42):
respect that boundary and toreally hold fast to that and say
OK, they're out of the inbox, Iam not going to bother them
with inbox things until they arescheduled to be back in the
inbox.
The second kind of side of thiscommunication is within the
team.
We as a team communicatethroughout the day, but it's
really important for us to knowwho's in the inbox at that time
(32:02):
and who's not, because we don'twant to reach out to someone
who's not in the inbox whenwe're working through a
difficult situation if they'rein deep work working on some
customer feedback, and so we arevery communicative when it
comes to who is in the inbox andwho's not in the inbox.
But I will put like one word ofwarning out there Be careful
(32:24):
not to fall into a trap ofconstant communication and
constantly like keeping eachother up to date on what you're
doing.
Yes, when we went fully remotefor the pandemic, we got into a
pretty bad habit of being verycommunicative about what we were
working on as a support team.
So, you know, if I was workingon something, I'd say, hey, this
(32:45):
is exactly what I'm working onright now and I will be doing it
for X amount of time, and whenI'm done with this, I will come
back into the inbox.
And it got really rigid, yeah,and it felt very like I got to
make sure everyone knows whatI'm working on at all times.
Jordan (32:59):
Well, and I'm picturing all like the pings and
notifications.
Priscilla (33:04):
Yeah, and it doesn't really foster an environment of
trust If you're constantlytelling everyone this is exactly
what I'm doing.
Or I left for lunch and now Iam back from lunch and it is all
very strict.
Even if it's just in a way tobe communicative, you can fall
into that trap of it being likevery, very strict, yeah.
And so we've had to be reallyintentional about stepping back
(33:25):
and saying, hey, we want to becommunicative with each other so
that we know who's in the inboxand who's not.
But the reality is, we don'tneed much more detail beyond
that.
We trust each other.
Jordan (33:37):
Yeah, that could quickly fall into like micromanagement
territory where it's just likeDefinitely Taking a bathroom
break, be back in five minutes,right?
Priscilla (33:45):
Exactly.
You don't want that.
So the communication is reallygood, especially when you're
working on a team and you're allworking out of the same inbox.
But you have to be reallycareful not to fall into a trap
of constant communication thatcan become very rigid, because
once you hit that, it's reallyhard to undo it, and then you
(34:06):
have to find the right balance.
So let's go back to theParkinson's law the inbox is
going to take the time that yougive it.
So it's important, as a leader,that you find the right balance
for your team, because you wantto make sure that your inbox is
getting the coverage it needs.
So you want to be realisticabout how many emails you're
getting or how many phone callsyou're getting or how many chats
(34:26):
you're getting or whatever formof communication your customers
use to get to you.
You want to be really aware ofwhat that is, so that you're
giving the right amount ofcoverage, because you don't want
to overload one or two orhowever many specialists that
are in your queue at a time, butyou also don't want to overload
it so that they have too manypeople in there and then you're
(34:46):
not getting the benefit of thisoutbox time.
You don't want to build insmall little breaks that don't
give you the time to do deepwork?
Yeah, but it's better to haveone two hour break in the day
than to have four half an hourbreaks or to have, you know, six
, 15 minute or whatever it is.
You want to give yourself timeto have the deep work and you
(35:07):
want to give your team time tohave deep work and you just want
to make sure that's balancedwith the priority that is the
inbox, because ultimately thatis the main role that you're
hired for.
When you're hired for a supportteam, in most situations your
main goal is that inbox time andthen plan your time with
intention.
You know and this is what I goover with our new hires a lot In
(35:30):
a typical week for someone onthe support team you're looking
I've said it a couple times butyou're looking at 75% in the
inbox and 25% out of the inboxis usually about where it falls.
But that means you usually haveabout 10 hours of dedicated
time outside of the inbox towork on projects or professional
development or any of thosekind of outside of the inbox
(35:55):
projects that you might have,and so you could easily squander
those hours away and not letthose be beneficial.
But what I will tell new hiresis like take time to plan out
what that looks like.
You know, sit down and kind ofmap out your week, say, ok, I've
got a two hour break here, I'vegot a four hour break here,
I've got a three hour break here.
What do I want to spend thosetimes doing?
(36:19):
So maybe you have a project andyou're like I'm going to use
this big chunk to work onwriting that new help document,
because I know that's going totake me time and I'm going to
need to get into some deep workfor that.
And maybe you have a smallerhour where you're like I'm going
to use that time to go watch awebinar and brush up my skills
on analytical reading.
Or I'm going to go and learnabout this new product or this
(36:41):
new feature that we justlaunched.
Building that out allows you toreally use the most of that
time instead of getting out ofthe inbox going all right, I've
got two hours, now what am Igoing to do?
That's not going to allow youto use that time efficiently,
and so, as someone who you know,you want to be a good manager
of one.
We've talked about that before.
And so, in order to do that, ittakes a little bit of planning
(37:03):
to make sure that you're usingyour time well and that you're
getting the most out of thatoutbox time for yourself, for
your own development and foryour own knowledge.
And then the last kind of tip Ihave is to respect deep work,
along with the communication ofthe team of who's in the inbox
and who's out of the inbox.
Really holding yourself to thatcommitment of not interrupting
(37:25):
someone when they're in themiddle of deep work or when
they're out of the inbox.
That's really important.
It gives your team time tofocus on the thing that they're
working on, but it also allowsyou to know that you're not
going to get interrupted whenyou're not in the inbox either.
It's kind of this give and takeof I'm respecting the time that
(37:45):
they are out of the inbox andI'm going to let them get into
their deep work and I'm notgoing to interrupt them, because
we all know that interruptionscan eat up your entire day.
And then you've lost all ofthat time.
Oh, yes, that you were going towork on whatever project you
were going to work on, and nowyou're back in the inbox and you
didn't get that work donebecause you kept getting pulled
back into some other somethingthat someone needed you to look
(38:07):
at, and so we try really hard torespect that outbox time.
So when I know someone's not inthe inbox, I try to leave them
alone as much as I can so thatthey can get that time.
Jordan (38:19):
There's times I will finally fall into that like flow
state of work and I'll juststart going, going, going and,
surely enough, two minutes afterI'm into that like deep work
state, someone pops their headin the office and they're just
like hey mom, can you, can youdo this?
Or like so-and-so is bugging meand it's just I'm out of it
again, and then it takes me like20 minutes to get back into it
(38:40):
and it does.
It eats up all your time and so, especially if you have, like,
remote workers, you don't wantto add to that as well.
Priscilla (38:50):
Yeah, and it's really hard.
I know as a leader of a team itcan be really difficult because
you want to touch base withsomeone on your team and they're
in the middle of an outboxbreak or hour of work and you
want to reach out and say, hey,do you have a minute to chat?
But even that is going to cutinto whatever it is they're
(39:10):
working on, and so you have tobe really careful about it.
I don't know who it was, but Iremember years ago going up to
someone in the office and saying, hey, can I ask you a question?
Or I said something along thelines of do you have time to
answer a question for me?
And they were like, well, yeah,now I do, because the
interruption has alreadyhappened, type of a thing, and
they weren't frustrated, itwasn't rude, but it was a good
(39:32):
reminder to me that even goingand asking and like interrupting
that time breaks the deep work,and so we just have to be
really careful as leaders thatwe're giving that ability to get
into deep work for our team,because that's when you're
really going to be able to havereally good quality work when
you're in those deep workmoments, but interrupting that
(39:55):
all the time doesn't allowanyone to get into that space.
Like you said, once you're outof it it's really hard to get
back into it, and then you'velost so much time.
It's not about getting you knowas much as possible out of
someone during that hour.
It's more about giving someonethe ability to use that hour in
a way that is going to bebeneficial to them and what
(40:15):
they're working on.
Jordan (40:16):
Well, think about how deflating it is when you have
spent the we've all.
We've all done this.
You spend the entire dayworking but you don't feel like
you got that much accomplished.
Yeah, and that is so deflatingas an employee.
But when you have a day whereyou're just in it and you're in
the zone.
You leave at the end of the daygoing, yeah, I nailed it today,
(40:41):
Like this feels great.
And then you're excited to comeback the next day because you
just got so much done.
Priscilla (40:47):
And those days feel good and you want people on your
team to have those days and youwant to have those days.
So if you model that kind ofbehavior for your team and set
their time that can be out ofthe inbox and respect that
boundary that you put in place,it's going to turn around and
they'll respect your boundariesas well and then you'll have
this ability to really get goodquality work done outside of the
(41:10):
inbox.
Ultimately, the most remarkablesupport experiences are going
to come from a healthy supportteam that has margin in their
day to succeed and get better.
So giving your team that marginoutside of the inbox it's going
to help you avoid burnout onyour team, it's going to keep
your patience and empathyreserves full and, ultimately,
(41:31):
it's going to provide your teamwith a calmer work environment
that's built for them to thrive.
Calmer work environment that'sbuilt for them to thrive.
It's time for Support in RealLife, our segment where we
discuss real life supportexperiences Jordan what is our
Support in Real Life question?
Jordan (41:49):
today we got an email from Stefan that says do you
think offering an onlinetraining for customers on how to
use your software or interfacewould decrease the demand for
support?
Priscilla (41:58):
Oh, that's a good question.
That's actually like a reallygood question based on the
conversation we just had.
Yeah, this feels like it tiesinto, like our proactive support
too a little bit yeah for sure,which we didn't really talk
about when we were talking aboutOutbox time, but all of those
kind of things that you're doingoutside of the inbox, all of
that can be considered proactivesupport and getting ahead of
(42:20):
those things, and so this is agreat example of how to use that
time.
So, yes, to answer Stefan'squestion, certainly I think
adding training or offering likean online course to use your
product to new customers isdefinitely going to impact the
support you're seeing.
Oh yeah, will it decrease thedemand?
Probably, but it'll certainlymake the questions that are
(42:43):
coming in be less basic, if thatmakes sense.
So you know you might want tocreate help videos that you put
in your help documents, or maybeyou create an online course.
Depending on the product thatyou're providing customer
support for, it might besomething where the barrier to
entry is pretty high and youhave to have a certain amount of
(43:04):
knowledge in order to use it.
Having those videos or havingan online course for new
customers to use to get in thatmindset, that can be really
helpful in answering those basicfoundational questions before
they get started.
You know we're in podcastingBuzzsprout is a podcasting
service, and so there isdefinitely an aspect of our
(43:28):
product that is necessary tohave a certain amount of
foundational knowledge aboutpodcasting in order to build on
that and have a successfulpodcast.
And so one thing that we'recurrently kind of working
through is this idea of how dowe best educate our customers
right when they get to us,before they start getting into
(43:50):
the nuts and bolts of things, sothat we can kind of build a
foundation under them so thatthey know exactly how to
accomplish what they want toaccomplish using our product.
And so I think you knowStefan's exactly right Offering
online training for yourcustomers on how to use your
service or your product candefinitely decrease your support
(44:11):
, but more so it can increasethe service that you're offering
.
I mean, think about the idea ofgetting on a one-on-one
conversation with a new clientthat you bring on.
It gives you the ability, as acustomer support representative
or specialist, to build thatrelationship with your new
(44:32):
customer right from thebeginning and set the
expectation of what your supportis going to look like.
And so when they reach out inthe future, they've already
spoken to you.
So when they reach out to you,they know oh, Jordan is on the
other side of this.
I've talked to her before.
I know she cares about me, Iknow that she's knowledgeable
and kind and here to help, andso I'm going to ask her a
(44:53):
question and I'm alreadyexpecting good service instead
of you know someone not knowingwhat to expect and they come in
hot and frustrated becausethat's how they expect support
to respond.
So no, I think this is greatand these are great projects
that can be given to yoursupport specialists to work on
outside of the inbox, Exactly.
Jordan (45:30):
Exactly.
It's actually very easy tocreate a YouTube channel and
make you know just kind of likewalk through videos or how to
get started videos, and if youmark the videos as unlisted, you
can do like a welcome email or,you know, if someone writes in
needing help, you can directthem to these unlisted videos by
dropping a link and then, sincethey have a link, they can
watch the video themselves.
But I mean, that's kind ofthing is like you're, you're
sort of weeding out the moreintensive work, because the
(45:54):
hardest part about new likesoftware or services, is usually
getting started, like justgetting started.
Sometimes just getting throughthe gate is really difficult.
Yeah, and like you said, likeyou will get more meaningful
answers because it's not someonewriting in going like what,
what do I do?
I signed up, what do I do?
You know?
Cause they, they know whatthey're doing.
But now they're going to sayyou know, I got to this step and
(46:17):
now I kind of got hung up inlike entering this data here,
what am I doing wrong?
It's going to be more pointedrather than you have to walk
them through over and over andover again for how many clients
you have.
Priscilla (46:29):
Right and it allows you to be proactive with your
new customers and it allows youto start building that
relationship right off the bat.
So yes, Stefan, you'reabsolutely right.
Having those kind of helpvideos and you know you were
talking about the unlistedYouTube videos that's Jordan
dropping some free knowledgethere about using YouTube I mean
(46:49):
that is such a good tool.
Youtube really can be a greattool when it comes to educating
your customers, and it doesn'thave to be a big public YouTube
page that you're spendingthousands and thousands of
dollars to create fancy videos.
They can be easy screen sharevideos or easy demos that you're
walking your customers throughmore complicated processes.
(47:12):
So that's a really great toolto use for sure.
Thank you for writing in thatquestion, Stefan, and remember,
if you want to share yourstories or questions with us,
you can email us at happy tohelp at buzzsproutcom.
So if you send in a question ora story of yours, we might talk
about that on a future episodeof the podcast.
That's it for today.
If you enjoyed this episode,please be sure to leave us a
(47:34):
review and follow us on Applepodcasts or anywhere else where
you get your podcasts.
Thanks for listening.
Now go and make someone's day.
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