Breaking tradition | Emre Tekoglu

[Emre] (0:00 - 0:23)

Something went wrong in their daily usage of the product. Something is off that they decided they need help. That's a signal we need to analyze.

Now see traditional customer support doesn't think that way. They are thinking about how can I solve the problem. When it comes to CSMs, they do all those touch points where it's monthly or quarterly, but they are missing all those details and details make up the big picture.

[Dillon] (0:32 - 0:42)

What's up lifers and welcome to the daily standup with lifetime value where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man, JP with us. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:43 - 0:43)

Mahaba.

[Dillon] (0:44 - 1:23)

It's going to make me look ridiculous. And we have Emre with us.

Emre, can you say hi? Yes. Hi.

So I got it right because you responded. Okay. And I am your host.

My name is Dillon Young. Emre, thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for being here.

Can you please introduce yourself? Yes. My name is Emre Tekoglu.

I'm VP of customer support here at Zywave. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here.

And you know what we do here. We ask every single guest one simple question. That is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success or support or post sales, think of it however you want to, but why don't you tell us what that is for you?

[Emre] (1:23 - 1:46)

Yeah. What's on my mind is the value and importance of customer support interactions when it comes to customer retention, because what I like to tell it is post sales, we are the one department that talks to customers all the time. It's organic growth conversations.

So how can we leverage those insights for customer retention is on my mind.

[Dillon] (1:47 - 2:31)

A couple of different angles I might come at this from. So you mentioned at the very end, the insights. So with that, I might assume you mean you don't even really have to change anything about the way support is run today, but you also mentioned earlier in your statement that support is one of the only groups that talks to customers consistently post sales, which sort of implies to me that there's a lot of opportunity, there's a lot of surface area to perhaps improve upon that experience to maximize that customer experience, but tell me how you think about it and which one of those statements I just said maybe is not true or is less accurate, like help me walk down this path. Yeah.

[Emre] (2:31 - 3:58)

All of those are accurate. And I want to change the point of view of support leadership when it comes to what their department does. Hence, I make those statements.

So traditional customer support is about picking up the phone, answering to chat, responding to emails and solving the case and move on. That's all they're focused on. They measure things like average handle time, time to resolution.

However, while we are helping the customers, there are lots of insights we kind of skip, we don't think about that because it's not in our nature to analyze those conversations. See, every case that customer decides to call us is an opportunity to help that customer. Something went wrong in their daily usage of the product.

Something is off that they decided they need help. That's a signal we need to analyze. Now see traditional customer support doesn't think that way.

They are thinking about how can I solve the problem? However, the shift needs to happen as to like root cause, like why did the customer call us? When it comes to CSMs, they do all those touch points where it's monthly or quarterly, but they are missing all those details and details make up the big picture.

You know, there's a saying, you know, that by thousand paper cuts. So we need to understand when the paper cuts are happening before you bleed out. And that's why I say customer support has all those details to just decide to listen to those conversations.

[Dillon] (3:59 - 4:29)

Whether, I don't know if you've sort of like developed this mindset at your current organization, or if the question I'm about to ask might be able to be applied to your previous experiences as well, but do you find that that creates tension with your post-sales counterparts, like customer success? Or do they view that as like a sigh of relief? Like, yes, please like think about this stuff more deeply.

Like I don't want to need to do that. I don't want to make them sound lazy, but like, so tell me what that dynamic feels like.

[Emre] (4:29 - 5:35)

Yeah. So the way we change that perception is I like to advocate a case that's prevented is better than a case that's resolved because every time that customer doesn't have to call you, it's actually a good sign. Having said that, we also look at data points like customers call us.

If they don't call us, which we know in B2B software, there will be problems with the product. So if they don't call, that's also a sign of disengagement. So we look at it that way too.

Now back to your really good question is we work with our R&D teams with that mindset. Let's prevent the cases. And that's a welcome to CSNs because they don't have to get bogged down on the technicality of how to prevent those issues and understand how we could change the UX or change the code.

They can focus more on the business side. So like they could talk to their customers. How can we help you with your business problems versus your software problems?

So I like to think of soft customer support. Let's help you with the technical support. CSM, let's help you with the driving value out of your investment.

JP, why don't you dive in here?

[JP] (5:36 - 8:44)

Yeah, you really wrapped it up nicely there, Emre. When you started talking about sort of like this optimal experience of support, because what happens is if support sort of just stops at the, okay, we solved that problem and they're sort of just always just sort of solving problems as they come up, but not sort of looking at things and in the aggregate and sort of zooming out and seeing where these issues are. Then what will end up happening is if of course, if someone has too many support tickets, not only does that begin to sort of, that's taxing the organization in terms of the support because, you know, it's limited, right?

Like we want to make sure everyone can get things through that pipeline. Like we want that channel to be as clear as possible. The other part is sometimes if there's a, well not sometimes, if there is a subpar experience that people have in support, then now it begins to become when the customer does interact with me, they, when I say, oh, we have this great support system, or when I say something about support, they are reticent to do it.

And they may actually begin to start coming to me with things because they may say, well, maybe, maybe you can solve this problem. And so I think like what you're describing is actually really great and really important because I can definitely get bogged down if a customer is having an issue and then I become a translator. Like even, even something as simple as maybe a customer has a question for me, I try to ask more questions as a CSM because I know that if I go and then I ask a question and then I come back to that customer and then let's say they have another question, now I'm spending my time going in between.

They need to be talking to the person who really has that, that expertise. And so I think when support has more of that, in other words, support is not taking the job of the CSM, the CSM, like you said, we are driving the business, really business outcomes is what we're after. But the technical things need to be resolved there.

But, but technical issues, like you said, we need to get to the root. If you just troubleshoot at a surface level, you know, I think there's a lot to be missed. So that's a really good approach that you have.

And I think that that is really what I think optimal customer support looks like. It's somebody who's thinking about, they're not trying to ask about your business outcomes. They're trying to see like, wait, maybe the reason you keep having this issue is because you are not upgrading.

And now if there's something with the upgrading, now that can be something where I can support on my end when I'm talking to the customer, because I can say, hey, your business outcomes, here is where you're losing out on X amount of money. You should really. So in that way, we can sort of lock more together instead of, you know, dealing like you said, like, you know, like it could sound like where there's this clash.

I think as long as we can understand our lanes, we can actually create an optimal experience for the customer.

[Emre] (8:44 - 9:59)

Yes. So speaking of lanes, one of the issues we do is when we detect a customer negative sentiment from a conversation, we will look into CSM at that moment, letting them know, hey, like this customer is not happy. You may want to look into that.

So we will provide the details as to why they're not happy. But now I'm trying to also take more positive. So if a customer renewal is coming up, let's say it's three months every day, and if the customer has a positive interaction, now I'm coaching my team, hey, let the CSM know that they had a good interaction with support.

So they could leverage that data point direct to renewal discussion. So it's something new we are starting. We have not developed that muscle yet, but that's how we could help each other.

Like detect positive moments, negative moments, figure out when to surface that. So they could help during the renewal discussion. It could help with the price increase.

If you have a price increase discussion, you need all the ammunition. So if you get all those data points from support, every time you call us, you get good interactions, that's a data point CSMs can use. So the more CSMs leverage the insights from support, they will be better off in their role.

So it's more co-ed sentiments.

-: 10:53

It's a team selling sport. Emre, I love this and I love what you said at the end about what you're doing good today, but what you can do better. It feels like I'm going to distill it down almost to this elementary sense of like, let's keep doing our job, executing incredibly well, but let's add this layer of critical thinking on top of like, OK, well, what happens before they enter this journey and what's going to happen after they exit this journey?

Are there ways in which we can improve upon that as well? Which I think is really this like next level of thinking that it can be really challenging. It requires an elevated level of thinking.

Emre, that is our time. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing this topic with us. Would love for you to come back maybe in a couple of months and tell us how you're doing with that piece that you're improving upon.

What have you put in place and what sort of metrics have you been measuring? How has it been going? But until that time, we do have to say goodbye.

Thanks for having me.

[VO] (: 10:59

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