How to Get Started Outsourcing Customer Support (E155)
Play • 46 min
  • Jim Coleman
  • Co-Founder of xFusion

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Transcript:

Charles (00:00):

In this episode of the business. E-Commerce I talk with Jim Coleman about how to get started outsourcing customer support. This is the business of e-commerce episode, 155.

Charles (00:18):

Welcome to the Business of eCommerce. The show that helps e-commerce retailers to start, launch and grow their e-commerce business. I’m your host Charles Palleschi and I’m here today with Jim Coleman. Jim is a co-founder of X fusion where they provide outsourced customer support for e-commerce businesses. I asked him on the show today to talk about if you’re a founder and you’re thinking of hiring your first support person or outsourcing support, what are some of the do’s and don’ts and what are some things you should absolutely do to make your first support hire or outsource successful? You works with a lot of e-commerce retailers. So I think he brings some great advice to the table and has some great tips out. So let’s get into the show and if you have any questions, leave in the show notes and I can forward them over to Jim. So let’s get into this. So Hey Jim, how you doing today? Good, Charles, how are you? Good. Awesome. I have you on the show. I’m excited to dig into the topic of customer support and outsourcing. It’s very near and dear to my heart. So, so real quick, what do you, so you run an agency. Oh, so I was saying support essentially, right?

Jim (01:31):

We do. Yeah, it’s called X fusion.io. And we, we provide customer support customer success to founders. We started kind of scratching our own itch. My, my co-founder David and I are both business owners and we built out a team internally on, on each of our companies. And then wanted to bring that to the broader market so that we kicked off mid 2019. And it’s been growing since then.

Charles (01:54):

Okay. Yeah. So I feel like support is one of those things where everyone just want to, like the, it’s usually one of the first things you see, like you’re trying to word this correctly, the biggest time sink at the beginning, where you’re just spending a ton of back and forth. And a lot of founders want to kind of get it off their plate early, but I don’t think a lot know how or know the right way. Maybe they’re like running out of their inbox or just as no docs, just kind of doing everything out of their own head. What do you kind of see that? Do you folks usually come to you at the beginning when, Hey, you know, I’m a founder, I’m doing a hundred percent of support and I want to get this moving somewhere else. So [inaudible],

Jim (02:35):

Well, we have a really nice mix of both. So we have, we have solo founders that come to us and they’re just overwhelmed and swallowed up in support requests and other responsibilities. And then we also work with the existing teams to help them scale. I enjoy both, but I particularly enjoy working with, with founders because of the, the wins that we can help them achieve at the earlier level. And, and what I mean is just that we, we like to focus on helping founders get back to the highest and best use of their time. And I recognize that like everybody has to make the decision on like when is the right time to pull the trigger for them. And I recognize that, you know, we have to build up revenue before we have the, the, the bandwidth to be able to hire a team to handle support.

Jim (03:12):

But one thing I’d like to consider is like, if, if you’re at that place where you can afford to do so, and you don’t, then you’re spending a good chunk of time working on tasks that are not the highest and best use of your time. In other words, things that other people can effectively handle for you. And, and you’re not working on areas of the business that only you can handle. So what we’ve seen is that once once a founder will kind of take that jump and hire us to handle support, they really free up a lot of their time. And that allows them to move forward at a much faster pace than the other ways. So I just, I really enjoy talking to founders and, and, and just discussing their business with them and helping them get those early wins.

Charles (03:48):

What would you say if someone was kind of sitting there thinking about this because you have this obviously outsource, or do I hire someone a direct hire full-time if someone’s kind of way in that back and forth? Well, we do kind of tell them what they should, how they should be looking at that.

Jim (04:02):

Yeah. It’s interesting. Like w w we don’t compete with, or we’d like to think of ourselves as not competing with other outsource companies, but rather with the idea of hiring internal versus versus external. It, what I mean is like a lot of, a lot of outsource companies will provide a resource to answer tickets, for example, on a per response basis. So the idea is that one agent might be shared across, you know, five or seven clients, and they’ll sort of go into multiple different inboxes and it’s really hard to get high quality support. I’m just not a fan of that. It’s all of our agents are full-time dedicated. We really focus on the customer experience and we believe that if you deliver that next level of customer experience, that it will pay off in time and think like brands like Chick-fil-A, you know, there’s just something magical about what they do.

Jim (04:44):

Southwest airlines, Zappos. There’s a lot of these that they provide next level support in it. It creates the the culture in their brand and their brain’s reputation and really helps take them to the next level. So that’s the idea like we’re, we’re providing that level of service. So yeah, I mean, it just, it, it depends on, on, you know, the, the founder’s priorities and what they’re looking to do. There’s certainly pros and cons of each approach, but one of the pros, I guess, of, of outsourcing would be the, the built-in management as well. So we provide redundant agents to help cover the inbox. And then, you know, we also provide leadership and management over the inbox as well. So it really just depends on, on where the founders out and how much how involved they want to be in the process.

Charles (05:28):

Yeah. It’s nice to have the redundancy, right. Because even if it’s dedicated, that person is going to have like time off at some point, and I’ve done that before, back in the day, there was one support person here, and when they’re not here, you know, you have, the founder kind of has to step back into support and having a backup. That’s the biggest thing. When you go from one to two, then all of a sudden, like, all right, now there’s, but if you can’t do that, then yeah, it’s nice to have a backup when a founder is starting, how you, how do you get someone? Let’s say I’m doing it full time, right? Like I’m doing support myself as a founder. How do you get them to basically like, download their thought, process, their brain into something that someone else can pick up and run with? Like, what does that process look like?

Jim (06:12):

Really important. I think that if we broaden that out just a little bit wider and kind of look at a 30,000 foot perspective, I’m really a fan of, it’s kind of funny. It’s funny that this, this is related in my mind, but back in the day I was in law enforcement and I went through sort of the, the law enforcement pursuit driving course, and we’re blazing around the track. And they told me that smooth is fast and fastest smooth. And I I’ve, I’ve related that to the business world and saying that like, look, if, if we’re going too fast in our business where we don’t have time to document the process where we’re not building out process maps, and we’re sort of carefully documenting what we do and how we do it, then in my opinion, we’re moving too fast. It’s, it’s the idea of building a skyscraper on a sand sand foundation versus on concrete.

Jim (06:52):

So I really encourage founders to take the time to, to document the processes. So for example, if you answer a regular ticket or the same type of ticket on a regular basis, to just take a moment to document the process, to do that, and you’re basically creating training assets and also just like other processes in your business. One of the things we do is we provide back office support as well. So not just customer support, but back office tasks, things that are just kind of you know, fairly simple tasks that are, but they’re also time-consuming. So, and I also told the founders that we work with, like, you know, at first, this is going to be more painful than beneficial to you. And what I mean by that is you’re going to have to slow down your regular output and work with us to train the initial agent as to what, what you, what we want them to do, what their responsibilities are going to be, but then you’ll be able to accelerate after that person takes on other responsibilities you’ve got. And then from that point, we create training assets and also support assets. So internal and external support docs processes in the inbox, all of that. And then we handle the training of future agents as, as our, our clients scale. But yeah, I think it’s just important for the founder to take a moment and document those processes. And gosh, I’ve seen that payoff so many times, it’d be really beneficial as founders grow.

Charles (08:04):

This week’s episode is sponsored by Prisync. Prisync is a competitor price tracking and repricing tool that helps e-commerce companies make intelligent pricing decisions. Using the dashboard and daily Excel reports Online sellers can monitor price changes and immediately make pricing adjustments. Here’s some features that I love about Prisync. First is smart match. What smart match does is allows Prisync to search for our competitors and attach their prices right on your dashboard. So you can monitor their pricing changes against competitors. You already know about, they find competitors. You didn’t even know existed. Once you have that, you can configure your repricing rules. What this does is you can now set your prices to be based on the average price, the lowest price, the highest price of your competitors go up and down. And also you can say, don’t go lower than my cost by plus $5. Whatever you want to do, you can set these rules and pricing will automatically adjust your prices. Next is price change notifications. You can set rules to when prices change pricing will send you a notification alerting you of your competitors. Prisync changes last, but not least is a price history. You can then go in to the dashboard and look up all the pricing changes over time, the price, and because of monitoring that way, you know, just because it’s slower today, they might just be having a sale and it might come back tomorrow. You can see all your competitors on one charge. Super cool. I urge you to check it out. Thanks again for Prisync, for sponsoring this week’s episode. Now back to the show.

Charles (09:44):

Yeah. I think a lot of people get hung up thinking it has to be this like perfect thing from the beginning, right? Like it has to be this like golden document. That’s like a PDF and you can like send it to everyone.

Charles (09:54):

And what I’ve always tried to do, at least my approach here is like, if you’re getting the same question, even two or three times, just create like a KB article. It can be pretty basic. Like almost you basically just answer that person’s question, but now when a KB article and just send it to them, and then next time take that same KB article and just like add something or do something and just make it a little better. And at some point it becomes like, it becomes the document. It really is like the definitive guide to whatever. And you know, each time you send it to someone it’s going to get better and you’re going to refine it, but just be okay, be okay with the bad version. Like it’s, you know, like there’s no like police or they come after you like the doc, the PDF beliefs. It’s okay. I think that’s what people kind of get stuck on.

Jim (10:35):

Yeah. I’m glad you’re bringing that up because I think a healthy caveat to what I said was, or is that this idea that like analysis paralysis is not good. That’s not healthy, you know, doing these things at the absence or in the absence of taking action is not good. So it’s not a matter of having the perfect foundation. It’s a matter of just like documenting the steps and moving on. And then the idea is to save time in the future, not get bogged down in perfectionism. So that’s, that’s a really good point. I’m glad you brought that up. Yeah.

Charles (11:00):

Well, what else, what else do you kind of see people getting bogged down on, in their early stages other than just like analysis paralysis?

Jim (11:07):

Yeah, I, I think that that’s really important to consider, like from a 30,000 foot perspective, the type of customer support that you want to offer, like what you want your brand to be known for. We really prefer to work with clients that have an emphasis on providing amazing customer support. But not everybody does, but I think it’s important to decide like what, what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do that. Establishing expectations and KPIs. Like, Hey, we expect four chats to be answered within five minutes or less. We expect for emails to be answered within an hour or less. And then just looking at the higher level things of, of the type of experience that you want to deliver to your customers and the culture that you want to build out your company. So things like going above and beyond, we gotta remember when I was a teenager, I think it was like 18.

Jim (11:47):

I worked at home Depot and we used to get in trouble if we would point to it. Like if someone came up and said like, Hey know, we’re, we’re light switches. If we would point to where they are, it’s like, Oh, it’s 18. Like we would get in trouble for that. Like the expectation was that we would go above and beyond. We would walk them over there, even if it wasn’t our department. And we would show them you know, where the item is in a corollary now in, in the world of remote customer support is if a customer writes in and they ask you a question about X and you know that when they go down that path or they’re naturally going to have a question about, Y we’ll include that in your answer. If they ask you a question like, Hey, what would you recommend? Like, can, can your app do this? Or can, you know, do you guys sell this? If the answer is no, then make some suggestions. It’s the idea of going above and beyond to build that that brand culture in sort of yeah, just the, the culture of your brand and the way that you treat your customers,

Charles (12:38):

How do you train people to actually do that kind of above and beyond? Because I do love on home Depot when I asked, you know, where like these little tiny screws are and they’re like, Oh, let me come. Like, hold your hand and bring you down there. And like, I wonder if I’m on my own, like, but how do you, how do you actually train people to do that? Especially in a remote culture where you can’t see them pointing, like, you know, how do you get them to actually understand like lead the customer and go with them and help them without,

Jim (13:01):

Yeah, that’s a great question. The way we handle it is through vetting very early on. So we definitely provide training. We have an internal boot camp and I’ll, I’ll talk to that about that in a minute, but, but our focus is really from the beginning, we, we hire a 0.5% of the total number of people that apply. And we ask them a series of questions that are really designed to assess their interest in providing next level customer support. We want to find those people that naturally do that. So we have kind of like a little snippets built into questions that evaluate for that. So I really recommend when, when, when founders hire somebody, whether that’s outsourced or, or, you know, on their own team that they really evaluate that person’s personality and mindset from the very beginning in the way that they answer questions, both in written form.

Jim (13:41):

And then also excuse me, in, in interview, you know, during the interview process. And then after we, we hired them. So, like I said, it’s a very small percentage that we hire. We put them through an internal bootcamp where we go into really great detail. And by the way, like they they’ve already been hired with the expectation that they have excellent writing quality. We’ve already vetted all of that. And that they have a, an emphasis on empathy and really providing a high level of service to the customers they interact with. But from there, we provide a lot of training to them that really instills the idea of our brands. Like we are, we are, we deliver next level of customer support. Here are the ways that we do that. And we have discussions with that. So we have a full-time dedicated trainer that provides training to them and, and also writing coaching, et cetera.

Jim (14:24):

But it’s just, it’s setting the tone from the very beginning. And I find that like, in most cases, people really rise to those expectations. It’s just like, how is it that Chick-fil-A over and over provides this incredibly high level of service. And yet, like McDonald’s taco bell, some of these other ones just don’t like it has something to do with the culture and the expectations. And then we’re like, we’re like very much like the Netflix philosophy. We’re, we’re quick to let people go. If we have to, if they’re not meeting that it’s not without working with them and giving them a chance, but we just really focus on maintaining a culture of excellent customer experience and just been a real priority.

Charles (15:02):

What’s a quick example of a question you would ask to test for empathy. Like, you know, I’ve done a lot of interviews and testing for the hard skills, right? The technical skills. I got it. Like, can you do this? Like this, there’s a process of that, but testing for empathy, it’s definitely more of a, you know a soft skill. W what is, what is some questions you’d actually ask to find out, you know, like, are you a nice person? Like, how do you actually get that out of someone

Jim (15:28):

It’s theoretical scenario based questions? So for example, someone writes in and they are on a free trial of a Shopify app, and they ask for an extension, what do you do? Or like, we actually, we, we will give them, we will give them information. Like I own a small SAS business within the Shopify space. And I’ll literally say, okay, here, here’s the name of the business. Here’s what we do. Like, here’s basic foundational elements, and here’s the customer question. And I’ll literally like, quote you know, Hey, this is Bob. I’m really upset because of this, this, and this, and all evaluate how they, how they answer that. And then we have other questions, like I think one that we ask is you found out that your friend is, has been falsely accused and is in prison in a foreign country. What do you do?

Jim (16:09):

So like little things like that, it’s like, you know, yeah, it’s kind of goofy, but like, it’s amazing how, how we can vet people and just based on the way they answer that. And then also just getting a feel interviewing them, you know? And I just, I, I really think that that all of us, or certainly most of us have kind of a sixth sense about people and the way that they they connect on a call and the way they answer questions, et cetera. So it’s kind of a combination of all of those things.

Charles (16:33):

Yeah. It’s definitely, it’s a, it’s a tough position to hire for, right. Because yeah. You have to get on a call and you have to kind of really talk to someone like face to face. I know like the last support position we hired for here quite literally got hundreds of resumes and, you know, you bring those down to people. Okay. So let’s get a subset and now, okay, let’s get people on the phone and by the time you’re done with it, you’re like, I’ve just talked to a lot of people to find, you know, one hire. So

Jim (16:59):

Charles real quick, before we move on, I think it’s really important too, to consider that, like, if it has to start at the top, it has to start with the founder. If, if you, as a founder, don’t deeply, deeply believe in this. If you don’t deliver that level of support, you it’s like, I, I still answer, like we, we have a team of 20 20 staff, but for my, for my own small South, like I still provide all the customer support because I want to have an ear to the ground. Like I want to, to, to never forget what it’s like to provide that, that initial support. And that really helps me stay aligned. And it helps me continue that focus of, of excellent customer support. Like if it, like you can’t tell somebody to provide excellent customers for it, if you don’t believe in that yourself, or if you don’t provide that yourself. So I think a good first step is to deeply evaluate that and make sure that you’re really aligned with that. It’s not just something that you say, but it’s like really what you believe and you’re passionate about for your brand.

Charles (17:52):

Yeah. I’ve always thought of what that kind of just seeing when, when you see behind the scenes of founder, how they talked to the team internally about customers behind their back. If that makes sense. I’ve seen, like when you’re behind the scenes, you can tell the founders that kind of like, almost talk kind of like down about customers and users. And then you realize like, Oh, that’s how they, that’s how the team is talking to the public to the customers about that. But the founders internally, they’re like, I love my users. Like they like the biggest, like, they’re like the cheerleaders for the users. This, it just seems like it comes out in the support team. I don’t know, that’s at least what I’ve kind of, from my limited seeing inside enough companies, it’s almost how the founder talks about the users that influences how the support team will talk about the users.

Jim (18:39):

Yeah. It’s like, it’s the idea that the internal culture seeps out no matter what, and you can’t stop that. So I think that’s so critical. I mean, the way that we treat our team again starts there and like, we treat them like, they’re very valuable to us because they are. So in terms of like paying more, like providing better benefits and just autonomy, like I despise screen recording software. I hate it because like, I don’t want, like, I don’t want my screen to be monitored constant. I don’t want it to feel like I’m being monitored. Like we want to extend trust. It’s amazing how many people will rise to that level of trust. They really want to meet expectations. So the point is to like consider the internal culture of your company and make sure that’s locked on. And then the natural outflow of that is the way that the team is going to treat customers.

Charles (19:27):

Yeah. I like that. When you said you guys do an internal bootcamp, what does it, so someone kind of finally gets a job and then what are they actually kind of going? Like, how do you get someone trained up on someone else’s business? Like, what’s that look like?

Jim (19:40):

Yeah. Well th well, the internal bootcamp is an internal training before they’re ever client facing. So they go through several days of training. They’re working with a trainer, we have a lot of material as it relates to writing quality grammar, writing, structure, tone, empathy, like next level support, the way that we interact on our teams. So just healthy, remote communication. We work everybody’s remote and we, we, we use Slack. So just like all of our expectations in terms of the way we, we communicate all of that is handled initially in that bootcamp training. And then after that, they’re introduced to the client and that’s when the client training begins. So we ask our client to provide that initial training to their agent or agents as well as the team leader. So from the beginning, we have a, a backup with, with the team leader being trained concurrently. And then that process takes from sometimes as little as a few days to a week and sometimes multiple weeks, if it’s a really complicated technical product, but, but in the e-commerce commerce world, you know, one week on average and then we take it from there. Yeah.

Charles (20:40):

Yeah. It’s a nice part. It’s support for e-commerce. I feel like there’s a lot of level one, like where’s my, where’s my tracking number. Where’s my order. Or those kinds of does this fit, you know, that sort of thing. How do you guys handle when it actually is like a research question on I was just working with an automotive retailer, right? Where does this part fit in this Mustang or whatever. And people will call what those sort of are used to sell equipment for like kind of old machines and like, does this heat, our work, does this heating element work in this machine? And as a support person, you kind of have to go and like open PDFs and stuff, like looking around it’s do you guys do, do you guys train people to do all that? Is that like a knowledge database? Cause a lot, it would just be literally going to like a manufacturer’s website, digging in finding a part number. And it’s, it’s one of those things. It’s, there’s no like direct process. That’s more literally just Googling and doing a bunch of research. A lot of times

Jim (21:33):

It is our expectation that every member of our team goes above and beyond and provides a next level of customer support, including, you know, doing research and things like that. It’s also very important that they communicate really well. So for example, if an average ticket takes maybe five minutes to answer, depending on the client, if we have a team member that’s spending say 20 minutes or 30 minutes, and their output is lower because they’re really digging into a particular ticket. Like I mentioned, we don’t use screen recording software, but we instead ask them to prioritize really excellent communication. So we asked them to make an internal note say like on help scout or Intercom or whatever platform we’re using to say, Hey, you know, I spent about 20 minutes researching this ticket so I could provide an excellent answer to the, to the customer. And also it comes to like back to healthy expectations.

Jim (22:14):

Like when I have a conversation with a prospective client, I make sure that they know our focus on customer support. And I make sure it’s a good match. Not, not everybody is. And that’s okay. Like, like there are some people that, that really want to provide some sort of like super fast answers. They don’t want to go above and beyond. They want to run their business that way. And that’s fine, but we have a conversation up front to say like, Hey, this, this is our brand. This is the level of support we provide. And just to make sure it’s a good fit I guess like to play devil’s advocate, there’s there’s times when that can be too much or it becomes you know, unreasonable. So, you know, there’s, there’s a point where we need to have a conversation with the client and say like, Hey, like, this is how much time we’re finding that the, that the agent is spending, providing this level of support. Like, how’s that working for you? Are you, you know, are you good with that or whatever? There’s always a line. Right. And, and it’s rare, but you know, sometimes customers can kind of push that. So you know, to be reasonable as well.

Charles (23:06):

Yeah. I think there’s a, there’s a a match between the agent and what the business requires for that type of ticket. Right. I’ve done e-commerce support before where you should have, you should basically betaine between when you touch the ticket and when you close the ticket, it should be in the minutes, like, you know, sub five, right. But then what sparks shipping this, some tickets where I’d expect easily, someone could spend over an hour and particular tech cash totally normal. They might we talk about screen recording. You would have material apart from like a time tracker. Sometimes we do screen recordings, just literally someone support agents recording their screen to send to user, Oh, I’m a huge

Jim (23:46):

Fan of that. I love that. Yeah. Like send a little video. Totally. Oh man. That people are blown away by that. It’s funny because again, I use this all the time at at my small software business when I provide support. But like people like, so I, it would take me maybe 10 or 15 minutes to write out a fairly lengthy reply with screenshots, or I can make it two minute video and just show them what to do and even better yet do it for them if that’s appropriate and send them the video, people are just blown off their chairs. They’re going, they cannot believe that live. It’s funny because like, I just saved myself, you know, 10 or 12 minutes, like, but they’re just amazed by that. And it creates this like sort of a personal connection as well, because we’re so removed. Like this, the thing about that we have to fight against with remote communication is that, that distance between people, you know, but so I, when I record a loom video, I like to have my face in the bottom left corner or whatever. So I’m just making a connection with the customer and they know I’m a human and they know I’m specifically talking to them. They can see my screen I’m on their website or whatever. And it’s just very connective and really builds, builds brand loyalty, which is a great bonus.

Charles (24:51):

Yeah. I feel like that, like you said, they, you know, they’re talking to you, right? Like we’re a support issue the other day with eBay. And somebody had to reach out to them and contact them and you’ve read the response. And you’re like, is this, even to me, like, this could be literally to anyone. Like, I don’t even know, like you write this like one page on email and you get back, there’s like two lines. And like, they could have just copied them. This most likely is copy and pasted versus with alum. Like you said, if it’s appropriate that, like in your account, they’re basically doing the setup for you and there’s no confusion and then you can go back, replay it. And yeah, we, I love doing that. Any other kind of things like that, that you’ve kind of found work very, very good to like personalize.

Jim (25:30):

Yeah, exactly. And that’s what I wanted to speak to a little bit more, I think saved replies as a template or a great idea and necessary because the truth is like most businesses have redundant questions, but, but there’s, there’s no reason that the, the agent or the, or the founder, if they’re answering support tickets themselves, can’t personalize that, you know, so you can start with a snippet, you have the, the basic information that they need, but, you know, add some personalization, you know, the things that are even obviously personalized, like, Hey, happy Friday, you know, or good afternoon, like things like that. And then also restating their questions. So yeah, you’re going to provide a template to answer, but restating the question. So, so they know they, they were listened to, right. Like, I mean, we all desire to be listened to, and, and you can prove that you’ve listened to their, their, their question, but just sort of recapping that in a, in a quick sentence.

Jim (26:18):

Another thing that I ask our team to be really careful of is to make sure that, that they’re catching all of this sentence or all of the the questions within the customer query. So attention to detail. So as you know, customer right. Might write in and they have a question initially, and then a lot more information. And then there’s another little question buried at the end. So being really careful to, to, to grab those and make sure that you know, that they’re just paying really close attention and listening well to the customer. Yeah. That’s of those things. When you read

Charles (26:44):

Some users, when they send a support ticket, it’s like a two line support message where like, all right, two lines statement, question, got it. Let’s do this other times, you get this like wall of text and there’s like question, and you can see this like question marks peppered inside. And you’re like, all right, this is gonna, this is gonna, this is gonna take some time just to like untangle and like, all right, let’s read, pick out the questions, respond to each one. Cause people then will go, Oh, did you not respond to all my questions? You’re like, I don’t know what are six of them like that I missed. One was in a question. And like, so you need to really on some of them spend your time. And like this time of just like breaking it apart. Just so you can actually get in line.

Charles (27:22):

And I think what people, what people will miss and it helps to keep in mind is you spend all this time and effort and money acquiring customers, right? You spend ad dollars, you’re spending marketing dollars, all this stuff. And then to lose someone to drop the ball, it’s like, literally like you’re right there. You’re, you’re, you know, you’re almost in the end zone and you just dropped the ball on something that could have just been a nice experience. And that’s kinda, I feel like people need to frame support like that, that it’s, you’ve spent all this money and resource and time already. And now you’re just like, this is a finish line and you just need to, like, you just need to do a good job here.

Jim (28:03):

Yeah. I think all of us at different times as founders are guilty of overemphasizing sales and marketing at the expense of, you know, what would it be? Customer loyalty, longevity, reducing churn. I mean, it just hit you, right? I mean, it’s, it’s crazy to spend and I’m not throwing stones. I’ve totally been there, but like they spent so much money and effort acquiring a new customer only to lose them through, through an interaction that that could have been better, you know, or lack of checking in with them or whatever. I mean, it’s like just, just painful. In to that, in another thing that comes to mind, I think is really important is to, to like, whether you hire internally as a founder or you hire externally a support company to, to give your, your team permission to, to make decisions on behalf of the customer to extend trust to them, to, for example, refund requests, like what are the parameters that they can provide excellent service.

Jim (28:54):

Like they don’t have to come back to you. And also like it’s interruptive for them to go back to the founder, but also it provides a poor you know, poor, poor, poor level of support to sort of like, let me get back to you on this refund. So to extend trust and permissions to the agents, to be able to give refunds up to a certain dollar amount or effectively do whatever within reason it takes to please a client. I I’ve heard of famous brands like Ritz-Carlton that allow their staff. I don’t remember the dollar amount, but some obscene dollar amount that the staff can do. Whatever they think is necessary to provide the next level of customer support to their customers. So things like that, where you empower the team to, to be able to provide that, and they feel like they have a sense of autonomy and authority to provide that level of support.

Charles (29:38):

What do you say? Because I’ve seen a lot of founders get hung up on one where like refunds, something like that, where you just think the support agents are gonna like run a muck and give everyone a refund. And I see people get like really hung up on, like, it never happens, but like, I see people really get worried about this. What do you kind of tell people to, you know, like that’s, and I know it’s not realistic, but only from, you know, I’ve done it, but like before you’ve done it, how do you tell people, like, that’s not going to happen? Like, trust me, it just never happens.

Jim (30:07):

Yeah. That’s what I think is I think it’s good to, to have a conversation early on and just set really clear expectations. So it will be my job to talk to the founder to say, okay, you know, Joe, what, like, what are your things, what are you thinking in terms of like maximum dollar amount that we can extend permission to the team to refund. And just also having a bit of a philosophical conversation on you know, like, like, like scarcity mindset versus an abundance mindset. So like, not like I don’t want to go in and sort of like, act like I know everything about their business and kind of take over, but I think it’s fun and interesting to have a philosophical conversation and just sit and, you know, talk about things like that. It’s like, well, what do you generally feel about refunds?

Jim (30:44):

You know, because in my experience I’ve found that like, if we’re quick with refunds, even if we get taken advantage of on occasion and that sometimes happens, it’s better in the long run to have…

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