Support Snapshot: 3 Great Sound Bites, Pop Culture Fun, and Must-See Newsletters

your pre-weekend podcast plan for support, SaaS, remote work, and being a good manager

Someone asked me this week, why do you do this newsletter? Why, if you're trying to gain subscribers of your own, are you lifting up other voices?

Well, I believe we all rise together. Competition, undercutting, trying subtly to silence others to be heard - these aren't the world I want to be in or create.

🎤 This Week in the Podcastiverse

⏳ Quick podcast highlight links:

if you only have a few minutes, check these out

• Digital CX: minute 21 for inspiration on how to craft emails to customers about product features.

• Growth Support: minute 21:30 for Kenji's story of sacrificing his own remote role to keep his team remote - this gives me all the feels, especially:

• Next in Queue: minute 30 about how QA is much more effective than surveying customers.

🦸 This newsletter is brought to you by Supportman.io, which connects Intercom to Slack with AI to give agents feedback and surface problems in real time.

your rollup of the customer support podcast highlights this week

😄 The Happy Holly Path

Holly Goodliffe on The Digital CX Podcast, hosted by Alex Turkovic - this episode is delightful but targeted more toward customer success teams. I picked out these two sections for support leaders:

➡️ Watch minute 21 for inspiration on how to craft emails to customers about product features. Yes, it's a more CS / marketing function than support, but it's a great lesson about working with product and resisting the urge to overcomplicate communications.

➡️ I also think this bit about a "happy path" is compelling - does your support team know what the happy path for your tool is? How could you make that more clear?

🌱 How to Build Remote Culture

Kenji Hayward on Growth Support hosted by Neal Travis 🌱  shares his secrets for keeping his fully-remote support team the most engaged team at his org. What I don't love: the work-life imbalance in the intro. Y'all - when I'm not working, I'm not thinking about support. I'm knitting, or paddleboarding, or laughing with my fam. Remember: thinking about work when you're not at work is an early stage of burnout.

Here's what I did love:

➡️ Start watching at minute 12:50 to hear Kenji's strategy for hiring on a remote international team.

➡️ Minute 21:30 for Kenji's story of sacrificing his own remote role to keep his team remote - this gives me all the feels, especially:

🤖 AI QA FTW

JD Fairweather talks with Rob Dwyer on Next in Queue about consulting as a longtime gig, QA, and the future of AI.

• check out minute 30 about how AI can turn QA into the "most important metric within an organization" and how listening to support interactions is much more effective than surveying customers.

More podcasts:

• Mathew Patterson and Priscilla Brooke - two amazing podcasters join up on Priscilla's Happy to Help podcast to talk about knowledge management.

• Creating a Zero-Risk Experience with Denise Thompson and John R. DiJulius III on The Customer Service Revolution podcast especially this anecdote about Starbucks giving out free drinks - they expected employees would give them out too much but found the reverse was true.

• The Table Service Podcast: host Jordan Hooker interviews Neal Travis 🌱 - check out minute 20: Neal discusses his "three domains" theory for managing a support team: knowledge, quality, and data.

🌎 Around the Web

🎬 Customer Support Meets Pop Culture

You know how it is to watch a medical drama with a nurse, or CSI with a science nerd? All the "but that would never happen..." and "oh come on..." Well take that, mix in iconic moments from movies and TV, and flavor it with customer support, and the result is just adorable.

This isn't technically a podcast episode but it is from the wonderful Mathew Patterson whose The Supportive podcast we frequently (ok always) feature here.

➡️ Watch Customer Support pros react to movie clips - spend 4 minutes on my favorite clip ("flair" from Office Space) and stay for the inimitable Mr Bean if you'd like.

The Newsletters

💸 This newsletter from Remote Source is just great - don't worry it's not all about the stock market. The Remote work headlines section is worth a scan. Highly recommend subscribing for quick headlines and scannable news for remote workers.

💬 Normalize Not Knowing Everything is wonderful, thank you Robert Cabral for this - another great newsletter to subscribe to: Beyond the Queue.

👵 Alisha Joseph's newsletter on cross-generational leadership is worth a read for anyone (um, all of us) who work with people of all ages. I like how this boils a complex issue down into memorable notes: Gen X = practicality; Millennials = flexibility; Gen Z = technology. Of course it's not that simple, but it's a useful way to begin and her article dives deeper.

📌 The Yetto blog is an absolute delight, but their emails are even better. Here's an example - subscribe here. Kudos to Brian Levine for crafting genuinely likable support content. Including this tip for hiring managers:

🧩 Little Bits

📌 If you haven't yet, please take a minute and fill out Conor Pendergrast's Learning & Dev survey!

📌 I'm really looking forward to the new season of Manager to Manager from Kamaria Scott - it's not specific to support but I'll be curating episodes for all you support managers right here as they come out.

🦸 This newsletter is brought to you by Supportman.io, which connects Intercom to Slack with AI to give agents feedback and surface problems in real time.