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  • Support Snapshot: Zapier’s All-Company Support, Disney+ From Zero to 325K in a Day, and Curated Roles Without the Fluff

Support Snapshot: Zapier’s All-Company Support, Disney+ From Zero to 325K in a Day, and Curated Roles Without the Fluff

This week in CX: team-wide support in action, streaming chaos at scale, and AI spin that missed the mark.

Author

Naja McGowan
May 09, 2025

I am on a mission to bring a little bit of ease to your week, by giving you the best of the CS podcasts from the week, and a little bit of news and community.

🦸 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.

if you only have a few minutes, check these out

📣 Voices of Support

Thibaut Martin 🦊 has launched a new podcast - Voices of Support! Episode 2 is an interview of Andre L.

➡️ Watch minute 16 for a happy relatable story about mentorship as you move up.

📈 Zero to 325,000 in One Day

Next in Queue with Rob Dwyer - I usually skip intros to podcasts (and books and YouTube videos 🙈) but this intro is worth the time.

  • Also minute 25:30 for a play-by-play of Brian Dunphy taking Disney+ support from zero to 325,000 contacts in one day. This had me riveted while I scrambled eggs this morning.

🌱 Growth Support

Nivedha Venkatesh charts the course from frontline agent to CEO tells us what we know: support is a career, not just a stepping stone.

➡️ Watch minute 20 for this great discussion:

❝

Taking ownership ... what are some problems that have just been lingering in limbo - just picking that up and seeing what you can do with it.

🌏 Whole-company support!

Mathew Patterson, Alison Groves , and Kristi Ernst Thompson are joined by a cast of characters to discuss how everyone at Help Scout has been popping in to the queue from the beginning.

➡️ Watch minute 12:30 for Alison Groves's short take.

➡️ I also like this clip of Wade Foster, CEO of Zapier, about how they have done all-company support from day one.

Last week, Priscilla Brooke just talked about all-company support on Growth Support - seems like the common thread is her quote here:

"whatever pain points that are real that we see in support all the time, [developers] are going to see that face to face ... and it gives them a higher respect for the support team and what we're dealing with."

More podcasts:

🤬 Airbnb

Airbnb just keeps getting more tone-deaf. Check out this master class in jumping to manipulated conclusions:

“One thing I’ll say about AI [is that] it is definitely making the customer experience easier … It has already led to a 15% reduction in people needing to contact live human agents,”

Anyone who's rage-quit a support conversation with an AI bot knows "reduction in live contacts" does not equal an easier customer experience.

🍦 Happy Thoughts

This article is directed at customers on how to complain effectively, and the whole thing is interesting, but especially this part:

Service retailer Timpson, which consistently tops the UKICS rankings, relies on what it calls “upside down management” to keep its customers happy.

Staff are empowered to follow their own instincts to ensure good service, including reducing or waiving prices and offering up to £500 in goodwill if disaster strikes. The result? Employees entrusted with such agency are happier, and complainants feel heard.

📌 How Front nails onboarding - Beyker Estrada breaks down his experience as a new support specialist.

📌 Mercer Smith (author of CXOXO) is writing her next book out loud, chapter by chapter, and it's great.

📌 Neal's new metrics newsletter is out! Subscribe here because it's just so darn useful.

📌 Professional Helpers newsletter is out with a curated list of actual job listings -- scams and forever-open roles removed, thanks Ashley Hayslett 🙏🏼)

🦸 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.