Tips for Hiring a Stellar Customer Support Team

Ever wondered what secret sauce goes into crafting an exceptional customer support team? Buzzsprout Co-Founder, Marshall Brown, joins us to peel back the curtain on the traits and talents that make or break the art of support. 

We're sharing our hiring playbook at Buzzsprout, revealing creative interview techniques, and the importance of soft skills like patience, empathy, and effective communication. We'll share insights and stories that might have you rethinking the way you approach hiring, training, and nurturing your customer support staff!

To cap it off, we tackle a listener's tech support gripe and turn it into a teachable moment on validating customers' concerns with respect and diligence. 

We want to hear from you! Share your support stories and questions with us at happytohelp@buzzsprout.com!

Follow us on Instagram @happytohelppod

To learn more about Buzzsprout visit Buzzsprout.com

Transcript

Priscilla: 0:00

Welcome to Happy to Help, a podcast about customer support from the people at Buzzsprout. I'm your host, Priscilla Brooke. Today we're talking about hiring the right people for your support team. We'll talk about the skills we look for in possible new hires and the process we use for finding the best person for the job. Thanks for joining us. Let's get into it. As always, we have Jordan with us today producing the show. Hi Jordan, how are you doing?

Jordan: 0:26

I'm doing great. I'm excited for this episode.

Priscilla: 0:28

Yeah, me too. We also have a very special guest on the show today. Marshall Brown is one of the partners here at Buzzsprout and he does a lot of work in shaping the culture for us as a team. He's also my direct report, so we usually have a lot of conversations about hiring, and he usually comes alongside me when we're hiring new people for the team, and so I'm excited to have him talk with us today about hiring. How are you doing, marshall?

Marshall: 0:52

Great Glad to be here.

Priscilla: 0:54

Can you go ahead and introduce yourself and kind of give us a little bit more about what it is that you do for Buzzsprout?

Marshall: 0:59

Sure, definitely so. As you mentioned, I'm one of the partners alongside Tom and Kevin. We've been together for a really long time and while we all wear multiple hats, I'm primarily on the financial side of the business. So I like to say, if it has to do with numbers, I typically am involved in some capacity. So that's ensuring the business is healthy from a financial standpoint, evaluating investments we want to make back into the business. So my world consists of a lot of spreadsheets and when it comes to Buzzsprout and support, I typically serve as really a resource to help navigate some issues, whether that's personnel planning, salaries, coverage. I can definitely geek out on the KPIs, all the metrics that you post around average first response time, those types of things. So I really feel like I help to ensure those pieces are solid for the team and in alignment with where we want to be and our values.

Priscilla: 1:53

Yeah, and, like I said, you also work a lot with me when we're bringing new people on the team and we'll have like a lot of conversations about new hires and so it's been really cool for me to work with you on that and so I think it's fun to have you on this episode as we're talking about bringing new people on the team and what we're going to look for when we're bringing new people on and then kind of talk through our interview process too as we bring people on the team. So, yeah, I'm excited about description and at the top of the description you'll see a link that says text the show. You can click that link and it will open a text message on your phone and it will be a direct portal to us. So you can send us a text and then we'll review them. Look through them before our next recording as we talk about hiring. If you have something to add or a question, feel free to send it in a text and we will talk about it next week.

Jordan: 2:50

So look out for that and make sure that when you do open up that text there's going to be like a podcast ID number that opens up in the text message box and don't delete it or else your text message will just go into the void. So make sure you leave that in there. But we would love for you to reach out to the show and maybe send in your support in real life stories that way, if it's a little bit easier than emailing us. Yeah, exactly.

Priscilla: 3:14

Okay, the conversation today is going to be about hiring new people and what skills we look for when we're bringing new people on the team and when we're structuring a support team, and then a little bit later we'll talk a little bit more about our interview process. So I want to start with the skills that we're looking for. We'll talk about soft skills and hard skills, and if you don't really know the difference there, soft skills are more kind of like your attitude, character, traits, their interpersonal skills, things that are more personality, and then your hard skills are more your knowledge base and maybe what you went to school for and things like that. So we're going to talk through soft skills that we look for and then we'll talk through some hard skills that we look for. So I just want to make sure we're all on the same page about what we're talking about with that as we talk through these, I think it's important to remember that most of these soft skills are going to be pretty universal for support teams. The hard skills will vary depending on your industry. At least, they can, some of them won't, but they're definitely going to be some hard skills that you might want if you're in the banking profession that we may not need here in podcasting. So as we talk through these, just keep that in mind that it'll vary a little bit, all right.

Priscilla: 4:26

So the first one I want to talk about which is no surprise to anyone, marshall, I don't know if you're caught up on listening to episodes, but we talk about this a lot. I think we talked about it on every episode so far is empathy. We want to find people for the team that are empathetic and kind of naturally, so that's one of their strengths. So when you're working in support, you're going to have people with different points of view and you need to be able to see things from their side. You're going to run into situations where you aren't in the same boat as someone, and so you have to be able to do it. And if you don't know how to do that, or if that's not something that's already kind of ingrained in you as a person, it's going to be really hard to do that. And if you're constantly having to strengthen that muscle all day, every day, you're going to burn out really quickly, and so finding someone who's doing that naturally is really really strong for joining your support team and helping your podcasters.

Marshall: 5:19

Yeah, absolutely, I have listened to those other episodes that I think you guys did a great job of capturing that and talking about it. It's essential and I think you said it well If that muscle already exists and you don't have to develop it and work on it every single day, it's a huge advantage.

Priscilla: 5:34

Yeah, Another soft skill that we look for is patience. In our job descriptions we usually include something like an overflow of patience or something like that to to kind of communicate that we don't just want a patient person, we want a person who is like drowning in patience. You're so good, You're so patient Doesn't mean you're always going to be patient. Obviously, we all run out at some point. But we want you to start with like a high patience reserve so that again, it's kind of that same thing with empathy If you don't have that right off the bat, you're gonna run out of it earlier on and you're gonna burn out quickly. So patience is a really, really important skill that we look for when we're bringing new people on the team.

Marshall: 6:15

Another one that I put right at the top of the list is independence, or something that we use a lot, that we borrowed from our friends at 37 Signals is the idea of a manager of one, and so what that encapsulates is somebody that thrives in an environment where you have that independence. So you don't need a task list. You don't need somebody with constant oversight. Like you want to push yourself to do your best work and you are motivated to do that every day.

Priscilla: 6:42

Yeah, you've got that self-motivation and I think it's important that with support, there is going to be a lot of collaboration when you're working with a support team, but having that independence and that ability to push yourself and the ability or kind of like a want to problem solve, like you know, those people who are like, oh, when I was a kid I used to take apart the television and put it back together those like problem solving brains, those are the kind of people that really excel in a support situation because they see every single question that comes in as a problem solving task that they get to work through and not something that they have to trudge through.

Priscilla: 7:16

And so I think it kind of goes along with. The manager of. One idea is not only is it that you can do it on your own and that you don't need someone to walk you through every step, it's also something that you can do it on your own and that you don't need someone to walk you through every step, it's also something that you really enjoy. You like going through those steps and being able to collaborate with people is really important, but also being able to have that like internal motivation to do really good work is also really important when you're having someone on the support team.

Marshall: 7:40

Yeah, I think that was well said, and in cases where it hasn't worked out and we have had to part ways with an employee, the number one reason is always they aren't an effective manager of one. They don't have that naturally, and so, like you said well with empathy, it's something they're trying to do every single day and that can be really exhausting, and as we're evaluating candidates and bringing somebody onto the team, we're looking for it to be a mutual fit, and that's really important. If you're in that environment like, that's not healthy for you and it's not great for us, and so we do try to identify that early on in the process.

Priscilla: 8:14

Yeah, absolutely. Another one I have on my side was humility. I think we've talked about it. I want to say we talked about it early on in one of those first episodes. But the idea that making mistakes can be a good thing and owning up to those mistakes can be really beneficial and support. And so having someone who is able to recognize that they made a mistake or that maybe their way of doing something wasn't the perfect way to do it, and kind of acknowledging that and owning those mistakes, that's really important and can really strengthen your relationship with your customers. And so looking for someone who is naturally humble is a really important part of the characteristics that we look for.

Marshall: 8:57

Yeah, and that reminds me, we all read that Patrick Lencioni book, the Ideal Team Player, and that has stuck with us that verbiage of hungry, humble and smart. So you addressed humility. Hungry, that kind of ties in with being a manager of one and being self-motivated. But then smart, smart doesn't have to do with, like, you have to have a really high IQ, it's just, hey, you need emotional intelligence, you need to be able to read a room, you need to be able to pick up on cues when you're communicating with a customer and know, hey, you can't say that they're going to take it the wrong way. And so, yeah, you're exactly right With humility. Smart is that third variable from the ideal team player.

Priscilla: 9:35

Yeah well, and that's the smarts kind of align with that empathy too, because you can use empathy as you're recognizing a situation where I need to be more empathetic here. I need to make that clear to them. They're losing that empathy, all right. Another characteristic that I look for when I'm kind of vetting possible candidates is really simple, but it's kindness. It really is like a very simple trait, but I think it's really important with support that you're a naturally kind person and not a sarcastic cynic Like sometimes I can be that way and it can be hard to kind of get out of that when I'm working in support, and so I look for people who are naturally kind, sweet people, who enjoy interacting with people. You don't have to be the most extroverted person in the room, but being a kind person that likes talking with other people, that's really important, because if you don't like talking with other people, then something a job like support, where you're talking with people every day, all day, is probably not going to be something you want to get into.

Marshall: 10:34

Yeah, I think that's absolutely right and I think kindness kind of goes lockstep with a passion for helping people Like we typically seem to find oh yeah, they excel at kindness and they have this passion for helping people. Yeah, like we typically seem to find oh yeah, they excel at kindness and they have this passion for helping people. I think both those characteristics are closely tied.

Priscilla: 10:50

Yeah, I think so too. The passion for helping people is so important. When you're looking for people to bring on to a support team, sometimes I think it's tempting to try to find someone who's like the most technical person in the room, because you want to have that skill set on your team, like someone who knows all the ins and outs of coding or all the ins and outs of whatever technical thing you're working on. But the reality is, you could have the most technical person in the world who knows everything, and they don't get life from working with people. They don't have a passion for communicating with people, and so they're never it's never going to be communicated well, and what we know with support is that the communication is maybe the most important thing. Accuracy is also important, but if it's not delivered the right way, it doesn't matter how accurate it is, and so finding people that have that passion for people is what's going to push your support from being adequate to being remarkable.

Marshall: 11:45

I just thought of one more that we always talk about it and I wanted to include it, but it's the soft skill of being a lifelong learner.

Priscilla: 11:54

Oh, that's a good one.

Marshall: 11:54

It's really important in that role because I sit in there. You guys learn new stuff all the time, like the. In line with one of our values of like we're constantly improving, there's always new stuff to learn. I think some people are wired in a way that that kind of change and that ability to adapt and learn something new is exhausting, not life-giving. And so if you can identify, hey, this person is a lifelong learner. And it makes me think of the example you gave of if you've taken apart a computer and put it back together, pretty good chance you're a lifelong learner.

Marshall: 12:26

And so as you interview is stories or examples like that come up from their past. It's always a like ding. Oh, that's interesting that person. Even though they're at this stage of life, they're continually learning and self-motivated to do that. I think that's an important soft skill.

Priscilla: 12:49

Yeah, no, I think that's a really good one because, you're right, there's always so much changing. When I first got out of college and I started working in advertising, I was working in social media and I remember being very overwhelmed with how fast the social media landscape was moving and how much I had to continue learning, and it took a minute to kind of adjust to that, coming from other roles and other jobs where it was pretty stagnant as far as that goes. And so finding someone who loves that and really like leans into it and wants to stay on top of the changing industry that you're in or the changing tools that you're using to support people, that is really, really, really important because it really never ends. I mean, when I'm bringing new people on the team, I'm always letting them know like a good part of your job is going to be studying. A good part of your job is going to be staying on top of how the product is changing, because you are the one that needs to be able to teach other people, so you have to know it inside and out. So I think that's a really, really good one to touch on.

Priscilla: 13:43

So, moving on to hard skills, these are again more like a person's knowledge, their occupational skills, things like that. There are kind of two that we look for that I've identified Marshall probably has some others but two that I want to talk about are technical familiarity. So you don't have to be a technical expert when you're joining the Buzzsprout team. In fact, in some ways it's expert when you're joining the Buzzsprout team. In fact, in some ways it's helpful if you're not the most technical person in the world, but you have to be comfortable with new technology, which I think is pretty easy these days, with most people that are entering the workforce, or really just anyone who lives on this planet is pretty technically savvy, and so you just want to find someone who is comfortable with technology. That way they can come in and then they can learn. You don't have to be an expert at the beginning because that's a pretty easy skill to teach as someone is brought into the team.

Marshall: 14:34

I absolutely agree and I think you said it really well. It just reminded me, it just thought, of a friend who sat down for a job interview and they asked him hey, could you kind of describe your relationship with technology? And he was just trying to be honest and he was like he's like, I mean, honestly, I just I hate it and I feel like it's oil and water and they were like all right. Well, appreciate you coming in.

Priscilla: 15:00

I wish everyone was that honest in interviews, like that's so good because it's like well, then now we know this is not going to be the best fit right off the bat. You hate it, then you're going to hate working with people.

Marshall: 15:10

Maybe not everyone on planet Earth, but the vast majority, 99 percent. Yeah, have that tech base that you would need for us to teach on top of.

Priscilla: 15:19

Yeah, absolutely. And then the other kind of hard skill that I identified that I think is the most important of these two skills is clarity in writing, and so what I mean is not just like writing in general. You don't have to be the fanciest, most perfect writer in the world, but you have to be able to write with clarity. And so for Buzzsprout, our support is primarily done via email. Support is primarily done via email, and so for us, this is really really important is that when we bring someone on the team, they're a clear communicator when it comes to writing. It's always helpful if you're a clear spoken communicator as well, but those things do not always line up, and so it's really important for us that when we're bringing new people on, then we're vetting new people, that we're getting an idea for their clarity when it comes to the way they write.

Marshall: 16:10

Yeah, and I would say that clarity with written communication applies universally. As you said earlier, there are definitely some hard skills that you know other industries will require, but that one is just so paramount. So, yeah, I agree, those were the two that I had too. I didn't have anything to add.

Priscilla: 16:22

Yeah, I didn't either.

Priscilla: 16:22

It's funny, as I was going through and kind of identifying those, these were the two that really stuck out to me as like the most important hard skills that we look for, and I thought it was funny that our soft skills are so much higher than our hard skills.

Priscilla: 16:35

But I think it just comes down to the fact that, for support, most of your work is centered around people and helping people, and so having those soft skills that are those interpersonal skills, those are just going to be so much more important when you're trying to deliver a remarkable experience to your customer. And it's also interesting to talk about the fact that soft skills are not something that you can teach as well as hard skills. You know you can teach technical stuff to basically anyone and for the most part, people can learn it, but it's a lot harder to teach empathy, it's a lot harder to teach patience, and even if you're really good at learning a hard skill, it's going to be really hard for you to learn patience and, like we were talking about earlier, it would cause you to burn out if you're constantly having to like strengthen that muscle. I mean it's basically like rewiring your brain. It is like rewiring your brain Exactly. It would cause you to burn out if you're constantly having to like, strengthen that muscle.

Jordan: 17:25

I mean, it's basically like rewiring your brain.

Priscilla: 17:27

It is like rewiring your brain.

Jordan: 17:29

Exactly. I think about my daughter who's like six, and she has zero patience. If something is not instant for her in that she's like trying to learn something new or she's trying to tie her shoe, and it's like mildly frustrating, she just boils over and erupts instantly. And so we're trying to teach her patience and it's been a long year of that and I'm hoping to do it while she's young. But I've got to be honest, I'm kind of losing hope. I think that's just who she is.

Priscilla: 18:00

Well, it's a good point, though, for any like parents listening that like these are really good characteristics to teach your kids when they're little, when they can learn it and start to like, work it into the fabric of their being. If you teach kids how to be empathetic, they're just going to have so much more success in working with all different kinds of people, whether they're in support or something else.

Jordan: 18:20

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you thought this was just a customer support podcast. We're doing that. Life skills.

Priscilla: 18:27

That's parenting. I don't even have any kids.

Marshall: 18:30

I think it's a great point and it just reminded me I don't know who said the quote or where I heard it but the idea of you hire the person, not the resume. We definitely tend to evaluate and look at the person way more than their resume and their set of hard skills. So yeah, you're exactly right.

Priscilla: 18:48

No, I think that's really good and I think that's a good thing to remember when you're in that interview process, which we're going to talk about in a second, that you really want to get to know the person and the resume is like kind of opening that door to get to know like how they are on paper. But that only goes so far. When you're actually bringing people on the team that you're going to work with every day and that you're going to trust with your customers, you know you got to make sure that you know the person. One thing, before we get off of skills, that I kind of wanted to talk about was the idea of hiring people with very specific skills for your support team. Did you laugh?

Jordan: 19:22

because I said specific skills and it made you think of I went straight to what was it taken Specific set of skills.

Priscilla: 19:28

Taken, taken. Yeah, I'm not talking about those kind of skills, but, depending on the size of team you have, you may want to look for people with kind of niche skills that you could bring on the team to offer more to your customers. So, for example, if you have a larger team and you're constantly training new people, you might want to look for someone who has a good history of training new hires that could come in and be the person who is training your new people. Or maybe you look for someone who is skilled in video editing because you want to include videos in your new people. Or maybe you look for someone who is skilled in video editing because you want to include videos in your help documents. So sometimes those hard skills can be really helpful depending on what specific kind of role within your support team you're hiring for. And so it's not that those skills are not important, but they're just not important for everyone on your team to have those.

Priscilla: 20:25

Okay, before we get into the interview process, I kind of want to talk a little bit about what industries we find are really good at kind of developing the type of people that we find are really good in support One thing that I think is pretty unique to how we've structured our team at Buzzsprout is that everyone on our team has come from another industry that is not the support industry. So they're not coming from a big background of doing customer support for another product. They're coming in from different industries, and so I thought it'd be kind of cool to talk about what we have found, what industries kind of produce those personality types that we feel work really well and support. Are there any that come to mind?

Marshall: 21:08

Yeah, I think it's pretty interesting that you know, nowhere in the hard soft skill conversation did we say like, oh, and a minimum of three years experience and customer support.

Jordan: 21:17

And a bachelor's.

Marshall: 21:20

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it kind of made me think. You know, I listened to a lot of historical like founder podcasts and just hearing you say that made me think of the story of Disney when he was trying to staff Disneyland or Disney World. His idea was hey, I don't want to hire anybody that has ever worked in an amusement park because what we're doing doesn't fit the traditional historical concept of an amusement park at all. And so I think that's what you've built here, our podcast success team. It really has very little in common with a traditional customer support role at a huge publicly traded company, and so we have typically gone to hey, we want to hire somebody with those backgrounds teachers, hospitality workers and then we want to pour out our opinions, the way that we do things, our culture and our philosophies on support.

Priscilla: 22:12

Yeah, well, it's funny because I had never done customer support in like a traditional way before I started working here, and so Buzzsprout was kind of built on very little knowledge of what exactly other teams do and support, and so we have found in Buzzsprout support that the people who have been the most successful here are people who are former teachers or they're nonprofit workers or they work in hospitality. Those are the people that we have found that are really succeeding on the Buzzsprout support team, and so I was reading something the other day. It was in a Slack channel that's a support Slack channel and someone wrote in there and said that they had a friend who was a teacher who was trying to leave the teaching profession, and she was kind of like do you guys think she would do well in support? Should I tell her to go in that direction? Read the conversation there, because a lot of people were like, oh yeah, that's great, it's a great transition. But there were also people in there who brought up a point that I thought was really important.

Priscilla: 23:15

Depending on what she loved about teaching, support may not be fulfilling enough for her, and so I thought it kind of was a good discussion about passion and how that plays into support. Because support, you are working with people every day and you are impacting their day every day. So you have the ability to make someone's Wednesday better. But are you impacting the world and these big world-changing impacts? Probably not. I mean, there's the butterfly effect. You know you make someone's day better and then they'll go and make someone's day better and then that's great and you had a hand in that. But are you shaping our economy or shaping the way that you know we interact? Probably not. And so, as this person was kind of writing in the Slack channel about this teacher, they were like, if she's gone into teaching because what she wants is to change the lives of all these children, then going into support may not be fulfilling enough for her. So I just thought that was an interesting thing to think about when you're looking for people to come on your team from that profession.

Marshall: 24:21

Yeah, I think it's a great point and I don't want to provide a counterpoint to it. But at the same time, as somebody who works primarily on the financial side of the business, I read the reviews that come in and those are so encouraging. Like you guys are changing lives of people every day, absolutely. Sometimes I'm like, oh, I spent all day in a spreadsheet, I didn't do it. And then I read a review of I've been struggling with this. I was with someone else, I transitioned over. It's something I've always wanted to do to prove to myself that I could podcast and that I do have a voice and I do have something important to say. And I wouldn't have done it if Megan hadn't held my hand through that and that, I feel like, is really encouraging.

Priscilla: 24:59

Yeah, I don't want it to sound like you won't have an impact through support, because you definitely have the ability to make someone's day and really make someone's opinion of themselves better. There's just so much when you have those interpersonal interactions with people, you can really make a huge impact on someone's life. What I mean is more of these like big changing the world things.

Marshall: 25:21

If you want to solve world hunger and that's your motivation, and that's your drive you're probably not going to be fully fulfilled and satisfied.

Priscilla: 25:29

Right, you might be hitting the mark on all of these soft skills and you might have the hard skills and you might look great on paper, but that passion might be in a different direction. That's not going to make support something that's super fulfilling for you. It makes me think of one kind of story in my life. When I was in college, I majored in teaching for a while. Everyone in high school told me oh, you'll be a great teacher, you should be a teacher. And so I just kind of like majored in teaching because I was like, oh, I guess I'll be a great teacher, that's what everyone's telling me to do. And I think it was about a year in to being in school for teaching that I realized that I really don't like teaching. It wasn't that I didn't like it, that I really don't like teaching. It wasn't that I didn't like. It was the kids, wasn't it? Yeah, I don't like kids. No, no, no, no. I love kids. That's one of the reasons why I think people told me I would be a teacher. But I remember being in a class and kind of having this realization that if I don't love teaching, I'm never going to be a good teacher and I'm going to be doing a disservice to anyone who's in my class if I don't love it, if I'm not passionate about it. And I think that is the same thing for support. If you are not passionate about providing remarkable support, you're never going to provide remarkable support. It's just not going to get there because it's going to be too much of a stretch for you to get to that place. And so I think when you're bringing people on your team, it's really important to kind of figure out what their motivation is and why they're reaching out about a certain support role. Because if they're doing it because they want to be in your company but they don't really love support, but they love this company, then they're probably not going to be the best person for the role. But if they're coming in because they love working with people, they love having one-on-one conversations and impacting someone in a real way, person to person, then that might be someone that is going to fit more in what you're doing when you're trying to reach remarkable support, that being the goal.

Priscilla: 27:23

Let's talk about the interview process a little bit. This role for me has really been the first time that I've ever really been part of like the hiring process, so this is really all I've known. So, marshall, you'll probably be able to give some perspective on how this differentiates from other companies and their interview process. But I think it's important just to set from the beginning that, with everything else we do in support and at Buzzsprout as a whole, our interview process is set with a lot of intention.

Priscilla: 27:51

We are really intentional about how we go through these steps and what we're looking for when we're bringing people on and we take our time through it. We're not rushing through a process just to get someone onboarded fast. We really want to find the right person and I think you said it earlier, marshall this idea that it's two people trying to find a fit, not us looking for one person. That person is also looking for the right fit as they're coming to a company, and so we keep that at the forefront when we're working with anyone to see if it would be a good fit. We want to know both ways Is this going to work for both parties?

Marshall: 28:24

Yeah. So, with it not being one-sided, we try to share a lot about. This is what we believe. This is the way that we do things. If that freaks you out, that should be a sign that we shouldn't move forward because it's incredibly costly to get the wrong person on the team. It's one of the costliest mistakes we can make and we don't want that for them either. It's a lot of their life that could end up being a frustrating time spent.

Priscilla: 28:46

Yeah, absolutely so. Okay, let's start with the application. When we have a job opening at Buzzsprout, specifically for the support team, we kind of talked about this, but we want to be really clear in the description that you don't have to have a ton of experience as a support specialist, but as a support specialist to come on the team, you don't have to have a specific degree. We recognize that you can bring these soft skills and these hard skills that we've mentioned without having that specific experience, and so we make that really clear in our application, that that's not something that you have to have With the application. What we want to do is we want to figure out what motivates you and what's life-giving to you and what kind of work excites you. That's what we're looking for when we're kind of having people apply for a job.

Marshall: 29:31

Yeah, and along with that, in the application phase of it, one nothing we ever do, we believe is finished or perfect, like we're constantly evolving our application, we're adding new questions, we're like, hey, I wonder if we took this off and we added this, but a lot of it is centered around this is the lowest investment of time from our end that we can have to get to know you as a person, and so, yes, your resume is something that we always want to put eyes on, but, more importantly, we want to hear your writing, and we want to hear your writing in a way that is personal and it's not technical. So we would love to hear I know one of the recent questions you added on there is tell me about a recent trip you took, and so I think that's great because it opens the door to this comfortable oh yeah, I'll tell you about it, and you can gather so much just from a person writing about that without ever having talked to him.

Priscilla: 30:27

Yeah, like what experiences did they go on that they decide are important to share with you? That'll help you understand their personality. It also tells you how they are with clearly communicating the road trip that they went on. It really is. I think that question specifically is a really fun one for like getting to know someone's personality.

Priscilla: 30:45

Another question that we'll ask people is you know, tell us about where you want your life to be in five years, to kind of get an idea for what they're looking for for the future of their life, not just work. I think you know it's important that we know where they want to go as, like a career path, but it's also important to just know what they want out of life, because so much of that is intertwined with how we work. Is what we want out of life. It's like that work-life balance, but it's all really just one pot of stuff. You know work and life is all in the same thing.

Priscilla: 31:17

Another thing we'll do is we'll ask questions in the application that will help us understand their ability to explain a task, and so one thing that I asked recently I think it was for our last person that we brought on the team was I asked her to write an email to me explaining how to make a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, which is very simple. But it was really fun to see her kind of sit down and prepare this email about how to make it and how much detail did she go into and did she talk about, you know, the temperature of the pan? Did she include slicing the tomatoes? Those kind of clarity of steps are really helpful. When you're trying to decide if someone is going to write with clarity for your product is whether they're going to go through all of those little steps as well when they're telling you how to make a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

Jordan: 32:09

I think my daughter had to do that very exercise in fifth grade. Little steps as well when they're telling you how to make a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. I think my daughter had to do that very exercise in fifth grade. Really, I clearly remember. Yes, like this is an exercise that kids do. I think I did this when I was in elementary school. The teacher would have you write out instructions for how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then I mean, my teacher went up with our paper and like tried to you know, quote unquote follow along with our terrible instructions. And then he would wind up with like this like haphazard sandwich covered in peanut butter and jelly on the outside of the sandwich and not the inside, or you, know, yeah, because you didn't say the inside, yeah, so that's really funny, because that's definitely something that my kids and I have done.

Priscilla: 32:49

I did not do that in school but that's so funny that you do that in school. But I think it really does help to communicate with a very like low pressure question how someone's going to do it, explaining the process for stuff.

Marshall: 33:01

So I love the exercise because once you're on a team for a certain amount of time, you are an expert in that field. You will become an expert, you will master that craft, and so you have to remember that a lot of times you're talking with somebody who might've just signed up for your product and they don't know anything about podcasting or whatever it is, and so that ability to take an expert level knowledge and communicate it effectively to the lowest level learner is a really difficult skill set to master, and so I think it's a great exercise and one we definitely use.

Priscilla: 33:38

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. One thing with support that is unique to the role is that you have to be able to communicate with all skill levels, and so sometimes that means you're working with someone who's really technically there and they know exactly what's going on, and you have to talk at a technical high level, but then you might talk to someone who's never used your product, so you have to be able to talk with them too. I think it's a really, really important skill to have.

Marshall: 34:03

Maybe the metaphor is like you find out oh, I'm talking to a chef, Okay, I can communicate a BLT on a different level.

Priscilla: 34:11

Yeah, right, exactly. I don't have to tell you to cut the tomato because you know you're going to cut the tomato, but if it's a five-year-old they may not know that you don't just put the whole tomato in the middle of the bread. So once we've kind of gone through the application process, we've gotten writing samples, we've looked through kind of that process and seen what we're working with there, we will narrow down our candidates and move to a phone screen step, and usually what this looks like is that I will get on the phone with the candidate and have a pretty casual conversation with them. I don't do it over Zoom, because I really like the idea of just keeping it two people on a phone, low pressure. I just want to get to know you as a person.

Priscilla: 34:54

I want to make sure you understand what the role is and what's expected from you.

Priscilla: 34:58

Because whenever you're looking at a job I know back when I was looking for work when I had just gotten out of college you can read job descriptions all day long and still not know what the job is that you're applying for. And so there's kind of two layers to this phone screen. One it's for me to get to know you as a person, your personality, what motivates you, what's life giving to you, those kind of things. But then also I want to make sure that I'm really clearly communicating to you what this role is, because if it is not something that you can see yourself enjoying, then there's no reason to go beyond this phone screen. And pretty quickly. When you're working with people, I feel like with support, it can be very clear right up front oh, this is not something that I'm going to enjoy, and so we try to show the negatives and the positives of working in support in that phone screen so that people can make that educated decision before they move on to the next step of the process.

Marshall: 35:53

I think there's a point to be made to follow up with that. I think it's important that at this stage, you're completely in the driver's seat. So, you're empowered to make all the decisions. You're leading the process and while we might, you know, have eyes on some of these, we're not taking any action. We're not really involved in any step so far.

Priscilla: 36:12

Yeah, which I think is important when you're especially depending on how often you're hiring new people. You don't want to have the partners in every single step of that, because it's still it takes a lot of time, and so it's such a good setup for me to be able to kind of vet these people and get to know them a little bit before bringing you in Cause. It really one. It helps with me to like feel ownership for it, but it also helps save time and respect, you know, the time of the partners.

Marshall: 36:39

Yeah, especially if you're listening to this and you're a support team leader. You have to live with the decision you know, it's like life's too short to work with jerks, and so if somebody else hires a jerk and puts them on your team, it's going to be toxic, and so I think you having the power to decide yeah, I could live working with this person every day is important.

Priscilla: 37:00

Yeah, I think that's the quote from the episode Life's too short to work with jerks.

Marshall: 37:06

I don't know what the actual quote is. I think they use more colorful language. That's all right, I like our version.

Priscilla: 37:12

I thought it would be kind of cool to talk about some of the questions that I ask people during the phone screen step in this process, because I kind of have it broken down into kind of three different categories. I'll ask like personality questions, ask questions about their current job situation and then support specific questions. Basically, all these questions are really just conversation starters to kind of get into a conversation. I try not to make it like I ask a question, you answer it. I ask the next question, you answer it. I want it to feel like a conversation that's going to be so much more indicative of how we're going to work together, and so it's helpful for me if I am starting a conversation and then we just talk about you and the job and kind of get through all of it that way. I always try to ask people how their friends would describe their personality. I'm not like setting you up to go a specific direction, I just want to know how your friends describe you. So if someone says, oh, my friends describe me as super sarcastic and really funny and kind of harsh, I'm like, oh, maybe that's not the person for support. But if, oh, my friends, you know they describe me, as you know, really kind and always there for them and thoughtful. That's probably more aligned with the kind of person you want to have that's going to be helping you through a support case.

Priscilla: 38:27

I'll ask them what work-related activities or not work-related activities make them feel the best about themselves, because so much of doing remarkable work is how you feel about it.

Priscilla: 38:38

So if you feel really good about yourself after you've helped someone do something, then, whether it's work-related or not, you're going to do a better job of that, and so I'll try to kind of get to that like what things you do make you feel really good about yourself, what makes you very proud about your work?

Priscilla: 38:54

So maybe someone's like when I run a marathon and I've trained for it and then I've met that goal, that makes me feel really good about myself. That tells me that you take pride in working hard to do something difficult like running a marathon, and that you're disciplined. Like these are all really good things to hear from someone you want to bring on your team. Another thing I will ask people is if they find it draining to work directly with people or if they find it kind of invigorating, which most people probably know. The answer I'm going for when I ask that question, but I do think it's a good thing to like bring top of the conversation because you want to be really clear that you will be working with people the majority of your day. So if that is not something that you feel comfortable doing consistently, then this is not going to be the role for you.

Marshall: 39:39

I think I would flunk your interview process at this stage. I love, I love working with people, but I'm also totally happy if I do not interact with a person all day and I just get to like deep focus work all day.

Priscilla: 39:52

And I think it's important to say that there are so many different jobs in the world for all different types of personalities.

Priscilla: 39:59

So we're talking about the skills we look for for support people. But that does not mean that these are like the best skills to have. These are just the ones that we find work the best when you're trying to give remarkable support. But it doesn't mean that if you're an introverted person who doesn't like communicating with people on a regular basis, that for some reason you're less than or not as qualified to work in. So I just want to make sure it's clear that it doesn't mean you're bad or less than. If for some reason this does not match you, I tell people that in phone screens too, when I'm talking to them. If I'm feeling like it's not going to be the best fit, it's not a personal thing. Like you have skills to offer that might just align more with a different role, and if it's not support, that's OK. But you want to know that going in, because if you don't know that, then it can be painful and you want to avoid that kind of pain. Some of the like current job questions that I'll ask are things like what do you find in your current job. That's life giving. Or what is it about your current role that makes you want to leave it? Because those are really important things to know. So we were talking about teachers earlier and you know, someone wants to leave teaching and they're reaching out to support and we're interviewing them and I say, well, what makes you want to leave your teaching role? And they say I am just done being the person that has to have all the answers. I do not want to be the one that has to do that. Well then I'm going to go. Oh, then maybe support is not going to be the right for you. But if they say, I'm just, I don't want to be creating lesson plans and I don't want to be on call all the time and I don't want to be getting up at seven o'clock to be at a school, those things might be a good transition because you still want to teach, you still want to help people, but the lesson planning is what's really dragging you down, and so I think finding out why they're leaving their current job is really important. And then, what things are life giving to them? So we have people on our team now who they get so much life from helping people and from coming alongside someone and making their day better and so finding those kind of people which can kind of be a needle in a haystack sometimes, but those people are like real gems for being on the support team and then kind of support specific questions.

Priscilla: 42:09

I said that I really try to make sure that people know what kind of role they're getting into when they come into support, and so I'll ask things. After we've talked about what the job is, I'll ask them like what sounds the most challenging for you? And what I've talked about, like what do you think is going to be the hardest part of this job for your personal skill set skill set and the answer to that can be really telling. We have had two people who have said that the most challenging thing is going to be the technical side of things, and when I hear that, I'm like, yes, that's what I want to hear.

Priscilla: 42:43

Tell me that it's going to be hard for you to learn something technically and I will tell you that I can teach you how to use this technology. That's not going to be a problem. But if you tell me that, oh, patience is going to be really hard for me, that might be a situation where I'm like oh okay, this might be, let's figure out if this is the right way to go or not, because technical stuff that can be taught. I feel confident that if you are pretty technically savvy, we're going to be okay. But if you have a hard time with patience, if you have a hard time with empathy, those things are going to be okay. But if you have a hard time with patients, if you have a hard time with empathy, those things are going to be a lot harder to teach, like we were saying at the top of the episode.

Marshall: 43:16

Yeah, it's a great point. Another way that I ask a question, a different question, to get the same root answer is hey, assume you get the job, close your eyes, fast forward eight months. Things don't work out. We part ways. What is the most likely cause of parting ways? And sometimes it just helps to get them in that state of mind. That's a good one. And if they say I blew up at a customer, you're like great, that's such a brutal question.

Priscilla: 43:44

I'd just be like do you say that's a brutal question, jordan? Yeah, yeah, it can be rough. We fire you in eight months. Why did we fire you?

Priscilla: 44:00

So after we do that phone screen step, we move into our Zoom interviews. And so with this kind of step it kind of depends on how the phone screen went. Sometimes, if the phone screen goes really well and I'm like, oh yeah, this person definitely would be a good fit, then we'll move into like a partner interview from there. But sometimes you're still trying to decide if someone's going to be a good culture fit for the team, because you do really have to keep in mind that you have a team already and you're bringing someone into that and so you have to make sure that that's going to stay really healthy. And so sometimes what we'll do is I will pull a couple people from the support team and have them meet with this person who we're interviewing without me in there, just to kind of get to know them on a culture level, to kind of get their insight, because the people who know your team the best are going to be the people on the team who work in it every day and work with each other every day, and so I think sometimes we'll have that step, but that doesn't happen every single time we hire someone new, but I think it can be really beneficial to have that step in there.

Priscilla: 44:56

And then we move into partner interviews after that. So, assuming all of that goes great and we're really excited about this person, then I will pull in Tom, kevin and Marshall and I'll say hey guys, I've got someone who I'm really excited about and I want to meet with them in person, and so we try to do it in person if we can. We have people on our team who are based all over the country, so sometimes it's not in person, sometimes it needs to be in Zoom or Riverside or however you remotely meet, but we try to make it so that we are meeting with them face to face, and usually it's me and all three of the partners. So, marshall, you're a big part of those interviews. Do you want to talk a little bit about what you look for when you're interviewing someone at that level?

Marshall: 45:36

Yeah, absolutely, and that's something that has been true for over the last decade. We've always wanted all three partners to spend time with somebody before they join the team. It's something that we think is really important.

Priscilla: 45:56

And, like you said, no matter where we are.

Marshall: 45:56

I think the last time it was the middle of the night in Indonesia, and I was like I got to meet this person. If they're going to join our team, it's such a big decision, you know, on our end it's such a big commitment that we really prioritize that. And so, yeah, I'll try to boil it down, because we, once an applicant makes it to this stage, they've already cleared a lot of wickets. There's already a confidence that they have soft skills, they have hard skills, and so at this stage, it's really about hey, how much of a cultural fit are they going to be? And so I'll try to boil. We usually ask a lot of questions, but I'll boil it down to like my top favorite ones to ask.

Marshall: 46:24

And so one of those out of the gate is what's the most exciting thing to you about this position and what makes you think it'll be a good mutual fit? What I'm looking for there is insight into their preparation. Do they know about us? Have they looked at our website? Have they read our values? They don't need to be able to recite all of them, but it's really impressive when they say I read this value, the fact that you guys believe in continual improvement. I saw that on your website and that stands out to me and I'm excited and that's what I think is going to make a good mutual fit. That's always really encouraging. If they're like I, you know they don't know much about us, they don't know kind of our market position as a product. It just reveals like they might not be great in preparation and they might not be as serious about this job as we are about them joining the team.

Priscilla: 47:17

Yeah, and that kind of speaks back to the manager of one that we're looking for. You know, we want someone who's coming into that final interview stage prepared and ready to go and they've done the research they need to do to be able to answer those kinds of questions, and so that goes back to that manager of one. Yeah, I think that's really important.

Marshall: 47:32

I love asking do you have any companies, leaders, authors or podcasters that you admire and follow? I'm always intrigued by that because you know it can be a massive, wide spectrum of what they come back with, and it's not that there's a right or wrong answer. I think, more than anything, it allows you to get to know the person, what they're really into, like, what they spend their free time, spare time listening to, and a lot of times it'll reveal, you know, hey, do they have that quality of continual improvement? Or manager of one, like, oh, I listened to Dave Ramsey. That is, hey, you're trying to get better and you're trying to better yourself every single day. Like it doesn't matter if I agree with Dave Ramsey or not.

Priscilla: 48:12

Yeah.

Marshall: 48:13

It's just that quality, that attribute, that is a great cultural fit here and on a support team.

Priscilla: 48:19

Yeah, for sure, I agree, for sure.

Marshall: 48:21

We do ask this a lot, I think, in just about everyone. We ask about hey, what are you passionate about outside of work? It's generally a high comfort question. Work, it's generally a high comfort question, and it's always fascinating to me, like what you hear of you know, hey, you make ammunition as a hobby on the side. I would have never known that. That's crazy. Tell me about it. And I think getting them on a topic that they are really passionate about and hearing you know what gives them life and hear how they talk about it, how they describe it, I do think is important, and so we always try to ask that, and it's not so much that we're like we want you to say this certain extracurricular hobby that you like.

Priscilla: 49:02

You know there's not a right or wrong answer, it's more, how are you talking about the things that you do outside of work? If you say, oh, I don't really do anything but work, then that might be, you know, not something we're like oh well, what hobbies do you have outside of work, like that kind of a thing. It's not like there's a right or wrong answer with what you like outside of work, but it does help us to get to know you and what things you're passionate about.

Marshall: 49:24

So yeah, and I would say on that too I think you know, jordan, you are an enthusiastic person in general, like that is a great attribute, and you don't have to be externally that enthusiastic, but when you ask that question, you can tell their body language changes and they're like well, you know, I'm really into kayak fishing and this is what I am really excited about and this is what gives me life from it. And I think tapping into that like oh, they have enthusiasm and that is an important characteristic too, is okay, great. They don't need to be enthusiastic about everything or just knowing, yep, they've got it and something that they're really passionate about.

Jordan: 50:03

I love how Floridian your examples are ammunition and kayak fishing.

Marshall: 50:12

Oh, that's a very good point. Quilting, quilting. What would it be in Idaho?

Jordan: 50:20

In Idaho. It would be like craft beer and fly fishing and hiking, I suppose.

Priscilla: 50:26

Yeah, a lot of outdoorsy mountains, yeah.

Marshall: 50:30

We started asking this what's one positive and negative impact COVID has had on you?

Priscilla: 50:35

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I don't think I've heard that one.

Marshall: 50:38

No, yeah, you get a wide range of answers and we usually give the person some time to think about it. Like we are not trying to test like can you be quick on your feet? Can you rapidly respond? It's hey, we'll ask a question. Take feet, can you rapidly respond? It's hey, we'll ask a question. Take some time to think about it, like there's no rush on it. But I do think it's interesting to hear it kind of test that you know we talk about hungry, humble and smart. It's a little bit on the smart kind of test somebody's ability to say like hey, it wasn't all negative. You know a lot of people will trend toward, oh, I can tell you the most negative things and they'll rattle off five things and then they're like I can't think of a single positive. Like okay, and vice versa. Some people are like man, I got way more time with my family, it slowed me down and I think that was really healthy. I think I was in a really fast pace and so I've found that question fascinating.

Priscilla: 51:26

Yeah, it's very like with the times too. Like you know, here we are in 2024, kind of a few years removed from it to like hear how that recent historic event affected people. I think that's really good.

Marshall: 51:38

Yeah, and I don't know if you would agree with this, but I think there's a certain element of you know, sometimes you're not always dealing with happy, joyful customers and support, and so if you have a tendency to dwell on the negative experiences and slide down, that you can end your day and not feel the positivity from the handful of people that you really did help and it changed their day and it had an impact on them. You end up putting more weight on that. One person was a jerk to me and I just can't shake it and I can't. I bring it home with me and I'm thinking about it at dinner. And so not that that is necessarily a test, for you know you're either this way or not, but it does kind of give a read into hey, can you find the positive in a generally negative situation?

Priscilla: 52:26

Yeah, I think that is a really we haven't really talked about it much on this episode, but I think that's a really important thing to keep in mind is that there are going to be positive and negative experiences throughout the day. When you're working in support, you're going to have people that are harder to communicate with and people who are easier, and it's more fun and things are exciting and positive, and not letting those negative experiences outweigh the positive ones is a really good tool to have in your toolkit when you're working in support. So, no, I think that's a really good thing to kind of gauge in that process. Well, thanks for being here, marshall.

Priscilla: 53:02

I think this has been a really good conversation and you know, hopefully, as you're listening to this, you are able to figure out what you want to look for for your support team and hopefully, some of these characteristics are things that you're listening to this, you are able to figure out what you want to look for for your support team and hopefully, some of these characteristics are things that you're already interviewing for, and if they're not, hopefully this is encouraging to say, oh, I haven't really thought about having a patient person, I really need to look for patients or things like that, and you know, I'll say it again, take your time.

Priscilla: 53:28

You know, when you're hiring new people, it's really an important step to building a remarkable team, and so it's not something you want to rush through. And if you're listening to this and you resonate with any of these skills that we've talked about and you're hearing us talk about these hard and soft skills you're like man, they are describing me, then email us at happy to help at Buzzsprout dot com, because we are always looking for good quality candidates for our support team and it never hurts to reach out. So if you hear this and you're like they are describing me on that podcast, then send us an email because we would love to get to know you and see if maybe you are someone who would be great.

Jordan: 54:04

I mean, jordan, how did podcast learning through Buzzsprout because it has such awesome guides on how to start a podcast, and then got involved in the Facebook community group and I was just so darn helpful that I got hired Exactly so you never know.

Priscilla: 54:22

You never know how you'll connect with the next great person for your team. So if you hear this and you feel like this is something that you align with, feel free to reach out. We'd love to talk to you. Feel like this is something that you align with, feel free to reach out, we'd love to talk to you. All right, it's time for Support in Real Life, our segment where we discuss real support experiences from our listeners. What do you have for us, jordan?

Jordan: 54:43

All right. So we got an email from Steven. It says Hi there. When you have a problem and if you're a person which usually checks if you haven't made the mistake and you contact tech support and the first answer is it works on my side, I usually respond that I don't care about this, that it works for them and the only one and only thing which should be important for them as a support team is that it doesn't work on my side. Just wanted to mention this, as it usually drives me mad and shows how bad a tech support can be. Have you ever received an email like this from support? I think that I have, at one point in my life or another, gotten the thing where it's like, well, it looks good on our end and then that's it and I'm just like, oh well, I guess that's it. Then huh.

Priscilla: 55:29

Yeah, I've definitely sent emails into support teams and had the response be like, oh, there's no issue on our end, You're good to go. And I'm like, well, no, I'm not good to go. And it's funny that this is a person who's writing in, who is writing in from the customer side and not from someone in the support team. I think it's a really good perspective to have and I think it opens up a really good conversation about how we as a support team handle those kind of questions where we can't replicate the issue. And so you know, when I think about this, the first thing that comes to mind is that first response should be a response where you are acknowledging their reality. So if they tell you something's not working and your response back is oh, it's working for me, then you're not taking into consideration the reality that they're facing. You're looking at what you're seeing and assuming that that is the accurate thing always. And so I think when that first response goes back, you want to recognize their reality is that it's not working and kind of show your work. It's kind of like when you're a math class you know if you are going to go and check their account and see if the feature is working for you. And if it's not working and you respond and you say, hey, these are all of the things I checked and it's still working for me. If it's not working for you, let's figure out where to go from here, because just because it's not working for you doesn't mean that they're wrong, and so I think it's important to kind of show that work. And then it acknowledges their reality, that there is something going on and allows you to kind of move into the next steps of how are we going to get on the same page? Why are we experiencing different things? Is it because we're using a different browser? Is it because the issue cleared itself up in the time that you emailed and the time that I responded? That's happened so many times and so kind of responding with that way of, oh well, it works for me, it kind of removes the ability to see what their perspective is or their reality that they're in an issue.

Priscilla: 57:24

I've definitely been in situations as the support specialist where I cannot replicate what they're seeing. But that should never be your first email back that is oh, it's working for me. You should be all set. It should always be. Let's get on the same page. Let's work through this and if we get to a place where we can't replicate it, then we go from there. We figure out what to do there. But that should never be that first initial response. Remember that you can share your stories and questions with us by emailing us at happytohelpatbuzzsproutcom, and you can also click the text, the show link in the show notes, and that will text us, and so you can send us anything you want. Through that We'll pick a story or a question to discuss next week. So if you send that in, you may hear your question discussed. So thanks for joining us today, Marshall. I really appreciate you being here and having this conversation with us. I hope it's really beneficial for our listeners.

Marshall: 58:18

Absolutely Thanks for having me.

Priscilla: 58:20

That's it for today. If you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave us a review or follow us on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else that you get your podcasts, and you can find us on Instagram at happy to help pod. So thanks for listening. Now go and make someone's day.