205: Fireside with Vlad Shlosberg

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode two hundred and five of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. Today, welcome Vlad Schlossberg for a fireside chat. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Vlad Schlossberg. Vlad, lovely to have you back after a little break. We've um we've talked a lot about Slack support this year, but you're joining me today for a fireside. And as with all my firesides, my guest gets to bring the topic. So first of all, welcome back. And secondly, what would you like to talk about today?

Vlad Shlosberg: 0:55

Thank you for having me back. Um I I want to obviously talk about Slack support. No, I'm kidding. Uh as no, I mean, I I think one of the interesting things is that I've kind of learned a lot over the last few months is kind of the topic I want to talk about is um is just as someone starting a company and kind of growing it, um, it's just about how to get close to your customers. Um, and I and just to prefix it, I I, you know, I do use Slack a lot to get close to my customers. So I, you know, without doing uh without talking about product, I uh you know, I I do want to I do mention it at times if that if that makes sense.

Charlotte Ward: 1:32

You're allowed, you're allowed, absolutely.

Vlad Shlosberg: 1:35

I'm not trying to pitch, but I'm trying, but I do use Slack a lot for this.

Charlotte Ward: 1:39

So yeah, yeah. But but like the the the thing that you talked about before that um Slack is is just the the incidental space in which your your business operates, right? But um this is an interesting angle because I'm always keen to talk about people trying to get support tools like out there into the ecosystem, get buy into them. But obviously, uh alongside all of that, you're running a business, you're doing everything with the business, and you're supporting a product. So, so tell me about that.

Vlad Shlosberg: 2:13

Yeah, I mean, so um, so I mean, we built this product that basically uh helps uh provide customer support through the non-traditional channels. So we've seen, you know, look at Zendesk and stuff, they focus on email and chat and phone. Um, and you know, now they're looking at some of the other channels, but uh but we focus on stuff that no one really looks at. So we look at like Slack support, right? Um and there is, I mean, not saying no one at all, there is there's a competitor, but um, but you know, it's not a very it's not a very big space. It's not it's not that the competitor is a multi-trillion dollar company. Um but but there but but we're so we're looking at that channel, we're looking at um expanding it out to some of the more non-traditional channels. And and and again, um, and just to prefix it as well, this is completely B2B. I I I wouldn't know the first thing about anything B2C related, to be honest.

Charlotte Ward: 3:01

Yeah, yeah, B2C isn't my my forte either. I've I've spent all of my uh long career in B2B almost entirely. So um, I mean, I'm I that's that's why for me this podcast is like such a learning experience for from all these other leaders who operate, you know, on kind of uh on the front line of retail and things like that. It's an entirely different experience again. Yeah. Um so building a support tool for support people, what um well tell me kind of, you know, what are your early challenges, what are your early experiences in this space to date?

Vlad Shlosberg: 3:38

Well, I mean, actually, probably the earliest challenge was just finding support people are busy. So finding support people to even talk to me to begin with was probably a very big challenge. Um and and what I wanted to do was just to, you know, even just do product feedback or kind of like do some um, you know, talk to people early on and say, hey, what's what are challenges are you facing in this space? Or a little bit later when we had you know a prototype or we had some screenshots or something, you we wanted to get it in front of people and get their feedback. Um and that was one of the that was like actually a challenge early on. Um what we found that helped was was uh again going to the slightly non-traditional rouses, uh, we found there's a lot of uh, you know, and also because of our space, we found a lot of Slack communities. Um and what we did was we kind of asked around there. Um and and to be honest, we did start off with just kind of spamming people a little bit and saying, hey, can you help me with this? And then we got you know yelled at enough times and enough people saying, Hey, you're gonna get kicked out if you keep doing this. So we kind of went towards more better routes, more traditional routes. Um but it was but it was a good way to start kind of getting feedback from people, um, is just to kind of start having conversations with people in Slack, non not in any kind of structured format right away. Um, what I noticed is that if you just message somebody, they'll usually respond. If you start kind of pitching too much, or if you say, hey, do you want to get on a call, or if you want a little bit more commitment, people are less likely to do it. I mean, some people are very likely, you know, very, very happy to help out. Some people are less so, but they'll answer a couple of questions. So in terms of but just early on getting product feedback, uh, that that did help a lot. Um, but I mean, I think the to kind of back that up and to to standardized like where what it's what communities do your customers, your your potential customers live in, right? Whether, you know, for us it's it's it's a Slack community, but are there other communities or other areas or meetups or you know, whenever we go back to the real world of of you know meeting people in in space in in real life, right? Um, are there those kind of communities that you can go to and and find the people that you actually want to talk to? And and not necessarily to sell right away. It's it's just you know, one of the best messages that probably works is hey, I I'm building something, I'm doing research. Do you have 15 minutes just to talk about this, just to give me some feedback on the product or the idea or your pain or you know, something along those lines.

Charlotte Ward: 6:10

Yeah, and you know, you said it yourself, support people are very busy. We're all terribly busy, aren't we? Um but also I think that everyone in my experience in support has really, really, really deep understanding of what their pain points are and what their problems are, and probably very likely what solutions might be or look like. Did was was that your experience that people had quite definite ideas about their needs?

Vlad Shlosberg: 6:42

Um I think people knew their problems okay. Uh the but the challenge there, as you said, is they know the solutions is that um I I I tend not to kind of care about people's proposed solution. Um and then the reason for that is is it's like in coming back to it, whether it's a you know, somebody that you're just researching and trying to understand the space, or you're um, you know, you're actually have customers and they're telling you what they want. Um, a lot of times, I mean I've I faced this multiple times, so it's not just a you know, the the added, you know, the the known adage that um don't kind of trust users there, don't trust users to kind of design the features. Um, but I've seen this multiple times where somebody comes to me and says, Well, can I have this feature? And I say, Well, why would you want this feature? And then they explain to me that really the core problem is that they have this other thing, and I say, Well, why don't we do this other thing instead? And they go, Oh, yeah, that would actually solve our problem. And then, and the thing that's great about that is that not only is it solving their problem in a way that they might have not thought of, but also it might be better aligned with your product vision, or it might be, you know what I mean, then you're not thinking about, oh, well, how do we build this one feature out for this one customer and never again? How do we actually instead build this out? Uh, how do we how do we instead uh find something that kind of correlates between customers?

Charlotte Ward: 8:03

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Um, and you know, I I think that um I've had this conversation a few times in different ways on this podcast over the last year and a bit. And that that is like as as customers, or in your case, potential customers, the um the customer often thinks they know, as you just said, that they know what the solution is. They want X to happen, they want it to look like you know, they want the thing that Craig Stoss and I often talk about is I want that button to be blue because I feel it'd be so much better when really there's like a different underlying problem. But you have to combine that, I guess, with like your vision of where you want the to take the idea that you had and and the product that you're building.

Vlad Shlosberg: 8:50

Yeah, and I mean that might sometimes mean I mean, I I think you have to think about what's important there is that if somebody wants a button blue and you say, Well, why do you want a blue? And at the end of the day, they might give you really good reasons or they might give you terrible reasons, but they're just kind of set on it. Then I think you have two choices. You can either, you know, go make that button blue or just not have them as a customer. And sometimes the right answer is just to go make that button blue, and sometimes the right answer is like, no, that making that button blue will take you, you know, a month of investment. Why would you go spend that time on that, right? I mean, and and I can give you two examples of that. One of them is um we had a customer that wanted this that had that integrates with uh Zendesk and they have this very kind of unique edge case. And it took us I I from the beginning I knew that it's not something that anyone else would use, but that's okay because you know we kind of wanted them as a customer, and and also because uh it was very easy to implement. So we went and implemented and kind of hid the feature a little bit, and and but we're gonna but we're but we rolled it out to them and they're happy with it. And actually, the interesting, the great thing about that is okay, by rolling it out and by building that one feature especially for them, now they love our product, right? And since that, um one of the one of the people that you know, my the the counterpart that I work with there um has been on reference calls and and did you know, did so many invites and you know, so tries to help the business in any way possible. That to to to some degree that I even like kind of feel bad. Like I maybe the feature wasn't I implemented wasn't even enough for him because the amount of work that he's kind of helped out with has been amazing. So there's that side of it that yeah, sometimes you'll implement something a little crazy, but you get paid not in terms of product direction, but just the the the kind of the the love that the customer brings afterwards, the advocacy, yeah, on your behalf.

Charlotte Ward: 10:48

And that that sort of increased, um, I guess increased potential trust in future customers, right? The the fact that it's not just you with the yeah with this belief. Um what what are the other I want to say peculiarities, but I think that's the word that's often taken the wrong way. Um but it is the right word in this circumstance. What as I'm gonna try and find a different way of phrasing this. What what are the other what what else is there of uh any particular nature do you think that's um special or different about creating a product for support folk or selling to support folk?

Vlad Shlosberg: 11:30

What's interesting about I I I'm not sure if I have a good answer to that. Um what's different about selling or creating product for support? I mean, I so I think one of the things actually is that that um that getting feedback or getting feedback early is actually harder from support because of that time investment. That in the past when I built a product for IT teams and I went and messaged a whole bunch of IT people and said, Hey, can I get 10 minutes of your time for some feedback? Uh probably like 80% of them said yes. Um when I did the same experiment with uh with support folks, they said, Stop messaging me.

Charlotte Ward: 12:13

I can and I can believe it as well. And I I I guess that's where I was slightly leading you because I I think in my experience, support people are so anti-sales in terms of like their own personality and the the way they relate to their own customers. I think that there is like this deep-seated desire not to be sold to as well. And I and I think that therefore it means kind of engaging with any part of the product kind of creation and selling process uh as a as somebody, you know, as as a potential consumer of it. That's my experience. I I I definitely kind of get understand what you're saying, and I wonder if that makes it more difficult to sell it to.

Vlad Shlosberg: 12:54

Yeah, and I think that the other part of that is um so it is hard to get in front of uh in front of in front of support people. The other the other part of it is just sometimes budgeting and and controlling that kind of stuff. So I mean again, uh maybe it's because I'm comparing it to selling to IT, but when I sold to IT, it's usually IT is the one that is the team that installs it, it's the team that um manages the you know the operation of that. So so it was getting in front of them and getting to install it and getting to try it out was very easy. Where here there's a few more hurdles where you know, if you have support bought in, well, you still need to get it bought in, you still need to get security bought in, you still need to find the you know the budget for it and everything else. There's a few more hurdles, but I mean, uh, but I'm imagining that's maybe that's not a uh something indicative of support. Maybe that's just that's an ex maybe that's an exception of IT, not something that's uh specific to support.

Charlotte Ward: 13:51

I think definitely any support team out there will tell you that they probably have more hoops to go to than a lot of other parts of the business when it comes to getting funding. Um I I imagine it's quite easy to get a new sales tool if because you can prove its direct impact on revenue very quickly.

Vlad Shlosberg: 14:10

Yeah, and I think it does help. It does, you know, from the support is usually a cost center a lot of times. Um and maybe that's changing now because a lot of customer success and support are kind of rolling in together. So there's you know, upsell targets and and reduced churn targets. So because of that, support is becoming less of a uh uh a cost based uh cost uh uh what's it called?

Charlotte Ward: 14:32

Um cost center, yeah.

Vlad Shlosberg: 14:36

Yeah, less of a cost center and more of a revenue generator.

Charlotte Ward: 14:39

Yeah, exactly. I do I I love the idea of support teams becoming more revenue generating, tending towards being profit centers rather than cost centers. I am slightly aware every time I have those kind of conversations on this podcast, though, of like who my typical guest is and maybe also who my typical listener is. And and I think that if we're not careful, we can we could kind of create this like lovely little bubble where we become a bit of an echo chamber for ourselves where everyone talks about how wonderful it is to have a support team that generates revenue for the company, and that um it's it's wonderful because so many other people are out there doing it as well. And yet, in reality, I know that um even this illustrious podcast is quite a small proportion of the vast number of support organizations and service organizations out there who really do, I think, frankly, let's face it, probably by and large um run as cost centers. Um I imagine the percentage is much higher than we give it credit for in this echo chamber.

Vlad Shlosberg: 15:50

Oh, I'm sure I'm sure that's true. I mean, actually, uh one of the numbers that I like to look at is that um customer success is kind of maybe a good metric, or like customer success people are usually kind of a good indicator of people that are trying to generate revenue. Um, and it's actually the sixth highest growing job in the US, and it's grown by 800% in the last five years, right? So it's eight over. But if you look at LinkedIn, there's still only 100,000 people that are doing it versus customer support, there's something like 2.3 million people in the world doing it.

Charlotte Ward: 16:22

So wow, I did not know those are the numbers. Wow, you know, something everything.

Vlad Shlosberg: 16:27

So there's a big difference, and I mean, because you have to think about it from you know, we're in it I mean, part of it is also B2C that's included, right? So that you're not gonna have customer success in B2C. Um, but also just yeah, there's a lot of Fortune 500s and stuff that are they're not looking at support quite that way yet.

Charlotte Ward: 16:47

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So so in this little uh in this little bubble that we've created for ourselves at customer support leaders, which is is I think slightly more significantly weighted to B2B and smaller teams and startup environments, etc. Um we talk you've talked quite a bit about like the research process and beginning to build a product for these kind of people uh and these kind of organizations. Um what what's next?

Vlad Shlosberg: 17:16

So actually the the the bigger the bigger topic I kind of wanted to cover um and the thing that I was very excited about was was just um is just how do you so doing the initial investigation is is hard, right? Um and bringing on customers is hard. So I I I don't know if I'm um I'm not the I can't sell very well, so I'm not gonna give you recommendations on how to do that well. Um but I can so even actually even there, one one thing I'll say what I've been using is, I mean, because I'm in kind of that space of using Slack, I've been kind of using it for a lot of stuff. So one of the things that I found very, very helpful for us is um so Slack has this shared channel thing where essentially you can create a channel in your workspace, your customer prospect, whoever creates a channel in their workspace, and they're linked together so that you can talk to each other just in this one channel without having to kind of go into each other's Slack workspace. Um so using this, what we've what we've actually been doing is we've been inviting every single one of our prospects into a share channel, like a share channel dedicated to them. Um, and what that's done is A, that gives me a very, very quick kind of access to these prospects, and I can ping them whenever, you know, whenever I need, and they can ping me whenever they need. So it creates that line of communication super, super quick and super easy and very, very low friction. And that's actually helped because I think every every one of those prospects so far, not not everyone, probably 50% of the prospects that we've created a share channel with has bought, uh, has has converted. So it and the ones that haven't, I can still message all the time or or have great communications with. Um so that's one thing that I I'm not claiming I'm a great salesperson, but I think that's a that's one of those things that actually helps a lot is just creating um very low friction communication from the beginning and having that something that you can touch point at any point, at any moment in the day. Um, but the other part that I that I'm kind of even more interested in and maybe more excited to talk about is so what we do is we bring in these customers as prospects or we bring in prospects into shared channels. Um and the next thing we do is once they actually buy and convert, we convert those kind of the same channels into just support success type of channels. Um what that means is anytime they have a question, they ask us in Slack, we pick it up, we respond to it. And I'm not gonna go into a product pitch, but that's kind of what we do. So we we dog food our own product. Um, so we we help with that. But besides that part, it's been actually really, really good to figure out product direction, to figure out kind of what are The pain points that people are having, how do we solve them? So just having that communication channel. I I have customers, I have certain people that contact me every single day almost, and they'll say, Hey, there's a, you know, here's a here's something that we're facing. How would you solve this? Or even with enough time, they would kind of say, Hey, there's a here's a feature that you know we might it might make sense for us in this case, or might make sense to some of your other customers in this other way. So it helps for that professional relationship, but then also on a more personal level. There's some people that I just haven't shared Slack channels or in Slack and any other way. And I just message them directly every once in a while and say, Hey, how's your weekend? Where, you know, I saw you went to the beach this week. How was that? You know, so and just that in-personal relationship. What has happened with those types of relationships is that actually they've caused upsells, not because of me explicitly asking for upsells, which sometimes that helps, but but company because we have this constant ping and because we have this great relationship, anytime that somebody has an issue that they even like think about that's in my realm, they'll direct message me because they can directly in Slack and just ask me a question.

Charlotte Ward: 21:07

You use that phrase a couple of times there as well, that low friction. And and it strikes me that what you're doing is you convert prospects who are in these shared channels, trying out the product, talking to you about it, talking about their experience, and maybe you know helping shape it for the future. That it's it's just the flick of a switch for you, then in terms of like the experience transitioning from prospect to customer, isn't it? So the customer from from what you're saying has like very, very little transition to to experience. There's no like wall that they're thrown over where they get a completely different set of contacts or a completely different experience or or access or anything like that.

Vlad Shlosberg: 21:51

Oh, yeah, totally. I mean I mean, there is no can there is no change at all. The only change is that they start paying for the product, essentially, for us. Um, and I mean, I think part of that is because we're small, um, so we don't have separated teams. But the but also I think that you know, coming back to that customer success and support world, I think uh kind of onboarding and success and support and and and sales and and all these teams are kind of coming together and and slowly is changing to where those roles are blending a lot. So I what I would imagine in the future is that even for big companies that have more separation of duties, there's not going to be as much uh of a you know hurdle or or going over wall where I would imagine even if you have very separate teams, you can you know have your AE directly in a channel as a pro, you know, you have a prospect, you have your AE in the channel, you're having conversations with them, um, as you know, with the customer and AE. Um, and then slowly you start bringing on the CSMs to start helping with onboarding and start having those conversations. So you can have in the same channel, the same, you know, um within with the same customer, they you can have multiple types of conversations. Um, and whether it's support or you know, or sales or whatever, it's all kind of coming in the same place. So the to the customer, they don't really know the difference between who's helping them, what team it is.

Charlotte Ward: 23:21

Which facilitates effectively an all-hand support of a flavor, I guess. And um, whether you call it that or not, that's kind of what you're doing because the customer just sees you as an organization in where they need them in the moment they need them.

Vlad Shlosberg: 23:38

Yeah. And and I think the way that you're the way you're describing it as all hands, it sounds kind of scary because it sounds like you're like, well, how do we scale that, right? Um, and I think in the beginning, and when you're small, don't try to scale it. There's a very famous quote by I think it was Paul Graham that said, Don't uh do things that don't scale as a startup because you'll learn a lot more. So in the beginning, don't do things that scale, that's fine. Um, but once you're ready to scale and you're, you know, you're obviously following the the patterns that I'm describing of you using Slack for all this stuff and you are ready to scale, just come talk to me because that's what our product does. I had to work a pitching. I had to work on it.

Charlotte Ward: 24:16

You said you were gonna. You said you weren't gonna. You saved it right to the end, practically, lad. Okay, all right. Well, we can't go out on a pitch.

Vlad Shlosberg: 24:24

So I guess I guess we want to promise.

Charlotte Ward: 24:29

Okay, I'm gonna nail you down then for the last two minutes. Like I I think that um one thing that I quite often like to do with firesides is kind of get that one piece of advice at the end. So maybe uh, you know, as someone in this kind of this kind of operating in this smaller space of a founder creating tools for support people, what's the piece of advice you'd give all of our listeners today?

Vlad Shlosberg: 24:54

I mean, I think that's the one I've kind of been trying to, I think I've been kind of saying it is create a low friction um way of communicating with your, you know, whether they're prospects till they're until they become customers and and and forever actually. So figure out ways to create low friction communication paths. Um, I don't think email is the best way for that, and I'm not kind of supporting any one specific technology, but I think just whatever those low friction methods are are are gonna help you a lot in terms of you know figuring out the product, figuring out what your pain points your customers have, and then just everything throughout the journey.

Charlotte Ward: 25:36

That makes complete sense. Thank you so much, Vlad. Thanks.

Vlad Shlosberg: 25:40

Thank you, Charlotte.

Charlotte Ward: 25:44

That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash two zero five for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.