Charlotte Ward: 0:13
Hello and welcome to episode two hundred and eighty nine of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I’m Charlotte Ward. Today, welcome Greg Skirving to talk about cultivating customer champions. Today, um, I’d like to welcome back Greg Skirving. Greg, um, my goodness, it’s been a long time since you and I talked on the podcast, right? About five years, I think we figured out.
Greg Skirving: 0:45
Um, yeah, five long years, I think, as it were.
Charlotte Ward: 0:48
So some of them were definitely long, I would agree with that. Seeing as it has been so long, would you please reintroduce yourself?
Greg Skirving: 0:58
Absolutely. Um yeah, Greg Skerving, like you said, um been uh um been in all three phases, uh customer-facing phases with technology companies for uh a few decades now. Um I I have sold, I have implemented, but home is uh home is support once uh once uh uh technology, the application, whatever is sold uh to uh to customers and it’s it’s implemented the way they like. I like to take care of them and uh and make sure that they uh you know uh well, like I say, um it’s my job to make customers want to stay, renew their contract, buy more and be reference accounts.
Charlotte Ward: 1:47
So you really have seen the uh the customers at every stage of the journey, then. Yeah. Yeah.
Greg Skirving: 1:54
That helps from a customer standpoint and internally as well.
Charlotte Ward: 1:58
Actually, it really does help internally to get uh, and this would be like my advice as well, even if you don’t work in those other functions is make friends with those other functions, get comfortable talking about those other functions’ goals and uh and how you can support them because then you’ll get the support as well, right? Um that’s a podcast in its own right, but that’s not what we’re here to talk about today, is it? Maybe you can come and do that one another time, but we’re talking about customer champions today, right?
Greg Skirving: 2:27
Indeed. Indeed. Um yeah. Uh um so so what’s really interesting in when you when you when you break down the the support, the ticket. The ticket, let’s start with the ticket. Well, a ticket’s not really a ticket, it’s an engagement. And uh and what that means is customers engage with us for two things to determine the cause and provide the solution. Because if they could do that on their own, it wouldn’t open a ticket. So and and again, with the actual um the actual foundation of the troubleshooting and remediation process, um um, which is always determine a cause and uh you know apply a solution. Um there are customers, and we’ve had both ends of the spectrum. You’ve got the customers that are like, How do I do this? How do I what what what do I uh what do I look for next time? And then you have customers that open a ticket and throw the log file at you and say, This didn’t work, fix it. Right? So what what what what customers some some intrinsically understand it, some don’t. What customers don’t understand is not only they are they involved in the troubleshooting process, in the in the in the process of resolving an issue, but it would behoove them to be very involved. Support has talk about other podcasts, the evolution of support is another podcast into it onto itself. But you know, decades ago, support was strictly break fix, right? Okay, are there three lights on the front of the box? Yes. Is the third one blinking? Good, okay. I’m gonna transfer you to one of my business application people and they’ll help me. Which is not support, you know, the the way it has evolved.
Charlotte Ward: 4:28
Yeah.
Greg Skirving: 4:28
And and and what’s interesting is like I said, there are customers that truly understand it. They want, they want to know that they they’ll invest money to train their people. And and there are other customers that um um, like I said, don’t want to spend the money. Um and ultimately they’re not successful. They’re not successful with with their the purchase of uh whatever technology they’re they they purchase from a vendor.
Charlotte Ward: 5:00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Greg Skirving: 5:02
Sorry, go ahead.
Charlotte Ward: 5:04
I was just gonna say, first of all, congratulations on using the word behoove, behoove. Um, not many people use that on the podcast. I I very much appreciate that. So I guess I guess I want to sort of bring you to a definition because everything you’ve said is absolutely spot on. Like there are customers who fully see themselves as part of the process and are willing to spend time and money and invest in that. And then there are those that aren’t. And so I guess in that landscape, could you tell me what a customer champion is? Uh do we tend to see them in one type of customer and not the other? Is that where where that’s where my mind is kind of taking me?
Greg Skirving: 5:47
Yeah, yeah. So um first and foremost, um the the customers have to be willing. Okay? They have to be willing to be um um the customer as an entity needs to invest. That means that means training. That means keeping their technology up to date. That means that means having a champion. As a matter of fact, um I I put together uh uh a training program for for my guys currently. We run sort of a pseudo TAM premium support model and uh long implementation, six months longer than that. And uh when when the transition from deployment to support comes, um my folks will deliver this presentation. And and we named it our most successful customers do this. And and that means having spare parts, hot swappable parts, um, we’re we’re hardware heavy, um, keeping the software up to date, having trained people, and having a champion, having somebody that’s that’s kind of the person that everyone can go to within the customer.
Charlotte Ward: 7:12
Um is this someone, is this so this is someone really that has had the benefit of all of that training, is probably a a major stakeholder in the relationship, maybe commercially, maybe not, almost certainly technically and in terms of internal enablement at their side, right? And and is that something, someone that in your experience they identify or you identify, or that you get up to a point and kind of you know work together to identify?
Greg Skirving: 7:46
Yeah, yeah, that’s a that’s a great question. Excuse me. And uh I’ll go back to uh a term I like to use, um, willing, and I will say capable. Okay, the people, the best champions firstly need to be willing to participate um in the troubleshooting process. So, so transactionally, the actual ticket, strategically, um obviously staying staying current. Um, but but they need to be willing. And the willing ones are easy to work with. You just spend an extra five minutes and say, the next time this comes up, look for this, and you can solve it yourself. And they love it. So so there’s some coaching I do with my folks. Um uh identify and capitalize on the willing participants. And if they’re not willing, um, you know, the people that just throw the logs, then you have to sort of politely position why why it’s it it their involvement is important. We’re we’re we’re going to ask you these questions. So if you give me a log file, our log files get overridden fairly quickly. So timeliness is important. If if if if you give me the log files, I can then find a root cause. But if you wait an extra day, then we’re kind of out of luck. Um I’ll I’ll talk about uh I’ll talk about troubleshooting. Um I like to think that troubleshooting starts the second um the issue is is identified. Even even telling a customer that, you know, in my business we do footage, CCC, you know, CCT, TV, um, you could take pictures. We’re going to ask you these questions anyway. You may as well start. So, first of all, you have to identify whether whether customers are willing, and if not, you kind of coach and encourage them, kind of nurture them, yeah. Slowly they they come around.
Charlotte Ward: 9:45
So um, so for those customers where the champion is effectively self-identifying by that engagement, they’re willing to, they’re proactive, all of the things you said where where the customer champion is evident. I’ve got one question there, and then I want to follow up on like how you bring others into the fold. But do you track them? Do you have like identification markers or check boxes or a contact list for your champions? Are they actually is this almost kind of a role or a recognized type of stakeholder that you’re tracking?
Greg Skirving: 10:22
Yeah, from the customer side, um, and oftentimes they self-identify, like you say, this is our champion. They use that nomenclature. Um if not, I don’t have a formal checklist, but it’s pretty obvious they there is there is one or there are one or two people that are involved um or not. And if they’re if they’re involved, then that’s great. And then we’ll use that word champion. And again, the training helps them to understand the the the the transition they’re going through and truly owning, now supporting whatever product they’ve uh they’ve purchased. So that’s a good idea. I haven’t really uh I’ve got I’ve got a lot of training material and I haven’t actually put down a checklist of what to look for. And I might just do that. But you know, like I say, it’s pretty obvious. The people who throw the log files at you, um, they will ultimately as a company potentially struggle.
Charlotte Ward: 11:24
So it’s interesting to me because I I think that identification is one part of it, getting your team to begin to look out for the markers of a of a potential champion. But it but on the other hand, as well, like uh another aspect here is like if you track those champions as individuals as you identify and nurture them, that’s actually really valuable information for the rest of your team your business, isn’t it? So customer success are gonna love that kind of information, for instance, where you can say, this is our most engaged technical stakeholder in this customer. He comes to us with this kind of information, these kind of problems. There’s clearly a new use case developing, or there’s something they’re doing that we we’ve got early line of sight of because he’s very engaged.
Greg Skirving: 12:14
Yeah, you’re you’re absolutely right. And uh and we do have uh customer sex success managers who work very, very tightly with our uh um TSSs, but they’re really TAMs, uh our TAMs, and and absolutely having that that that line in to the technical people to be able to feed back up strategically to the CSMs who can um, you know, uh I I I like the CSMs, uh our CSMs to be able to walk in and say, we noticed you have a challenge with X, we can help you with Y. And a lot of that information comes from the uh the feet on the ground of uh what uh what my guys do from a technical uh troubleshooting and you know problem remediation.
Charlotte Ward: 13:01
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let’s go to the uh the other path then for these customer contacts, which you mentioned, which is the ones that are less engaged, the customers that are coming into the business with no obvious, you know, willing participant in this, you know, they want to throw a log file over the wall and say, there you go, fix that. Um what is what does the nurturing process look like? You described a little bit of it a minute ago. It’s describing some of the benefits of approaching troubleshooting in a certain way. This is how we can help you. But is there more to it than that? Because in many ways, that’s sort of that’s how I would expect a good support engineer to function, right? Is like bring the customer along with you. Um, is there more to it when you’re talking about nurturing potential champions?
Greg Skirving: 13:51
Yeah, absolutely. And and uh it’s funny that we talked about CSMs because um uh my folks are you know, much like sales and an SE, uh aligned TAM and CSM on the back end. And you know, the the TAM can only do so much to constantly remind um remind how how a part of a partner, a customer um is involved in the process. Is involved. But some people some people are are you know hesitant. Um I said there’s a lot of a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty. I really don’t know. So this is what my support contracts were, you fix it. Um but working working in uh in conjunction with the CSM, and again, like I said, it’s it’s it’s it’s such a simple thing, but a CSM should have a have a monthly meeting with their their stakeholders, with the TSS, and say, we noticed you you you struggle or you could you could benefit from X. We can help you with Y. Excuse me. That could be training, that could be spare parts, that could be uh optimization services, that could be inspection, that could be um um uh tr uh troubleshooting training, anything like that. It ties up to that bigger because what we’re really trying to in many ways is it’s protecting people from their cell from themselves. If you’re a customer and you think you could just buy technology and it runs, you you that you’re gonna fail. You you have to invest in it, you have to do the right things. Excuse me. Um like I said, that’s why we put the training together. Our most successful customers do all of these things. And the core of that is having somebody that that owns it. It’s their baby. They want to make sure it works. They make sure that the people um who report into them or you know, the people that use the system can come to them and solve problems uh before a ticket needs to go to the vendor. So it’s really uh it’s it’s like I said, it’s we’re talking about cultivating champions, but it’s really how can customers um realize the best benefit out of the technology that they’ve purchased. And it’s not set it up and run and sit back, you know, it didn’t run and open a ticket.
Charlotte Ward: 16:20
So Yeah, yeah. Do do your champions typically so sorry, it’s a bit of a follow-on question because I know you have like this premium support model as well. Do your champions typically raise more complex, like higher stakes questions, you know, more more like, you know, adoption questions rather than just break fix? Uh has the nature of their questions changed?
Greg Skirving: 16:46
Yeah, absolutely. Uh uh when we started out, um, I I really wanted to set the stage of, you know, the the the lifecycle of every engagement or ticket, which is there’s something wrong. Oh, okay, let’s let’s troubleshoot. Ah, I’ve identified the colors. Okay, here’s the solution. And and that’s the what. Um who does that? Um, excuse me, who does that? Um again, let’s go to that one customer that thinks that’s what my support contract is for. They think we do. Um, and even if we do, we’re still gonna involve you because I need to ask questions about about the situation. Um but the customers that really embrace it, they start to take on that process. They become the who in failure identification and and and providing a fix. They do it. Um there’s there’s a there’s a customer, I won’t mention them by name, but they went through a six-month process, and the only time we ever hear from them is to replenish their spare parts because they’ve determined the problem. They’ve they’ve put the part on and they’ve said, I just need this part. So absolutely, again, but what does that roll up to? Um uh better success in in operating, you know, technology. We we uh people in our field wouldn’t have jobs if technology, you know, worked flawlessly 100% of the time. It’s a fact. But you know, the the mo our most successful customers invest in making sure that they can they can uh um fix stuff. I haven’t talked about preventative maintenance too. I’m actually in products now. They’re they’re uh and they’re autonomous. And like I tell people, the robots are autonomous, the maintenance isn’t unique in these things, right?
Charlotte Ward: 18:41
So so you so you kind of get as you said, you come we we kind of come full circle with champions then, right back to your starting point, which is that this slide that you put in front of customers, which says our most successful customers do this. The champion is almost there in on-site ensuring that that success happens because they’ve presumably or probably at that point seen that slide anyway. And um, if they’re self-identifying, they’re gonna make that happen. And if you’re nurturing, they’re gonna kind of clue into that over time. So it becomes a uh a kind of success um influence inside the inside the customer organization, right?
Greg Skirving: 19:25
Yeah, and and and as you say that, I’ll I’ll I’ll I’ll categorize it like this. If the users of the technology within the company view that uh champion as their first stop, yeah, they that’s success. Because they you know, say, oh I’ve I’ve seen that, you know, just do this and that’ll that’ll solve that, or oh no, that’s normal behavior, that’ll clear itself. Don’t worry about that. Because you can’t you you have many depending on the technology and uh uh uh and what what you’re what it is you’re supporting and selling, of course. Um there there could be multiple users, right? And and you don’t want um multiple users, well, in most uh I’m trying to be as technology agnostic as I can. But I mean if if if they view that champion as their help desk, they can go to them. Yeah and and they and and and and it’s not again, I don’t want to go back to the old we need to deflect, you know. Let’s we don’t want customers calling us for support. It’s like, no, we wanna we wanna enable you to be able to resolve issues. And the ones that love it, love it.
Charlotte Ward: 20:42
Yeah, and that’s the point, right? I think like it’s easy to look at deflection because it’s a number and we can attach to it, but ultimately what we’re all trying to create is successful customers. And the most successful customers are generally the happiest customers. Um in uh bi-directionally, though. So happy customers are, you know, uh are the kind that can serve themselves, they’re the kind that typically get their problems answered quicker. And if that quicker means I’m not gonna have to wait for a ticket response, whether that’s five minutes or five hours, then the the fact is they’re gonna walk away happier, you know. And and we see that as customers ourselves, right? I mean, I I could not be more pleased than when I solve something on my like let’s say my iPad myself, than having to dig around with Chat GPT or or you know, Apple support, right? Like it’s okay, oh this, oh, it was that. Fine, I’m happy now.
Greg Skirving: 21:46
There’s that individual satisfaction, but um, I I will say this there’s the you know, whatever the driver is, whether there’s a commercial angle on this, well, you know, we need to sell premium support and and you need to CSM and all. That or whether you just want a happy customer, um w one leads and the other follows, regardless of what your approach is. But at the end of the day, like I said, technology breaks. And the what is you determine a cause and you provide a solution. And and um like a hundred percent a hundred percent of every issue does that, right? You identify what what’s wrong and you provide a solution. And if you look at it from that standpoint, um you you it’s it’s really a matter of of of the who. And the the our most successful customers, I’ll say it again, um, invest in shortening that that that timeline because they uh they can handle it themselves. They invest in that. They have people that are trained, they have people that understand, they have people that want to solve it. And uh, you know, if you want to talk TTR, the the TTR is shorter because you can fix it yourself.
Charlotte Ward: 23:01
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And we don’t really take that into account, do we? I think I think one thing that’s coming up more and more from just purely from a support metrics point of view, and and we see this very prevalently with AI getting into the queue as well. You know, I talked to your your friend my friend Craig a few weeks back about AI and humans sharing the queue. Like the the dynamics change significantly. The more you push downstream, whether that downstream is to an AI or to the customer, your time your time to resolution is going to increase. And yet a lot of executives don’t really appreciate that. Um, and they look at the baseline number. So that as a support leader is going to have to be a narrative you are very keyed into and very ready to tell. Yes, it’s last quarter, our time to resolution increased because customers are asking us less tickets, ticket complexity is increasing, you know, increasing and so on. Like it’s really important to not just be driven by a number.
Greg Skirving: 24:03
Yeah, yeah. Actually, it’s kind of funny because you’re right, your TTR is driven by um a lot of things, but going back to your your comment, uh companies with with with who invest and have good champions, they don’t raise how-to-type questions. They do the stuff. Um they they I I also another point of coaching with with my guys is is how technically savvy and credible is the person with whom you’re dealing. Um because customers tend to, I won’t say lie, but misrepresent what they’re telling you. Well, when did when everyone who’s listening to this has gone through this. You say you ask the customer when did this start happening? And they all did this morning. And you look at the loss going on for six months.
Charlotte Ward: 24:58
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve only there.
Greg Skirving: 25:01
So, so so how how how can I interface? How can I ask questions to elicit the responses that are gonna help me troubleshoot? You don’t have that with the champion because you know them, you understand them, you know their technical level. So what they will bring to you are only the tough ones that they can’t solve because they’re doing the tier one and tier two support. So those take longer, but there’s fewer of them. And like I said, because you know, you determine a cause and you provide a solution, and that gets shortened because people end up doing it themselves.
Charlotte Ward: 25:36
Yeah, yeah, 100%. What an interesting topic. Thank you for covering it with me, Greg, today. Um, I know that we have at least three or four more strings that I would like to pull, uh, threads that I would like to pull on based on our quick chat yesterday and uh and this conversation. So I’m confident that you’re gonna come back for several more episodes to come. But can I can I get your commitment to do that now where you come back and join me for another chat?
Greg Skirving: 26:02
Always a pleasure, and uh, I would love to come back and uh talk a little bit more about uh about a few things.
Charlotte Ward: 26:08
Perfect. Thank you so much for today. Um let’s have a catch up soon. That’s it for today. Go to customer supportleaders.com forward slash two eight nine for the show notes, and I’ll see you next time.
