Charlotte Ward: 0:22
Today welcome Ryan Klausner to talk about what support does when AI takes the tickets. Today I’d like to welcome back Ryan Klausner. Ryan, thank you so much for coming back on the podcast after quite a break. Um, it must be a couple years since we last actually had a chat in this forum, I reckon. What what what do you think? Uh it’s been a while anyway. Um, so I’m gonna ask you to reintroduce yourself, but welcome back.
Ryan Klausner: 0:52
Thank you, Charlotte. It’s good to be back. It’s always fun to talk with you about what are the latest uh challenges and opportunities happening in our industry. It’s been an interesting few years, both in the the job market, the industry with the advancements uh with AI. And I’ve also had a recent role change. So I uh wrapped up my time at Who Gives a Crap, a profit-for-purpose startup after five years, uh, who is based in Australia. And now I’m working for a men’s personal care uh brand called Based, uh, who is doing some incredible sales and growth uh predominantly through TikTok and their DTC website. And I’m bringing some of that special blend of CX magic to what they do there. And I’m just sort of uh in my third week, so it’s still all fresh. It has that new startup smell uh still.
Charlotte Ward: 1:49
Um the kind of smell that uh personal care products bring.
Ryan Klausner: 1:55
Precisely, precisely, hence the need for based, basebodyworks.com, uh, for those wanting to check them out. Um, but excited to chat with you today. I mean, I have 15 plus years of experience helping startups and mission-driven brands build and scale customer experience, support, and success teams. Uh, I generally take a human-first and innovation-led approach that is really focused on driving customer loyalty and growth while building global teams that are highly engaged and love what they do. So, how do I balance that with AI? That’s the question, because I often don’t lead with AI, but every role these days wants you to lead with AI and they want to see some experience with AI, which I have worked a lot in and implemented both externally and internally with teams, um, both that I’ve worked with in the past and the ones that I’m working with now. So excited to talk through that with you today.
Charlotte Ward: 2:52
Thank you so much. Yeah, uh, yeah, what an intro and what what what some quite some experience. Um, you and I talked when you were at Hugh Who Gives a Crap, and uh I I think you know you summed it up there well, that the sort of mission-driven really um uh organizations that you’ve worked with for a substantial amount of your career. Um the that strikes me as being a very human-led way of doing support. And so listening to you talk briefly there about having brought those kind of uh organizations into the new world and and implement AI and begin to think about what the support teams are doing around and after AI. Um, I’m super interested to dig into with you a little bit on this episode. Um, because I genuinely would have thought very human-led support of those kind of organizations, but we have to be realistic. What support team isn’t thinking about or doing or implementing or have implemented and are well past the AI experience right now. Um, so that’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it? Life after AI, what support teams do around um and uh instead of core support work when an AI of some sort or other is taking the tickets, triaging the tickets, moving the tickets along, right? So um, yeah, what what do what does a team do once you’ve once you’ve done a really good implementation and AI is taking a good portion of the tickets? I think realistically it’s you know it’s not going to be 100%. So let’s just get real there. We do need some support work out of our support teams, but but what comes next?
Ryan Klausner: 4:38
Yeah, well, we’re definitely not there yet, to your point. I think any organization that went fully all in, 100% of their volume will be handled by AI uh very quickly or or shortly thereafter did a 180 on that approach. Uh I think there’s a few notable brands that we can all point to that made a big declaration about we’re going all in on AI, and then they retracted that after unfortunate layoffs of a large part of their team. And I think that’s the thought, or maybe that’s the misnomer, particularly around being human first or being a very human-centric company, is that there’s no place for AI. And I think AI is actually there very much to support the work, to do better work for what your teams do every day, and also to support your customers with their evolving expectations, their desire and expectations now for immediacy and self-service and getting the answers that they want. But I think we really need to think about that AI shift is less about taking jobs, but now we enable our highest performers to really focus more on the proactive and move away from the reactive, which I think has been sort of where support traditionally has sat. Um, so that’s you know, doing a better job of using AI to surface where friction lies in the customer journey or within the product or platform itself, and how do you surface those into meaningful and digestible reports uh that can be actually leveraged and implemented across an organization? Um, how do you identify through pain points in the customer journey where to proactively um sort of reach out to customers, which was often something more marketing teams did? But how do you partner with marketing and well as customer journey um mapping to really understand where that is, to go for again from that reactive to proactive to create a better uh funnel for the customers, but also to gently nudge them in the right direction before they realize they have a question you’ve already pointed them in the right direction. Um, but it really is, I think, about support teams overall becoming that central intelligence function in the business. So, yes, if there’s a data scientist or an insights function and you’re fortunate to fortunate enough to have that where you are, they’re going to be extracting a lot of the data that you you have and are make available to them. So I think it’s really going to a high level, moving from that reactive to proactive that’s really so key. Um, but yes, let AI handle those repetitive tickets. Let AI handle onboarding, let AI handle um a lot of what was fairly high touch in the past, and then have your team there who are truly capable of thinking, thinking in ways that we haven’t seen AI be able to successfully do for those unusual curly scenarios with customers so that they can actually get right into resolution mode and not do that endless back and forth, which AI is currently not handling so well and could easily have, you know, a dozen or more back and forth interactions from.
Charlotte Ward: 7:36
Yeah.
Ryan Klausner: 7:36
And then I think, you know, as we move from that uh reactive to proactive, then we can need to start looking at, you know, how can everyone in your team become a strategic operator? So how can you build that as a mindset for not just the leaders on your team, but everyone? And that is probably going to have some significant L and D required internally to have that shift of perspective because there’s also going to be some resistance, especially if people have had their career doing that reactive work. That is a significant shift in their thinking. Um, so again, how can they feel that they have more autonomy to um identify issues before they happen? How can you leverage the AI to also identify trends all too often, especially if we’re working with the BPO, uh, for example, we often don’t identify an issue until it’s blown up. But if you actually look back at the records, you’re like, oh, but we did have two dozen tickets come in over the weekend. And we could have identified that it was an issue at that point, but no one wanted to raise the flag. So there’s sort of those cultural challenges in an organization that can make that possible. AI can do a great job of working together to identify that. There’s also that third one that then makes it like your human team will become truly a white glove sort of concierge team that is really going to be able to go that extra mile for customers when it comes to loyalty, refunds, thoughtful interactions. AI can raise the bar for that proactive and immediate responsiveness, but as your customers’ expectations get higher, when to jump in, and even being able to train AI effectively on that is really going to be critical.
Charlotte Ward: 9:14
Yeah, yeah. Well, there is such a lot there to unpack, isn’t there? And I think when I think about the common elements across everything you said, I think that the broadening of the role is inevitable. You know, we’re going to touch more to your point on insights and customer success and marketing and community. These are all things that have traditionally been at the edges of support. And we have to move into them when the core work of support disappears. And almost, I don’t know why I’m going this way, but support comes as becomes this kind of donut shape, right? It almost becomes the interfaces with so many other parts of the business. And that’s actually where the real value comes rather than in the core kind of ticket handling. Um, and I think each of those um interfaces and opportunities carry some really interesting uh new skill sets, to your point, um, require building new ways of thinking and things that don’t necessarily come naturally to people that have traditionally sat in a problem-solving or you know, question-answer kind of space. Uh, that reactive nature is um and that reactive mindset is quite different from everything you described, which is often sits in the kind of spotting patterns and acting earlier. These are things that don’t come naturally to support people. And it’s really interesting to hear you sort of think about just that that late last example you gave of like there was a a problem brewing. Humans are actually very good at spotting brewing problems, I think. We just don’t necessarily take the leap as support people and say this is a brewing problem. I need to do something about it now rather than wait until it’s officially on my queue to solve.
Ryan Klausner: 11:03
100%. And I think that’s the real difference of what we need to encourage, not just with our the leaders that we have within customer support, but it’s also why I am such an advocate of having customer support teams report into a customer experience function, because ultimately customer support will only be reactive if that is the corner that they are forced into. And historically, customer support teams are a reactive function. We need support because we need to get on these issues. What does getting on these issues means? It means we need to reply to customers about problems we’re having. It’s not about how we feed that across the business, et cetera.
Charlotte Ward: 11:41
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I actually think the more I reflect on it, um, I think a lot of support leaders are really good at at spotting the signs much earlier. And I think given just a little bit of space, we’re quite good at saying, hey, product team, we think there’s this thing over here that could be could be a brewing concern. And I think, hey, you know, marketing, we’ve spotted this opportunity because I’ve seen a lot of this kind of thing bubble up in the last few weeks. And so let me leave that with you. And I think support leaders are quite used to um working at that level, interfacing with other teams and um building those relationships and those skill sets to work alongside those other teams much more closely in ways that doesn’t come naturally to the front line of support. And coaching that is quite hard, I think.
Ryan Klausner: 12:36
It is, it is, but I think as leaders, it’s our job, especially at this time, to help ensure that we are influencing the evolution of what support roles look like. And yes, there will be some folks that won’t uh uh want to come along, will be too resistant in that change, especially if they’ve been in support for a very long time. It is uh a big uh evolution to take that reactive to proactive shift. Uh it’s not more work, it’s just working differently and different than what we’re used to. Um and I think for that very reason, though, we need to think about what do some of these evolved roles look like that we had historically leaned into that won’t necessarily have a place in the future. So, you know, what does it look like for someone to be an AI sort of conversation, conversational analyst that is also involved with designing prompts, for example, within AI? And that’s not there’s not going to be just one role for that. That’s going to be a series of roles that are feeding in as agentic AI is getting smarter and more intelligent. You know, ultimately, I don’t think the future of a support agent is probably going to look like it does today. It’s going to probably be more somewhere between a product specialist and an analyst of some kind. Like there’s that analytical side of the support brain that I think will have to be leaned into while also still having those soft skills, that empathy, that AI, I I mean, it doesn’t matter how intelligent it is, we’ve all had it. I understand how frustrating it is. A bot telling you that.
Charlotte Ward: 14:20
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Ryan Klausner: 14:22
We all know inherently feels disingenuous. Even though it might know that because it’s trained to know that. Just get me to the resolution. The false, the fake empathy, I think. And maybe that’s a generational thing. Maybe that’s something that we will, you know, the younger generations as they’re raised and they’re engaging with that will look quite different, and they’re going to want that sort of higher emotional intelligence from AI that uh as it exists today feels inauthentic. Um, but I mean, at the end of the day, what are we going to be optimizing for? We’re going to be ultimating optimizing for speed, for self-service. I think personalization and context. How we talk to a customer that’s been with us for two years will be should be different than someone who just joined us in the last month, for example. Um, how do we get to solution mode faster? Often we’re great at answering questions, but uh we need to be better at getting to the solution. Because ultimately that’s what customers are looking for is what’s the solution? Not how much of a heartwarming back and forth can we have. Trust is built on that. So AI can do build trust if it can jump to a good solution, um, and also not sort of um railroad a customer on not having an alternative if they’re not happy with that solution, or perhaps the solution isn’t um the resolution isn’t reasonable um for the for the situation. But yes, I mean efficiency is just one thing. I I think there’s also a lot of things we could do in terms of really focusing on, you know, many of us have neglected help centers, um, or just general sort of poor customer education, um, an onboarding journey that maybe wasn’t looked at since the product launched. So I think how we look at support teams is going to start, I don’t want to say looking a little bit more like success, but even customer success roles are going to have challenges if they don’t adapt, right? Because of AI. So there’s definitely going to be, I think, a lot more sort of uh blurring the line in in some cases between reactive and proactive.
Charlotte Ward: 16:26
I I agree. And I think like I, you know, I’ve it’s all over LinkedIn and places like it, how support is moving closer to success. And I think I think that’s not wrong. Um, but I also think it’s a it’s too simple an answer. And and I think that we in when I see that written, I think you you’ve shortcut so much there because you’ve really looked around the business and thought, what is the thing that’s closest to customers when it’s not just answering their tickets? And actually, when you think about success, it’s it’s cust it’s it’s multifaceted as a discipline. And I think so much of that is really what those people are trying to convey when they say support is moving closer to success, but I think it’s too simplistic, and and I’ll tell you why. Um I think it I think what they’re trying to say is when you take away the tickets out of support, what you’re left with is humans who have a lot of the capabilities that other humans in other parts of the business do, particularly in success, which is relationship building, but that actually humans in support are just humans. They are great and they’re great at talking to customers in a in an understanding way. And given the time, a really good support agent or a good support engineer will always do way more than just answer the problem. They’ll try and understand the customer’s real need. They’ll try and provide alternatives, they’ll try and understand when we need to do something new here, either in terms of product or you know, innovation on the experience or the customer relationship. And all of those things are opportunities for really good support engineers or support agents to deliver, which some of which do traditionally sit inside success, but some of which very definitely don’t. And I think to to simplify it to, oh, we need to move closer to success is kind of I think the the um the inference there for people reading that, like skim reading that at speed would would be, well, okay, we can get rid of support and just hire more success people, but but it’s a different discipline, I think. And I think that what you’re describing, some of the other facets also sit inside the new world of support. You know, when I think about designing a customer experience, it’s about understanding your customers and finding new ways to do things. When when I think about you know creating better knowledge or better product, those are those are understanding your customers and finding new ways to meet their needs. And that isn’t customer success. And I think for me, that’s that’s what, to your point, is what support has the potential and probably will become.
Ryan Klausner: 19:18
Well, that’s exactly it. I actually, in some ways, it’s so funny. Everyone said, this is maybe gonna be my hot take to wrap things up. The the everyone’s been so overly indexed on the impacts, I think, to customer support uh because of the evolution and and push towards AI. There will be impacts, needless to say, to support. We’re already seeing that, but I think it’s more of an evolution of how those roles work. I actually think customer success is more at risk in some ways. It’s that’s very old school in a sense, just rebranded account management, post-sale account management. And that’s something that AI can do a great job of monitoring behavior in a much more sort of low touch, higher impact way for customers and the business. Um, so it’s much more at risk than perhaps customer support ever was, even though we keep hearing customer support jobs are at risk. The only people I think at risk in the world of customer support are those who are not willing or in unable to evolve what their role looks like, the type of work they’re doing. But the work will exist. And, you know, I think it won’t for the very sort of few that are just there to answer tickets in a way that is just extremely baseline. Your jobs have already been taken by AI. Just coasting, right? Those people. Just coasting. Yeah. But anyone who is above just sort of the coasting and have an appetite to learn and grow, I still think there’s a lot of opportunity in in our industry and will be for years to come. It just will continue to change. But I think there’s something very exciting about that at the same time for those who are truly willing to lean into it.
Charlotte Ward: 20:58
Yeah, absolutely. Of course, the rate of change is the thing that’s unusual now. You know, we’ve I’ve been in support for 30 years, believe it or not. I know I don’t look old enough, Ryan. Thank you.
Ryan Klausner: 21:08
I was gonna say 30 years. How is this possible, Charlotte? How is this possible?
Charlotte Ward: 21:13
I know, I’m just so babyfaced. Um, however, however, um support has changed. You know, when I started in support, I couldn’t imagine a world where I wasn’t sat in a cubicle answering the phone. Um, and and here we are. Um I’m still I’m still you know alive and kicking in an evolving support function. And okay, it’s evolving. Not answering the phones, and all of my phone calls when I do make them are on Zoom and they’re proactively arranged, right? So so yeah, yeah. Uh so things do change. And I think it I I do think get on board, and there are exciting times to come to your point in support. Like I think there are there are many, many opportunities to evolve individuals inside a team, never mind the business. Never mind the industry. You could if if you’re engaged and willing to lean into to your point. Um I I I think that you can make what you want of this almost at this point because the needs are there across the business. You just need to recognize them and go for it.
Ryan Klausner: 22:23
Brilliant. Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Charlotte Ward: 22:25
Oh my goodness. Did I just wrap up this episode with a I think you did without realizing it. Without realizing it. Wow. Okay. Uh well, thank you so much for joining me, and thank you for letting me wrap up my own episode. How amazing.
Ryan Klausner: 22:37
Thank you for for helping me wrap up. Uh design can be long-winded. So well done. That’s a true consummate professionalism.
Charlotte Ward: 22:45
Oh, I was just such a professional. It’s the 30 years that got me here. That’s what it is, or something. Um, thank you so much for joining me again, Ryan. Will you come back and have another chat another time soon?
Ryan Klausner: 22:55
I hope so, if you’ll have me.
Charlotte Ward: 22:57
I certainly will. Thank you again. Lovely to see you. That’s it for today. Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash two nine four for the show notes, and I’ll see you next time.
