Laura Bedoya: Building Customer Support Teams with Heart and Strategy

awesome I’m excited to welcome Laura bedya a senior technical support manager at vital. where she built and leads the

company’s firster technical support team for B2B platform which is super cool so excited to have you Laura yeah thank you

so much I really appreciate the invite uh we we were just briefly talking about how we’re both uh East Coasters and as a

New Jersey native I’m always I have like a special place in my heart for for people who live out there or in Boston

so this is especially exciting for me um so Laura one of the things that I’d love to kind of talk about is this um the you

know building the first support team I have built some of those teams myself not on the sport side but on sales or go

to market and it’s really tough um I imagine that you experienced a lot both you know helping people come on and

building process tell us uh some of the questions uh sorry sorry some of the lessons that you learned in those early

days building this out yeah um yeah I mean it was it was a lot of fun um just

CU it’s just a lot of creativity really it’s just kind of like you know let’s

try this let’s do it this way this is what I know let’s see how we can make it better um but yeah I uh started at

vitally um I’ve been almost it’ll almost be three years in February um so coming

very close to to I feel like three years in a tech startup is like 10 years in

like any other company um uh but it was really cool um I was the

first technical support manager and technal technical support specialist and

pretty much just anything that came with the job of being in technical support um

so it was cool that I got to actually experience like what the Daya day was going to be um so then when I brought on

people I could actually be like this is definitely what you’re going to be doing throughout your day because I did it for

the last six months by myself um learned a lot about in

um a lot a lot a lot about intercom it’s one thing to implement it but it’s another thing I always call it my

adopted child because I didn’t implement it or anything and so I it was just kind

of given to me and then I was like okay what like what did you guys do how is this set up what is not set up like I’m

still learning three years later so many things about intercom that I didn’t realize was turned on it it been a lot

of different lessons but I think the the biggest lesson for me is literally documenting every single little thing um

and so for us um having just like a really big

Internal Documentation helps every single person on board very easily

because as soon as I started a process I would document it and then whoever was on boarded whoever the next person was

that was new to our team was able to actually be like oh okay this is what you’re doing this is why you’re doing it

this is how you’re doing it and all that um and you know a Shameless plugin we

use Zite to pretty much just create all of our screenshots and gifts and screen

and uh screen recordings and everything for our documentation we’re big fans of text but also visuals everyone has

different learning styles um and because we’re also are in charge of

documentation um on the external side you know we need to be adaptable to

different learning styles and you know maybe reading a bunch of words step by step is not your thing and you’re like

wait what a crap where am I what step am I on like maybe you’re just seeing a video you go oh I know what that looks

like cool like let me just click around so yeah documentation I think is probably the biggest thing um that I

learned and it helped also just keep me accountable and on track of like what did I do how did I do this when did I do

this so it’s been super helpful yeah I love how you have that kind of like I don’t know if you call it like a

multimodal or you know multi- uh type of content but for me outside of work I love Reddit and

I use it as a resource to read about people’s experiences and then I go to YouTube to watch how people build things

like for Christmas for my kids I’m going to build them like a swing set and I don’t know what I’m doing so I’m gonna watch somebody else do it and figure it

out um I you know go going back to your your comment about um having software or

or tools or even people I feel like that’s a pretty common experience um when when you kind of adopted that tool

intercom did you feel like you were a true parent or did you feel like you had

to leave it how it was did you kind of start to make changes and just sort of make it your own no I I first observed

and was just like okay what is happening right now what is working what is not working um so it was a lot of just

question asking and observing and trying to figure out uh what exists today um

and you know I mean I was the I think the 28th higher if I’m not or

maybe yeah I think it was like something like that I can’t exact I can’t remember exact number but um I was brought on

really really early on and so um it there was no handbook like there was

nothing it was just like here you go uh learn it create processes do what you

can and so it’s just a lot of like all right let’s click around and see like what you guys got turned on and how you

are powering this and like I just learned recently that most like where our data is coming from I I thought it

was coming from one platform and ended up coming from another one so I was like oh I didn’t know that um so it’s been um

yeah it’s been a lot of Discovery but yeah at first it was just a lot of just question asking and trying to figure out

what is working I I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel if I didn’t need to necessarily um and I mean at this point

everything has changed but um I did everything also kind of like wave I also didn’t want to like completely disrupt

the way that customers were used to getting um you know their their customer experience I and the customer support I

didn’t want to Super change that too much and then be like whoa like how do I get help now I don’t understand this so

been a lot of you know iterations of the same thing just getting progressively

better so you have you sort of undertook new tools you um built out a BN bunch of

processes for both current and new folks you joined your team you’ve created content in a bunch of approaches um can

you tell me a little bit about you know what’s it like from after you’ve built out some of these process how do you

kind of keep your team enthusiastic and at the same time focused on what is

often I think a people people don’t really appreciate how difficult customer support is like you have some of the

hardest interactions with people they’re annoyed and frustrated and then also you have some of the best right how do you

kind of keep people enthusiastic excited motivated to help ensure the company hits their goals but also for them as

people yeah um yeah first and foremost yeah customer support I think is one of

the most undervalued teams um and it’s not specific to anyone in particular I’m

very thankful that vital um is not part of that culture our team like our CEO is

constantly like you guys are killing it like we are very acknowledged but yeah it is really really difficult because I

mean most times um you know you’re dealing with customers that are unhappy

that are like hey this isn’t working I’m trying to figure this out like I I can’t do it and like you know that doesn’t

allow you to do your job and focus on what is important and is reaching that goal it’s kind of like a blocker and so

um that can be really draining um for you know whether it’s just your your

patience your frustration your mental health it could definitely be really really draining so customers support is definitely not for everybody um but one

of the ways that we really try to keep our culture is um number one thing is

team um everybody has to get along I don’t need you guys to be best friends but we are here together and so we’re

going to act as if we are on the team together um so there’s a lot of unity

and something that I’m I’m very known for um is kind of like that culture

champion I think it just makes such a huge difference to actually be like oh wait you guys are humans right um let me

treat you like such and so um it’s you know something that I think most people

we get so uh focused on the business that we forget that there are humans

that are actually getting us to those business goals um and so my team feels

um it’s so funny we’re like in the middle of doing reviews and started to kind of read a little bit of some some

uh our upward reviews of what my team is saying and um it’s great that they feel

like anything that they say to me I’m their Champion I will always be like

okay cool like this is what you want let’s think this through what makes sense on the business side and then

let’s also you know try to see how we can accommodate that to whatever it is that your concern is um so one making

them feel heard is super important because there are going to be times where something isn’t working maybe they

think that they have a better idea or something and so it’s just talking through it’s like a soundboard I’m like okay come to me with your idea we’ll

talk this out loud I’ll give you my opinion you’ll give me yours and then we’ll see where where we can find like

the middle ground here does it makes sense to change the process does it make sense to just leave it as is given the

context that I provided you um number two another thing that we do that’s really big is um we do a lot of like

working sessions together and it’s mainly because we are a remote first company and so most of us are everywhere

um we have team team members based right outside of London and then we have the rest of the team that’s based in the US

and so um we try to at some point get together and

actually like work together and teach each other certain things and keep each other just kind of updated on everything

that’s going on um and we have a team Channel um and in that team Channel we talk about all kinds of things if

there’s something really that happened over the weekend it’s really nice because they will actually just um like just post

like hey like this is what I did this weekend and it’s nice because then it’s like oh like I know this thing about you

and this thing that you did and that human connection is just it’s really

makes the biggest difference and all of that and so it’s a lot of just remembering that we are humans and

collaboration and partnership is really really rooted in our human con nection

to each other and so it’s just fostering a lot a lot of that oh well I I absolutely agree I especially love the

the focus on the human connection and it’s especially hard when you know effectively what we’re often reduced to

is a name and a slack Channel you know it’s it’s pretty tough for your username in a intercom or something so that’s

great I I I love how you’re thinking about this so I imagine that a lot of these ideas these leadership approaches

didn’t sort of just come to you over time you’ve worked in a bunch of different areas retail e-commerce Tech um have you found that working across

these different Industries have really contributed to how you think about some of these problems like were other

companies not uh maybe uh you know where you learn some of the the hard lessons

of like oh actually we we don’t want to do it this way or oh actually this is this is a great approach to how we should do things yeah um first and

foremost and this is what I tell my team all the time we are not saving lives okay so while I understand that you know

these are people businesses and money is behind this everything will be okay like

no one is going no one is in danger like you know unless you are in I don’t know

in law or medical or something which we are not everything will be fine um

and working in retail I worked in retail for about 10 years and I made it to be an assistant store manager uh for a big

flagship store that made an insane amount of money um and it

just it I mean I was also I was oh my gosh I was so young um I was

probably like 23 right or 24 when I made it to

assistant store manager wow um and it the first thing that I I really

learned was just like yeah I’m just not going to take any of this too seriously because like this is a material thing

you don’t need this like there are there are things that are out there that are far worse and so like this little thing

like it’ll be okay um and most times customers just want to vent that’s

really they just they just want to be able to be like I’m really frustrated about this I really don’t like this and

then once they get those feelings out it’s like they’re just got it off their chest and now we we can actually get

into like Solutions mode and so retail really really put a thick skin on me um

and it just kind of taught me like you know what even at the worst of time during holidays when it is absolute

chaos when I’m getting up at 4 o’clock in the morning to be at the store at 5:00 am to open up at 6:00 AM to like

there’s just so many different things going on um like everything will be okay I it will 100% be okay um and so retail

definitely taught me the most about the human connection um and the customer

experience um as soon as I’ve stayed calm and I never took it personally I

was a much happier person and I was a much better manager for it um and over

the years as the other industries that I’ve I’ve been in um it really the rest

of that really solidified everything that I learned in retail and it started to also some of the things that um I

started to learn were about documentation and organization and like how that was going to help myself and I

always I always say this is super morbid and I’m like if there is a day where I die who’s going to be able to do my job

um and I you know I love the people that I work with and um I always want to make

sure that they’re prepared like what if I’m out sick or what if I get a new opportunity maybe I won’t die maybe

something else will happen that’s a little bit better I feel like I feel like the uh the hopefulness around not dying is pretty you know I’m sure not

now not for a while right but you know eventually eventually oh but it’s it’s my funny way of just being like guys

like what if I die tomorrow like how are you gonna know to do this and it usually gets a a good laugh um but yeah it’s

just really um a lot of how can I prepare everybody else to be their best

selves because not everything can live in my brain needs to be it needs to live somewhere else and so um also I’m not

being bothered all day by questions like how do we do this like what’s this process it’s like here’s a place where

you can find all of the questions or all the answers to your questions um

probably the the thing that I’ve probably learned most over the years I love it I I I think especially you know

I I the I really resonate with the uh experience working in retail I I was a

cashier a bagger at a grocery store in my hometown I worked at nordstr men shoes for like the world’s leader and

shoe sales and it was incredible how he approached customer conversations and his huge rod decks and I made cold calls

for him and he really truly cared about it but also at the same time there were folks who took it like way too seriously

and sometimes I was like I get that this is your life livelihood but um yeah I

love that so so tell me a little bit about um you know thinking about customer support obviously like there’s

the human part and there’s also sort of like the metrics driven outcomes seat

all that great stuff um what have you seen as far as what are the right things to implement from a tracking and metrics

perspective and how have you been able to help your team be successful in those areas what are some of those

Secrets yeah um I think cessat um is something that is important

but is looked at incorrectly um I had a manager

and recently um and she kind of just changed the way that I viewed seesac

completely and maybe everybody knows this and maybe I’m just the last to know

I don’t know um but she was she said I will never hold one person accountable

for cessat it is a team metric it is not an individual metric and I kind of looked at her and I

was like wait why like what do you mean

um and she was like well and she looked at me and she was like I will hold you me as their manager accountable for C

set but I will never hold each individual person accountable for their C set and I was like interesting um and

so I asked I was like you know what like why that doesn’t make any sense to me I’m thinking sead and you know and

obviously there are times where like if there’s C set that’s consistent with like wow this person is just terrible at

their job of course please hold accountable that person CU that’s you know there you cannot get more explicit

um but but in SAS and maybe other companies I don’t know um sead is most of the negative CAD

is not actually based off of the customer experience but it’s usually based off of the product I’m upset that

I wasn’t able to do this because your product didn’t allow me to you know and so I was like oh oh my God duh that

totally makes sense like yeah why would I hold a person that has literally

nothing to do with building the product accountable for negative Cad and so that

made a lot of sense for me um and then I was like okay well why would you hold me I don’t I’m no coder I don’t know what

I’m doing like I’m barely that technical in comparison to some of my team members and she was like well you know as

manager as voice of the customer you have the ability to influence the road map and to be like hey product team

we’re getting this consistent feedback of this one tool not doing this one thing and customers are getting really

frustrated she’s like that’s a data point that you can present to influence the road map I’ve since like for a while

now been doing product reporting and just like voice of the customer stuff and it’s been super helpful um so that’s

the one thing for said that I recently learned um uh I will say first reply

time I hate that metric I hate it I hate it I hate it so much because it it

creates this sense of quantity over quality which nope no thank you I don’t

care if your first reply time is under an hour if all you’re saying is I’ll

look into this I like that for me I’m like

cool now like where’s the answer like how long am I you know it it it’s the

responses after that that make the biggest difference for me so it’s not first reply time for me it’s just

response time and overall kind of like handle time right and handle time

specifically to tickets that are not being escalated to engineering because we have no control over handle time once

something goes off to engineering but that for me is more consistent with

okay well I’m always going to assume that my team is doing the best that they can and if the team overall if they’re

averaging about the same then something else is going on maybe what we’re what

we’re looking into is product related maybe there’s just like a way that we can Surface things in the UI for

customers to selfs serve a little bit better maybe like we can’t find certain

data and we need an internal tool to be able to help us more efficiently troubleshoot certain areas um you know

and that’s where I start off with and then I kind of go down of like okay well is it a team member thing or is it one

team member that’s really like taking down handle time or is it just everyone is generally around the same time um so

for me I hate first reply time I cannot cannot stand any company that is like

you need to do this amount of tickets per day that it that never helps the

customer ever ever ever ever ever ever like it literally only makes all your

support people rush through tickets and then all you’re doing is just numbers but they never actually get solutions to

these customers because they can’t take their time and actually provide quality work my big thing is I want this

customer to ask this question once and I never want them to come back with the question ever again that’s the goal I

want you to ask this once and then I I don’t want you back in the queue unless it’s something else but that’s it that’s

that’s my biggest goal with everybody so I’m like sit there and explain to them why this is happening how they can fix

it and po potential workarounds in the case that they want to you know think like longterm we have a couple of

different um features that the solution looks very differently short-term versus

long-term and so we want to ask like okay what’s your ultimate goal here like how do you see this happening and then

we start to think about okay this is your solution um also keep in mind X Y and Z if any of this is relevant to you

let me know so we can provide you even more solutions and that’s the way that we think about our support team and um

we thankfully have a very very good reputation with our customers and I think that’s honestly one of the biggest

reasons so so from uh what we were just saying sort of like I feel like in um improv they have this idea of like yes

and so like you answer the question you provide a little bit of extra um is that sort of kind of what you’re saying here

is like obviously you’ll answer the immediate question but you’ll try to look for anything that might also be there to to sort of point out yeah I

mean you know I think when customers ask a question they’re thinking about that

moment they’re not thinking about the future it is up to us the product experts to know that it is us to it is

up to us to anticipate those needs um because you know we see them all the time the same questions are going to be

asked over and over and over and over again by different customers um and so those trends that like repetitiveness

should teach you oh you know what every time a customer asks me about this one thing they’re probably going to actually

encounter all of these other like potential workflows or branches let’s call them um and so it it is kind of

that it’s like it is that very much like yes and like we should be able to anticipate the customer needs because

ultimately we know the product way better than a customer um or

else a customer probably wouldn’t be in the chat asking like Hey how do I do this one thing and have you found

speaking of uh knowing the product best have you found that defining roles for

your team or kind of identifying Specialties has helped make the team even more effective or is everybody sort

of a generalist yeah so we definitely run on more of like the generalist

because we can’t run any other way um we’re a very small team um but we do

have SME um so subject matter expert and so um the way that we handle that is

like the documentation is owned certain features are owned by certain people and so like that’s kind of like the point of

contact um if there’s like an update or a product is doing something or they or product needs feedback um they’re like

hey we’re about making this update like who can we ask they have that go to person goto person where they are able

to be like okay I probably know this feature a little bit more than the rest of the team I can give you some

potential ideas or you know just feedback or some data or whatever the case may be but we definitely for the

most part we are pretty generalist and when it comes to our product knowledge

um we the way that I hire is typically I try to have people that are very very

technical um because we are very Integrations heavy and so it’s a lot of data and you know anywhere from like we

connect from Salesforce to like API and segment and data warehouses and you know so it’s a level of um as a technical

level is kind of different um so we I try very hard to kind of make it

even where in the US and in AO we have at least one very technical person so if

the team is like oh God S3 oh I really don’t know how to do this they can turn

to somebody and go like hey can you just help me like look through this ticket just so I can you know know how to

answer and also for them to learn as well um but yeah big uh blurb for that

simple question sorry I think I think it’s great I think uh we we talked to a lot of companies who have huge customer

support teams that is really specialized multiple tiers and then also we talk to smaller customer support teams who you

know they kind of have they have to be able to handle all the scenarios so I think it’s like you really pointed out

um very very clearly that documentation process and escalation paths are are you

know super important there um kind of a question that goes back to one of the things that you talked about earlier

which was with your team and trying to define the community and like having them talk about you know their their

week or their their sort of weekend um one of the things I noticed on LinkedIn is you have this passion for Community

Building U particularly in the Latin Community I you know what what what’s that about how much how much uh like

what are some of the areas that you get excited about like what are you hoping to kind of accomplish there yeah um so I

am an immigrant um I was born in Colombia I came to the US when I was seven and I lived in New York pretty

much my entire life I’ve lived in other states but New York has definitely been um the one that I’ve been I’ve lived in

the most um and you know I there’s a lot of and you

know you there’s a lot of things on like LinkedIn that I post about that I’m like open about and so if anyone is like whoa

what what does that mean um you can go ahead and you know try to scavenge all of those posts but um I you know

everyone talks about like the American dream and why so many immigrant families move to the US and it’s really just to

give their children an opportunity to be successful um and I feel like I am able

like I’m living this American Dream um I

went to college and then I dropped out after a year um I don’t have a degree I am not here because I have a degree um

and it took me a very long time to figure out what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go and I thought retail was

kind of like the only thing that I it was available to me because most of the job postings that I saw were like you

have to have a bachelor’s degree you need to have like all these degrees and all this experience and I’m like oh my

God I don’t have any of that so I just kind of just like all right well I mean I’m just going to stick to what I I’m

doing and what I know and maybe I’ll make it to like district manager and that was my goal for a really long time

um hence why I became an assistant store manager like I think I was like 24 25 I don’t know I have no idea how old I was

um but at that point um it just I I got

to a point where I was like this is just way too much like I don’t want to get up at 5:00 in the morning during the holidays this is insane um and so I was

just like well maybe somebody else would just give me an opportunity um and I was

given that I I kept getting opportunity after opportunity without a college

degree um without having really any connections because it’s not like I really knew anybody other than my family

um and so it’s I’m at a point where I feel like I’ve I am successful to by my

standards um I have a good paying job I have I’m stable I have the ability to

help my family I have the ability to pay my dogs bills that are sometimes insane think goodness for pet insurance but

like that stability is something that I think everyone everyone is after um but

it’s you know I think for people like me um it’s it can be a little bit different

our experiences are just a little bit different um and so I wanted to just give back I I I see and I mean zero

disrespect by this but like a lot of companies we see white men in leadership positions we don’t see enough women we

don’t see enough women of color and Leadership um you know even I recently

was even searching into career coaches and I think it’s like a

tiny tiny tiny percentage of Latin women that are career coaches it is primarily

predominantly uh white men that are in career coaches and you know for me for a

long time I was looking for a mentor and I had a really hard time and I spoke to so many people and there’s so many smart

people out there like your gender and your your background really like it for

the most part I’ve learned from everybody from all over the place but for me to enhance my career there

are certain experiences that I have experienced that other people may have not and so I really wanted to find

somebody that could connect with me and really help me through those types of

obstacles and to kind of heal from some of these things as well as somebody that

probably understood where I was coming from um and so I you know through my own

experience of like I really can’t find a mentor that I just like really connect with where I’m like oh my gosh like I

can be open with you and you’re not going like whoa someone said what to you like that’s crazy and it’s like it’s not

crazy it actually happens pretty often um so I really wanted to get back and

and find and just provide that mentorship not just me being the mentor but I wanted to find other Latinas to be

able to Mentor other Latinas and be like how can I help you take up more space

because that’s really what it is like there is enough space for everyone

um we we just need a little bit more of women and women of color in those spaces

in those rooms diversity is really important because it really creates a sense of like let’s think of everything

from every angle and our lived experiences really make a huge difference so um I think it I mean it

really rooted from that and um I think anyone who is an immigrant

will I think it’s it’s really interesting I didn’t know I was I

thought I was the only one that felt this but talking to more Latinas it it’s a stereotype of like we carry this guilt

um that is like I’m successful and maybe my parents aren’t as successful or other

leas that I’m friends with aren’t not successful um there’s just this like guilt and it’s crazy because I shouldn’t

feel guilty for being successful my mom literally brought me here for this um

but you know through that I was like okay well I have this feeling what can I do with it and so I started to partner up with Amiga Latinas and I got really

close with the founder um and since we’ve tried to really provide a lot of professional development and we’ve

partnered up with a plethora of other Nas and it’s been really really awesome

to kind of hear from them and it and inspirational as well to kind of be like

whoa like you did all of this like that’s crazy like I can do that and it’s really awesome to see

so so just just to come back um you mentioned it sounded like the name of an organization uh or a group yes yeah yeah

yeah yeah so the group that um I do a lot of this with it’s called Amigas meas

um there’s a huge social media following the social media Instagram has just been a lot for the founder so that’s kind of

been a little bit on pause but um Super Active on LinkedIn though and um Danny

the founder is a phenomenal human being I she is very young and I’m like girl I

have no idea how you’re doing any of this plus your full-time job so um yeah

Amad Latinas you can find them on LinkedIn there’s a public one and then there’s also a private group where is a

little bit more like Danny and I are trying to um get more services out there

for for other leas and for anybody who’s maybe listening like are are you comfortable usually with folks just like

pinging you on LinkedIn and asking direct questions group yeah for sure um

I get I get a lot of messages on pretty much every day um from a variety of

people and I’m always happy to respond I will be the person that even responds to people who are trying to sell me things

just because like I know that you’re using a you know one of those like premium things that I’m like ah like

you’re wasted this message on me I have to respond so I will respond to pretty much anybody on LinkedIn um so if

there’s anyone that has any questions or you know any resources or anything that I can point you in the right direction

I’m I’m more than happy to I Love It I I love that you’re willing to kind of like

understand what it took to get you from where you were to where you are now and then the the the willingness to help

other people I think that’s in some Industries not super common and then in others it’s even more common so I I love

that you’re willing to help um so speaking of you know the the type of messages we’re getting on LinkedIn uh I

get a lot too some of them are from real people and I swear most of them now are like AI um you you’re starting to see a

lot of uh tools intercom is one of them they have a new one called fin um where there’s this AI Tooling in customer

support in Customer Support tools how how have you seen this help you help your team and what do you feel like um

other customer support leaders should be doing to prepare for these types of tools and products yeah um number one be

responsible AI is not replacement for support you just can’t you you can never ever ever literally just replace human

support with a computer just cannot be done um you lose that

human aspect you you use honestly common sense because the computer does not have common sense it just it doesn’t um

so do it responsibly first and foremost um when it comes to AI it’s been super

helpful I mean like I think aside from Finn um we actually just signed on to

get co-pilot as well with intercom which is a co-pilot um we get to ask it

questions where it’s like why would this happen to you know whatever feature and

it’s cool because it not only gets information from external documentation and Internal Documentation from but also

from past conversations which past conversations is a like it is gold right

there you know like you are most times answering the same question over and over again and so for AI to look at that

historical context phenomenal um so for

it’s been super helpful to kind of just really get like that low hanging fruit or my whole process and AI is I want

customers that have these like really easy how-to questions to be able to get

those answers within minutes or seconds um and then really what the

support team should be handling is more of those like really complex types of issues because now we’re just kind of

letting go of like the super easy you know like how do I add this one thing

here and it’s like oh just press this button um versus some of like the other really needy types of questions that we

get and you know my a lot of support teams I always think that support is

like a stepping stone for a lot of careers whether you want to go into customer success whether you want to be

a Solutions architect or sometimes you want to be an engineer um and support is a really really good place to kind of

like start I I know a lot of people that started in support and are now directors of pro marketing are now product

managers and like there’s just been so many different types of paths that people take and they all started within

support um so it’s been super helpful to kind of be able to not have to answer

these very simple questions that may take us like a few minutes but those few minutes that we could really be focusing

on like the more complex issues the ones that we’re actually learning a lot more and we’re actually making a difference

in the product where it’s like oh my God yeah you’re right like this messaging totally does not make sense let me go

ahead go into product and like let them know those that’s what makes a difference in customers everyday lives

it’s not the hey how do I add a user again and it’s like press these three

buttons and you know like AI can do that like let AI kind of handle those and

then we can go back to more of like the complex and theoretical like I have this

really wonderful idea I want to automate I’m trying to do X Y and Z and then I want like you know just all those types

of ideas that you need a human being to kind of talk back and forth with um so it’s been super helpful I we love it um

we are trying constantly to empower it to AI to just do more for us um because

even if it doesn’t respond to your question maybe it’ll get you halfway

there and then you can go oh okay so that makes sense now I have a follow-up question where maybe now human support

can jump into so we’re not starting from you know step one maybe we’re at step five and that’s already getting the

support team ahead and you ahead as a customer to be able to get to whatever goal that it is you’re trying to do yeah

I think that’s that’s what I’m hearing from a lot of different different roles frankly is as opposed to replacing your

team they’re supplementing enhancing making your team you know it’s sort of like the difference between uh AI

replacing just with robots versus like helping us become RoboCop or something like that you know like just empowered

with technology which is super cool that’s great um May and then just you know one one final question for you that

you know I uh this is more just like fun question but you you mentioned that uh you’re you’re a un serious serious

person um and I’ve seen on this this conversation today even like where you know you clearly care about your

community your team um you know the reputation of your your product with your customers but also like there’s a

lot of energy and enthusiasm and fun that’s that’s there so how do you play that and how do you balance it into your

leadership style yeah um yeah I think it’s it’s a really

interesting thing to be a millennial um I think that really has a

lot to do with my managing style I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been on like Instagram just like scrolling and

um there’s a lot of like your Millennial manager um types of videos and I’m like

wow I feel so seen like maybe I’m not as like goofy as that but like 100% like

totally relevant um but yeah I mean I I I think it just goes back to like the

I’m not going to take this too seriously because like not saving lives um so like

everything will be okay I promise um but also it’s the balance between like let’s

like here we’re we’re here for like 40 hours that’s a lot a lot of time um and

so I want to have time I want to have a fun time in the meantime um but I also want to make sure

that we’re getting our job done because what what I don’t want to happen is for

someone to get upset or for senior leadership to be like what’s going on like you guys aren’t like performing well because then that cuts into the fun

time and so I’m like totally let’s have fun but like let’s also just make sure that we have we are going towards these

goals and if we’re not like we’re all holding each other accountable and I think my team I’ve created this culture

of like yeah you can totally like have fun and make jokes and you know like

even our support when we talk to customers we use gifts all the time like

they’re fun and they’re you know that like unserious serious we like we’re going to help you with your problem no

matter what we’re just going to throw in like a couple of different gifts in there like I remember I threw in like a k Reeves gift and the customer was like

I really appreciate that like I like thank you so much and is this is this sad keano eating a sandwich keano or is

this one I can’t remember exactly which one it was honestly got so many great ones so many great ones um but you know

it’s like those things like even when I’m like hey like you know can you try clearing your cash and cookies like the most it responsive you try turning it

off and on you know like and when like that doesn’t work like sometimes I’ll be like oh rats and you know like those

like little things where it’s like we’re here to help you but like let’s also

remember that like we can laugh and have fun in the meantime and kind of just make light of this um but still get you

to the end of your goal um and so I really try hard to just just make fun of

things um I think comedy is a really good way of keeping sane honestly um but

always ensuring that like you know the business is there and top of mind at all

times and so it’s just really finding that balance I think that’s great uh the idea of having fun and then getting it

done sounds great so Laura thanks for joining us today and great for you yeah

thank you