Matt Bond, Director of Customer Support at Algolia: Building Resilient Teams and Embracing AI

Scott Smith: All Excited to welcome Matt Bond. He is the director of customer support at Alolia with over 13 years in customer support. and he has been focused on helping his customers have great outcomes and have great experiences for quite a while. So excited to learn from him today. Welcome, Matt.

Matthew Bond: Hi Scott, thanks very much for inviting me. I’m really excited to talk to you about this today. So looking forward to it.

Scott Smith: I think there’s a lot of different places we could start. I think I’d like to, start as far back as we can…

Scott Smith: where you think maybe there was an inkling in your mind of I think I know what I might want to do with my career. Was there ever a point, were you ever like a bagger at a grocery store or were you ever in university kind of working on a project where you were like, I’d really like to go in this direction.” Or has it been kind of, very incremental along the way?

Matthew Bond: That’s a good question.

Matthew Bond: It’s been a long evolution. So, I started work at 13. I grew up in a customer service, dealing with people is bread and butter to me really bad from those days. I did a science at university. So I was doing environmental science and I just gradually became more and more technical really honestly.

Scott Smith: No. Thank you.

Matthew Bond: my dissertation I started using machine learning models and…

Matthew Bond: building stuff with geographic information systems GIS and then I moved into building websites and then I know worked as an engineer a few different companies and then I gradually found myself I mean customer support you you kind of have the perfect blend of customerf facing management dealing with people and then also the technical side as well it’s a really nice balance…

Matthew Bond: but yeah it’s been a gradual journey I’d

Matthew Bond: Okay. Yeah.

Scott Smith: So maybe we just go back a little bit when you’re working at the restaurant.

Scott Smith: I haven’t had the opportunity to work at a restaurant, but I’ve worked with customers in person in both stores, multiple stores, either selling batteries or selling clothes or selling groceries.  And I think you kind of develop a style or approach to working with people who are both very nice and easy and very difficult, did you run into a lot of difficulty at the restaurant? Any big challenges that really stood out from that timeline?

Matthew Bond: Yeah. I mean, restaurants are high pressure environment, you’re trying to deliver food quickly. You’re trying to deal with people who are, in a hurry and people can be rude. And I think one of the most important things you can develop is I say a thick skin, but just being able to understand that, people won’t always behave the way you expect and just not letting it get to you.

Matthew Bond: And that’s very very helpful in customer support. you have to try and meet people where they’re at. You have to let people be a bit frustrated, let them sort of deescalate and calm, and as we sort of work together. And I think one of the most important things I always try and emanate to people is that I’m trying to solve their problems and your problems. It’s my problem, too. And we’re just trying to work together on a journey to sort of get there. but yeah, I mean, there’s definitely a synergy. I find people who’ve worked in any sort of customerf facing roles,…

Matthew Bond: whether it’s in restaurants, shops, or anything like that, they tend to do well in customer support because of that background, because of that understanding of people and the empathy that you sort of develop through that. Okay.

Scott Smith: Yeah, I think you made an interesting point about just having not letting it get to you. do you ever find though that I would imagine that, if you imagine, I actually heard this really great analogy recently about stress and strain and all the difficulty and it was like if you take a soda can and you shake it up and…

Scott Smith: you can either open it quickly and it sort of explodes all at once or you can figure out ways to kind of slowly let it out. have you found ways that help you in addition to just being like a chill, careful, methodical, patient person, either kind of reset or set the tone every day as you go into work or as you leave work to kind of let it go? Is there anything that you do or anything that you practice?

Matthew Bond: Yeah, that’s a really good question.

Matthew Bond: So, there’s a few different ways I approach it. I think one of the really foundational things I’ve learned myself honestly more recently is exercise. when you’re starting from a basis of good health and when you’re sort of getting some of that emotional energy out by I like running. I’ve just come back from a 5k run after work and it’s a great after work thing to do to just get all the energy out because we’re sitting in a chair all day dealing with all of these ideas and talking and communicating and we need to sort of try and balance that out in my view and…

Scott Smith: All right.

Matthew Bond: that’s a really good way to do it.

Matthew Bond: And then beyond that, I just always try and put myself in their shoes, put myself in the shoes of the person you’re talking to and as much as I can empathize with them so that I don’t take it too personally. and just being patient with people. I mean, it’s not easy. And customer support it’s a tough job.

00:05:00

Scott Smith: Cool. Yeah,…

Matthew Bond: A lot of the basis of my energy and a lot of the support network I get is from my colleagues. I have a lot of credit for them because we approach it as a team. We all know what it’s like and We’re all in it together.

Scott Smith: I think the team camaraderie really it’s sort of like I don’t think the customer is to kind of view them as I don’t know the horde that’s coming over the gates, and…

Scott Smith: you’re and you kind of have to be but it’s like you having that team really does make a difference. And then one last little quick tangent on the exercise. So, you go out for your 5K. is it completely silent and you’re just zoned out? Are you listening to podcasts or are you listening to heavy metal or what’s going on as you run?

Matthew Bond: I am partial to heavy metal actually,…

Matthew Bond: but normally it’s an audio book. I really like listening to audio books.

Scott Smith: True,…

Matthew Bond: It’s a great way to, learn a bit more and, I love my history, my science, my tech. I even listen to a few of your podcasts as well. So, it’s just a great way to, absorb things and be a bit more efficient. Yeah.

Scott Smith: you mentioned there’s a couple different stages of your career. you talked about web development or app development. You’ve talked about customer support success. have there been parts of your career where maybe either the creativity, the juices, the enthusiasm started to wayne a little bit and then you sort of proactively looked for or…

Scott Smith: found ways to just really get back into it and get excited again? and if so, what would you typically do? where is the creative inspiration come from in your work?

Matthew Bond: Yeah, that’s definitely something that resonates with me.

Matthew Bond: So, yes, in tech we get the tech that we’re given often, especially for an in-house engineer, You’re maybe working with an old framework or you’re using old technologies and sometimes you can feel I really want to try some of the new stuff. So what I did to resolve that is I just started building side projects and the side projects gradually evolved and I ended up building a multiplayer game which I then rewrote twice which was another learning experience for me but I could use all the technologies I wanted to use. I could use Vue, I could use Laravel, all the things I wanted to try out and experiment with.

Matthew Bond: And it helped my day job as well because then when we were talking about what framework should we switch to or what technology should we use, I had that knowledge to fall back on and it was really helpful.

Scott Smith: Tell me about this game …

Scott Smith: what are you building or what did you build?

Matthew Bond: So I have closed it down now because it’s quite a lot of work to maintain, but it was an online multiplayer game basically like a souped-up version of Risk with a few more little options and things like that. but everybody was playing the same game and that was what really got people engaged because they were sort of, attacking each other and, building these little kingdoms together sort of thing. And it’s Zen if we had about 10,000 people that were playing it. So, I’d say moderately successful, but not at all financially successful,

Scott Smith: Okay.

Matthew Bond: obviously. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Smith: So 10,000 people and this is like you alone maintaining building this thing or Wow, that’s incredible. And how did they initially find out about it?

Scott Smith: Is the website, Reddit, just I don’t know.

Matthew Bond: Yeah,…

Matthew Bond: back in those days. So Google had the store for Chrome where you could build JavaScript apps and then put them in the store. So I built a version of it for the Chrome app and that was basically the main source of my traffic. got quite a lot of organic traffic from there. I’m not a big marketer guy, I like building things, but I wasn’t really looking to advertise or anything like that. And I just sort of let it grow organically.

Matthew Bond: And yeah, it was fun. It was It was a great learning experience.

Scott Smith: Man, that’s amazing.

Scott Smith: Yeah, I bet. I take it as well outside of work, you have a map behind you of the world. So, I imagine the global domination world, these are these types of games pretty interesting to you or that do you find that you go and resonate with games like Risk or Settlers of the Ken or these other kinds of things?

Matthew Bond: Definitely. And I have a real love of geography and maps and that sort of thing as well.

Matthew Bond: going back to my environmental science background and I mean my first career I was working in remote sensing so working with satellite data I’d spend my whole day just staring at images of the earth and…

Matthew Bond: and playing around with them that sort of thing so yeah I mean that’s a Lego map I built with the family over a Christmas and combining a few of my passions together I think Yeah,…

Scott Smith: and…

Scott Smith: I don’t remember seeing this map. I probably have seven Legos behind me and maybe 50 in the house and probably not 50 but quite a few. it came from a plan, a template, or did you just sort of build it ad hoc?

00:10:00

Matthew Bond: I found it on Reddit It was a modification of the standard one…

Scott Smith: Cool.

Matthew Bond: because the standard one’s got a nice colorful sea, which is all very well and good, but I was a bit more interested in the land, but I added my own flourishes to it as well, just to make it a bit more fun.

Scott Smith: So you have the side hobbies, you’re building these apps. I mean, to get 10,000 players is pretty awesome without being a marketer. So, congratulations on that. But when did you I guess shift from and…

Scott Smith: maybe we could talk a little bit more about your sort of development app. Were you a full-time developer at work every day? Was it just side hustle stuff and you’ve always been customerf facing? tell me a little bit more about that.

Matthew Bond: Yeah. …

Matthew Bond: I started out working in remote sensing, working with satellite data, and I basically just became the in-house developer for a very small company. And, whatever my boss wanted me to build, I built it, right? I started out in tech. That’s how I started out building things. and I’d done university courses as well to sort of get me that background.

Matthew Bond: Then I moved on to work for a few different companies. a job site in the UK, quite a big one. as just a PHP developer and all along the same time I was building my apps on the side as well and just experimenting with that and one of the interesting things was I was working at this job site and one of our main products was search.

Scott Smith: Right. Which is…

Matthew Bond: So that’s when I started to get exposed to search as a technology and that obviously thread continued later on through my career.

Scott Smith: what brings you to Alolia and building a great product that a huge universe of people have So talk to me a little bit about I guess the transition or switch or change or I don’t know how you view it but into providing customer support for your customers your team versus maybe building external customerf facing tools features etc.

Matthew Bond: H that’s a really good question.

Scott Smith: Does it feel like maybe I should say was it as easy to start or did it take a while for you to kind of transition into this role? I know you have the background, but what was it transitioning into this full-time

Matthew Bond: So I was working at an agency. I was leading a team of engineers and one of my engineers bought me Yanga as a product right for a project we were going to work on. That was when I was first introduced to it as a technology and honestly I just wanted to work for the company. I looked for the roles they had available. They had the roles that were open to remote. So I didn’t think I’m going to become customer support. That was just the role that I picked.

Matthew Bond: But then I realized that there’s this really strong synergy because when I was working at the agency, I was obviously dealing with customers. I was dealing with the people that we’re building projects for and I was already relating back to that. So it wasn’t as much of a transition as I expected…

Matthew Bond: because I had that experience of working and even going back to work and when I was working in the restaurant. and what it helped as well was that we were a very small team. We were a team of five developer support engineers when I joined. Now we’re more than 23 people. We’re growing as I speak. We’ve got a few job wrecks open right now.

Scott Smith: Yeah, I saw that Javre open.

Scott Smith: That’s sweet.

Matthew Bond: And it’s really exciting because I’ve been able to see the scaling and direct the scaling of our customer support team and improve the depth and the level of support we can provide. So it’s been really kind of an organic growth and I’ve grown with the team as we’ve been expanding.

Matthew Bond: We’ve replatformed onto a new help desk system.

Matthew Bond: We’ve developed Now I’m building tier three support. So, it’s just a continual growth in the depth of support we can provide.

Scott Smith: And it sounds like going from five support reps,…

Scott Smith: was it five right away or was it initially a one there, and then all of a sudden 23? Did it seem like it got there very fast?

Matthew Bond: It was in fits and style. So yeah, I were the one person in Europe and we had a few great people in America and we just hired someone in Apac as well who was also really awesome and it was a very experienced team and then we gradually grew to about 10 or 11 over the next few years and then more recently we’ve been growing gradually again with the business up to the level we’re at now.

Matthew Bond: So, it wasn’t just immediate. And I think that’s one of the really important things because hiring in my mind is the most important part of the job as a leader, when you add someone to your team, it’s a long-term investment. It’s a long-term decision. And we take a lot of care over the hiring process. I mean, I can say that now because I’m doing literally doing interviews as I speak to and also the managers in the team that I’ve got a manager in Europe and a manager in America and they’re both really great at hiring and taking the time to speak to people and yeah it’s been really great.

00:15:00

Scott Smith: when you look at your criteria for hiring and then also some of the questions that you like to ask to learn more about the criteria, how they fit,… do some of the  same questions come up a lot. are you more like the same five? Are you kind of like let’s just talk conversationally and tell me a little bit of how you find good questions and maybe some of the examples that you’ve used

Scott Smith: 

Matthew Bond: Yeah, that’s a really good question.

Matthew Bond: So, we have a sort of stable of questions. So, Alia has five core values and these are things that we try and use them in the hiring process. So when we’re talking to somebody, we will ask them questions aligned with the sort of values that we have so that we can understand how that person, relates to those things. my own approach, I like to ask quite an open-ended question. I go by the rule that obviously the interviewe should be speaking most of the time in an interview. So I try and give them something that gives them an opening to talk about, who they are, what they do.

Matthew Bond: And a lot of the time you’re looking for not even necessarily what they’re doing, but their potential as a person on the team, what they value and whether they’re always thinking about improving things. Those sorts of, little pieces that you can put together into an idea of what someone is is likely to become because I mean a lot of people we hire from our team, we do hire lots of juniors and I’m a big proponent that support should be an entry point to the business. So we will hire people…

Matthew Bond: who have the beginning of their tech career and it’s a great way of bringing a more diverse group of people into tech. my most proud stats is that I’ve lost four people from my team in the last year to other teams at the company. So they’ve been poached and…

Scott Smith: Nice. Yeah.

Matthew Bond: I don’t mind I’m happy for them to poach my people because it’s great for their careers.

Matthew Bond: It’s great for the other teams at the company and I know we can find more good people as well.

Matthew Bond: So, it’s just everybody wins in that respect. so yeah, it’s exciting. 100%. Yes.

Scott Smith: So given that you guys have a more technical developer focus,…

Scott Smith: you guys really embrace that kind of community, I would imagine your customer support team at all levels is probably skus more technical. Is that fair to say?  And I guess it would be kind of tough because you want the everyman engineer customer support person but when I worked at Facebook we had a team called partner engineers and they could write code that was terrific. They also had to talk to customers and they had to do customer support and it seemed like a really hard role to hire for.  So I would imagine to an extent it’s similar with you guys.

Matthew Bond: And I mean oftentimes we’re crossing the gulf, right, between the sales people who are obviously very good with people, very good communicators and the engineers who are very good at building things and we have to kind of do a little bit of both and be that sort of bridge both within the business and also to the customer and yeah it’s a challenge and I think you try and think about the things that people can learn and the things that are almost inherent and I mean going back to know what we’re saying about the core values people who can show a high level of grit, who, are caring by nature, so they’re going to empathize with a customer. Those are people who are generally set up for success in these sorts of things because,…

Matthew Bond: they have those sorts of raw materials that we can then develop. And I mean, I’m very big on developing people within the team. we have a coding club that we use for people to try out new technologies, and upskill themselves technically.

Matthew Bond: And I also run the mentorship program with one of the managers which is companywide. Mhm. Yeah.

Scott Smith: That’s cool.

Scott Smith: And you mentioned earlier you have two managers, one that’s in the US and another in the UK. Where was the other one? Okay. So, to both hire and then bring on and then train and then basically have them help, to be great at execution. you’ve talked about hiring the right people, kind of developing the right culture, and then also managing them across what sounds like multiple time zones. So, I know that it’s not new to do this anymore. it’s not like some, hey, you’re building a remote team, but how have you figured out either little techniques or…

Scott Smith: tactics opportunities to I guess not only build the execution and the training, but also ensure that your team knows each other, enjoys working together, has that culture of both outcomes, but also supporting each other, communicating, all that kind of stuff. what do you do there?

Matthew Bond: Yeah, I mean that’s a big challenge and…

Matthew Bond: I’ll be honest, I inherited a very strong culture within the team, So one of my main objectives and this is something I’m always repeating to the team is I want to keep that culture…

Scott Smith: Yeah.

Matthew Bond: which is a challenge when you’re talking about growing a team from 5 to 23. So at that point there’s going to be a different culture. there’s going to be subgroups within that and time zones they make it even more challenging. We were lucky in some ways because we’ve always been a remote team. So that’s something that’s literally built into our DNA as a team within the company. And there’s a few things we do.

00:20:00

Matthew Bond: I mean one thing that the team really is quite attached to more than I even expected is that we do a sync at the beginning and…

Scott Smith: Please.

Matthew Bond: end of it every day and it’s five minutes but it means that every single member of the support team is on a call with every other member of the support team for at least five minutes a day and if there’s something going on if there’s a complex issue or there’s a topic we need to discuss then we can obviously go for a bit longer and we can discuss those sorts of things but just having that availability and that goes across the team. I always say if someone has a question, they want to reach out to me and we want to talk about a ticket together and my door is always open and everyone in the team has that same ethos so that we don’t have too much of a silo system within the team and we can try and make sure that everyone’s collaborating.

Matthew Bond: But it’s a challenge and you just have to always be conscious of it, always be listening to the team and trying to keep everyone involved and engaged.

Scott Smith: Yeah, absolutely. Is it sort of like, is this team chat?

Scott Smith: Is it kind of like passing the baton from one time zone to another effectively?

Matthew Bond: Yeah, exactly.

Matthew Bond: So, we’ll talk about, maybe there’s been an incident that happened during the day or there’s a ticket that we want to get one of the thememes involved in because it’s, particularly complex or, we’re deciding how to escalate or who to escalate to.

Scott Smith: And is your team kind of cover the full gamut of talking to customers, developing content, and then you mentioned tier one, two, three. So, is it doing all of it including the documentation,…

Scott Smith: all those kinds of things?

Matthew Bond: Yeah, we have a knowledge base and…

Matthew Bond: we’re trying to go for the knowledge centered service approach, the KCS approach where we will solve a case and then we’ll write a knowledgebased article that’s based on that case that we resolved that then any customer…

Matthew Bond: who asks the same question can see it.

Matthew Bond: And what I’m really proud of is some of my team have put together this little extension into Zenesk so that when you’re typing in a ticket, it’ll do a search of that knowledge base. So the user who’s actually creating the ticket will see the answers that other customers have actually been given that were written by us and authored by us whose 1500 articles we’ve written. And it was really really effective and…

Scott Smith: That’s awesome.

Matthew Bond: it’s actually decreased the number of cases we see despite the fact that our customer base has grown year on year. So it’s been a real success.

Scott Smith: Right. man,…

Scott Smith: sounds like that developer or support engineer needs to put that into the Chrome store or Zenesk store maybe. It’s pretty cool.

Matthew Bond: Yeah, we wrote a blog and we actually do share with some customers because obviously it’s using Alolia, So it’s a great use case for…

Scott Smith: Right. Yeah.

Matthew Bond: how our product can make things work better.

Scott Smith: Yeah. Absolutely. Very cool. by the way I love I love how occasionally you’ve said and you’ve said it a few times. I’m proud of and then my team for X Y and Z. I think that’s really cool.

Scott Smith: I think it’s very easy to get stuck into we’ve done a great job or especially I’ve done a good great job. it’s like I’ll take the credit and the glory, but I’m sure somebody’s going to listen to this podcast. So, it’s probably better not to do that, right? Yeah.

Matthew Bond: I mean,…

Matthew Bond: it really is a team effort, honestly. And I’m very lucky and proud to be working with people and it’s what keeps me so engaged and happy with this role because I’m working with really smart people who are really enjoying what they’re doing and care and it’s not just a support team like I say I came to Alolia because I could see it was a good product and that’s through the engineers through the leadership people are really committed and it’s funny when they first told me about these five core values I was very skeptical very classic English what are you talking about this sounds like corporate

Matthew Bond: But I mean there’s something to it.

Matthew Bond: There’s an intentionality behind it and it reinforces the way that we’re communicating and the way that we’re treating each other. And I think it really does make for better collaboration.

Scott Smith: a couple,…

Scott Smith: to your point about sort of the British style. a couple of my closest friends are from, trying to think, like Heraford and, in the UK or in England. But, one of the things that he talks often about is his reluctance to kind of talk himself up. But I am curious if you find that it’s not the case when talking employees up because you’re not talking about yourself, right? You’re talking about somebody else. Does it seem easier to talk about them versus yourself?  Yep.

Matthew Bond: Y 100% and I mean I think a big role of a leader is to be a cheerleader.

Matthew Bond: It’s to champion the achievements of your team because if someone does something good and then you champion that, they’re going to do another good thing later on because they know it’s going to be recognized. And honestly, this is what I’ve seen other leaders at Alolia doing. And I’m just literally echoing the same approach that was used with me and it lifts everybody up as a whole. very strong proponent of that. We have quarterly, employee of the quarter competitions and things like that which is entirely voted by the team. I don’t get a say. it’s entirely up to them who they think’s doing well. And we make sure that we get as much recognition for the work that people put in because support is tough. people you’re dealing with people who are got a problem. They’re not reaching out…

00:25:00

Matthew Bond: because they’re having a good day. They’re reaching out because they need help with something. And it’s important.

Scott Smith: Right. Yeah.

Matthew Bond: I mean, one of the other things I’m very proud of is that the engagement and morale scores within the team are very very high.

Matthew Bond: And we get good feedback from the team about how they’re feeling about things, which to me is a really strong bell weather that the culture is strong and that we’re doing our best for the customers as well because if we’re happy, then we can best serve the customer.

Scott Smith: I think one of the words that you use is just talking about celebration. And I’ve heard this phrase a bunch of times which is cure culture is what you celebrate and tolerate. And I think to your point not only do you want people to continue to do the great things,…

Matthew Bond: Yeah. Yes,…

Scott Smith: but in order for them to keep doing them, they have to be aware that they did the right thing. And in the workplace or at home, I have four kids. It sounds like you have how many kids do you have?

Matthew Bond: I don’t have any kids.

Scott Smith: 

Scott Smith: Sorry. Sorry. I thought you said but building that culture by communicating clearly what you expect of people I think is a big part of that celebration. So I love that you guys do.

Scott Smith: So would it be teammates or kind of raising up another teammate and kind of having them get highlighted? Is that right? Cool.

Matthew Bond: Yeah. And…

Matthew Bond: what I love about it is the votes are even, right? you don’t just have the same person winning every quarter. It’s always different people and it’s always for different, things and it’s just great visibility for us as leaders to see what the team are valuing about each other. and anything we can do to champion helping this is the other thing I say helping your teammate is key when we look at metrics and we look at an awful lot of metrics I’m very fortunate that our me manager is really great Christopher puts together amazing reports of all the data we’ve got in Zenesk and also beyond that but there’s more than that as well this person is going to help me when I have a problem we’ve got one person in the team whose catchphrase is pretty much I can take it when the tickets

Matthew Bond: being discussed, that’s the first thing you’re going to hear from her. And that’s just a really great again these things are the intangibles that you have to also try and bear in mind along with other metrics.

Scott Smith: I would imagine…

Scott Smith: though when you identify that that person is that kind of person. Occasionally you may realize that they might be taking too much or overindexing into difficult things.

Matthew Bond: Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Smith: How do you…

Scott Smith: how do you identify or keep an eye on folks to make sure that as they’re going towards maybe burnout or exhaustion or that you help pull them out of it or shield them from it?

Matthew Bond: Yeah. and…

Matthew Bond: this is another area where my managers are really strong and this is something especially Cindy the manager in the US is very strong on making sure that people aren’t burning out in her team. we always keep an eye on it. The fact of the matter is when the queue gets heavy people take it personally and they feel I need to try and catch up that sort of thing.

Matthew Bond: So there’s a few ways you can do it. One of the things I’m always telling them is that, it’s down to me to resource the team so that we can handle the workload that comes in. That’s not their responsibility. And, they’re doing their role, but I’m trying to take as much of that responsibility off of their shoulders as I can.

Matthew Bond: And then beyond that, we just try and pitch in together. I’m answer with everyone else in the team. I’m a big believer that we all just try and, stand shoulderto-shoulder and do what we can to make things work.

Scott Smith: It also sounds like I think there’s been a couple different approaches that I’ve seen both publicly and…

Scott Smith: privately with customer support, specifically with people. So I think there’s the concern that the Terminator is going to take over and…

Matthew Bond: Yep.

Scott Smith: take over the world and I think there’s companies like CLA who interestingly reduce their support team but then they’re rebuilding them back. And then there’s the other side which is more like a Robocop which sounds like your team is you have your team you enable them with great tools and you actually build your own tools to make them even better. So may maybe just kind of transitioning a little bit from the team and the culture. I’d love to know a little bit about, you’ve been there five and a half, six years, at Alolia, but you’ve,…

Scott Smith: you’ve been working customer support for a while. how are you seeing this kind of change with customer support, specifically in AI, and has it been easy to embrace, difficult, a little bit slow? what are you excited about? I mean, there’s a bunch of different questions there, but,

Matthew Bond: Yeah, it’s a really exciting time honestly.

Scott Smith: Yeah.

Matthew Bond: I mean, I’ve been interested in this stuff really going back to my university days when I say I was tooling around with machine learning models back before it was called AI and it’s been great to see the development of the technology and I’m really excited by what it can do.

Matthew Bond: And I think we just have to bear in mind the things that it’s strong at right the thing that I going back even back to those days machine learning all those sorts of things they’ll get you 80% accuracy that last 20% is very very very difficult it’s kind of like the reverse prito principle where you get 80% of the result from 20% of the effort that last 20% of accuracy of AI is incredibly difficult so as you quite rightly said a really strong opponent of the idea of augmenting the team with AI technology so that they’re more efficient. We’re actually developing in-house tools using our goal AI technologies and working with some of our great engineers to build tools that we can use to summarize cases so that we can more easily see what’s going on.

00:30:00

Matthew Bond: Just a few bullet points of what’s going on in that case, streamlining the whole process that we use to manage cases. There are also other teams in Algeria who are looking at other ways of approaching AI as well.

Matthew Bond: So, it’s really just a massive toolbox of things going on and it’s a really exciting time to be working in tech, frankly, and I’m really really keen to see where this all develops.

Scott Smith: What’s your personal maybe not personal But are there different AI tools that you use?

Scott Smith: Is there one that’s your kind of primary go-to? I’m always curious because it seems like every day there’s some new company that’s growing super fast and…

Scott Smith: I’m always looking to learn more or maybe if you’re willing or open to sharing. personally for me it’s primarily Chat GPT. but how about for What are you using over there?

Matthew Bond: I’ll be honest.

Matthew Bond: I mean, I think chatb is great. It does a lot of things. you can give it a bunch of material and just condense it down and get some bullet points out. You can ask it all sorts of questions. I mean, like I said, I was talking about my own running. Sometimes I might just ask it a question about that. what’s a good running speed? what’s a good diet a week for a runner?

Matthew Bond: things like that and it will give you an idea and then I always use that as that’s a starting point,…

Matthew Bond: Then you can use that and then actually research it. Maybe it’ll give you some good links you can work off of from there. So, that’s a really good starting point, I think. But I mean, like I said, the space is moving so quickly that I’m sure there’ll be some new things arriving soon. Yeah.

Scott Smith: Yeah, I think that the parto principle or…

Scott Smith: prao I don’t know I think one of the biggest problems I have is, one of the side hustles that I like to do is it’s almost like media management for my family as far as photos and videos and all this kind of stuff is there’s just so much of it. I think I have some siblings who are not super technical folks and it seems like their information just disappears. So, I’m like, “Hey, I’ll pull it in. I’ll save it or whatever.” And as I’m trying to debug something or looking at logs, I can get a really good idea,…

Scott Smith: but then it’s so often that I get trapped in this circular answer of “Hey, you should try this.” And I’m like, “I tried that.” And they’re like, ” you should try this.” And it sort of seems like forever stuck. so it’s like we’re almost there, but it’s still so far away.

Matthew Bond: Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Bond: Exactly. I mean, the big question is how we cross that final 20% threshold really. and yeah, it’s interesting. what I like to do as well is to try and feel out the strengths and weaknesses. I mean the other day I was playing around with it asking it to draw maps and this is something it’s really struggling with because there’s a lot of complexity there and it’s very hard to sort of get the ge geography right and then in put the data into it correctly as well so there’s definitely room for improvement in those sorts of things but like I say the key thing is to use it as a building block is to use it as a way of discreetly doing one ask better than a person can do so that we can focus on the more interesting task of putting it

Matthew Bond: all together into a cohesive solution, and that’s why I think this whole doom scenario that humans are going to be completely replaced maybe one day, but not by this time AI technology. There’s other AI technologies maybe later on AGI that may well do that, but for now, I think there’s definitely a human component that’s needed.

Scott Smith: Right. Yeah.

Scott Smith: I do wonder sometimes if there was an AGI if it would also be like humans…

Scott Smith: where it’s like man customer support’s really hard. I don’t know if I want to do that all day like I got to take a break man this is too difficult.

Matthew Bond: Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Bond: Yeah. Indeed.

Scott Smith: Let’s see I am kind of curious too a couple more questions probably just two or three more but you guys have built a great product. I’m trying to think back in 2016 I probably met your CEO in San Francisco and it’s just a cool product. one of my first experiences with at least this kind of community was I worked at Parse which is a developer tool platform and there’s a lot of great products at the time including Stripe you guys parse etc.

Scott Smith: you’ve been able to see this great product getting built. how have you your developers your executives…

Scott Smith: how have you guys figured out the right way or one way to build a great product so that it’s excellent it makes people happy and they trust you.

00:35:00

Matthew Bond: Yeah, that’s a really good question.

Matthew Bond: I don’t know if I can give you a full answer to that. I can give you my own perspective for sure.

Scott Smith: Perfect. Yeah. Yeah.

Matthew Bond: And I think the key is listening to the customer, And we’ve got some really great PMs. And one of the things I’m trying to facilitate always through the support team is the communication between the customer and the PM. So we have channels where we’ll share feedback that we’re seeing from customers. And then we also have theme program which is something I’m helping to look after as well where we will try and train upmemes within the customer success side of things in particular topics and then they can go to So basically as close as possible we want the PM to understand the pain that the customers are seeing when they’re designing the road map and when they’re coming up with the plans for what they’re going to build.

Matthew Bond: But it’s all about listening and understanding the pain that the customers experiencing and what they’re trying to achieve.

Scott Smith: Have there been any techniques or…

Scott Smith: practices that you found have been really helpful with obviously when you’re kind of direct  directly in line listening to your customers pain points and problems. Sometimes I’m sure it can feel like everything’s terrible or everything’s bad because you skew, but have you found ways to kind of summarize or get the gist of either the exciting things as well as the painful things and then deliver those? Is there kind of an approach that you take to say, “All right, let’s step back. What’s going on, and how do I help the company as opposed to just fielding things?

Matthew Bond: I think I mean when you’re talking with a customer, it can be very tempting to just be like, I’m going to give you all the solutions right now and I’m going to think of them on the top of my head.

Matthew Bond: And that’s generally not a great idea because you really want to do research. You want to come at it with an actual plan. So one of the structural things I like to do and I encourage the team to do as well is to build up an action plan as we’re talking with the customer. Here are the things that we’re going to commit to do to get you to the next point that you need to be in this process. And then obviously following up by email and keeping that conversation going in the longer term rather than just trying to discreetly come in and just fix everything.  And then there’s another really deep thing as well, which is going beyond what the customer’s asking you for to what they’re actually trying to achieve and even more what is their boss asked them to achieve. Because sometimes you can go all the way down to I’m trying to do X with Y and we say that’s not a great idea because there’s a technical limitation maybe that makes that difficult.  But actually, if we know why you’re trying to do X with Y right and we can go all the way back to the beginning of that decision process, we can find you another way to the same result that’s actually going to be more successful.

Matthew Bond: So, it’s just trying to understand exactly where they’re coming from right at the root of the question and not trying to, I say, overcommit to giving the answers immediately, but being thoughtful about it, recording what they’re saying. And most importantly, like I say, just it’s all about listening to them and…

Matthew Bond: trying to understand their perspective because that’s the great value of being on a call with or, in a conversation with a customer It gives you a chance to see how they see things.

Scott Smith: Right. Yeah,…

Scott Smith: Okay, last question for and you’ve got a lot of experience now. you came from a restaurant business and you figured out how to build apps and develop great products.

Scott Smith: where you are now but what would you give as advice to someone who’s just getting started maybe who’s looking at their career particularly in customer facing what would you say

Matthew Bond: Yeah, that’s a good question.

Matthew Bond: That’s a hard thing to answer. So, I think in many ways it’s about persistence. if you persist at anything, you will eventually get to your goal. And I think it can be very easy to be dissuaded. I’d say honestly my main strength is persistence rather than anything else beyond that. It’s just about continuing to plow away at things.

Matthew Bond: I’ll often advise people that want to get more technical build something I mean I was talking about the game I built but it doesn’t really matter what it is but just persisting weekends maybe in evenings or something just persisting at building that thing building it up and eventually you’ll get to your goal and that’s really what divides people who are more successful because they are generally just being so persistent at something that after a while they’ll reach that goal.

Scott Smith: Love it. Matt Bond, thank you so much for spending some time.

Scott Smith: Lego map maker, customer support leader. so great to talk to you.

Matthew Bond: Great talk to you too,…

Matthew Bond: Scott. Thank you.