Hello and welcome to the Conversations
with Zendesk podcast. I'm your host, Nicole Saunders. Today we are talking about building
the support operation that your customers truly want with my guest, Brad Harris,
Director of Global Customer Support at Bitly. Brad built support teams from the ground
up at several organizations over the course of his career,
and in his current role, he is focused on elevating experiences
for both Bitly and their QR code
generator customers around the world. Brad is a
seasoned pro,
but he is not afraid to ask questions. He's the first
to reach out to his community to share ideas and experiment
with new technologies. With so much happening in the world
that he has declared this his year of testing, and we are excited
to learn about his process, how he's thinking about AI and other
innovative technologies, and what change looks like when you're designing
for two distinct customer base it. Before we dive in, a quick reminder
that Zendesk Relate is just one mont
h away. If you haven't reserved your spot yet,
you still have time, but not for long. We're going to be in Las Vegas April 16th
through 18th, and I am really excited to connect with everyone and for all of us to get to learn
what's ahead for Zendesk. Head to ZendeskRelate.com
to check out the agenda that has an amazing list of speakers and sessions
and things you won't want to miss. If you'd like to stay in the loop
on Relate, Zendesk news, and of course, this podcast,
be sure to follow Zendesk
on LinkedIn. That is our home for where
we're sharing the latest. So be sure to join us there. All right. And without further delay, Brad Harris, welcome to the Conversations
with Zendesk podcast. How are you doing
today? Hi, Nicole, I'm doing well. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Thank you for joining us. It's so fun to get to connect with you
here. I know I've seen you around our online
communities and different programs at Zendesk a lot, so it's fun
to bring you on to the podcast as well. So a
s I mentioned in the introduction,
you have two different use cases or internal customers,
if you will, at Bitly. I think that's going to set the context
for the rest of our conversation. So tell us a little bit about those
two use cases and how they're different. Yeah, absolutely. With the QR code generator customer base,
we tend to get tickets that are a lot lower complexity
but in a higher volume. On the flip side,
the Bitly brand that we're familiar with has kind of a higher quality
or highe
r complexity of the types of tickets that we receive,
but at a lower volume. So we have to approach the strategy
a little bit differently between the two, but with the same disciplines and the same quality levels
that we're trying to achieve with both. So when you started looking at how you're going to set up
your support systems for these two pieces, and I imagine one came
before the others, it's not like you were starting from scratch
at the same time with both of them. How did you approach ea
ch of them
differently? Yeah. So when I joined Bitly, the Bitly brand
or the connections platform was already using Zendesk, and they'd been using it
for several years at that point, when I joined the QR code team,
they were currently on another platform. We wanted to make sure
that we could have both groups under one umbrella and start acting as one team
with just different brands. One of the things that stood out to me
very early on was on the QR code generator. Customer base. They were receiv
ing ten plus times
the amount of tickets, then the Bitly side. And the first question I asked was, well,
how many of those are just one touch source? How many of them just require
getting to the queue? Having someone open it up, apply a macro
or a quick response and then solving it. And they said it was at that time
it was about 80 to 90% of them were one touch source,
which just screamed automation to me. So I was looking at absolutely. How do we yeah, how do we get to
that point where we have
a distinction between the types of tickets
and how we approach that, and understanding what it is
that those customers are asking for? So thinking about that automation. Tell me a little about what you implemented and how did
customers respond to that going from normally getting a human and now
maybe having a different experience? What was that like? Yeah, definitely. I mean, we're still learning, right? And I think that's a big part
of what we're talking about, is what it is that the customers
want
when they contact a company. And with the two different but similar
but different platforms and products that we support, where the overlap is
and where we treat it differently. And I think the approach with automation
tools was to first find
where customers are getting a hold of us. What makes sense for them, and kind of
rein in some of the extra stuff. Right? Like we had exposed email addresses
everywhere. And I think folks in the customer
support world will understand email's not the ide
al channel
for an inbound ticket. There's a lot of lost information. Is a web form a traditional submitted
request form the right solution? Do we have it hidden for some folks
and expose for some folks? And do you have to be signed in
and signed up? So we wanted to look at
what were they used to, how are they getting Ahold of us right now
and then how we could transition to something like anything
automated to be able to help us get back to our customers first. So we actually started with what w
as in our controllable universe
at the beginning, right? We owned our Zendesk instance,
which is it's always a benefit when the support group
has control over their support tool. And we looked at low hanging fruit. What's the easy stuff of those one touch
solve tickets that we have. You know, what's the commonality? What tickets can we respond to
without having to get to a human and know that the customer is going to get
the answer that they're looking for? We started really just with a series o
f triggers
that based on the customer selection, they would get a different auto
response, right? So it wouldn't right away say,
thank you, we've got your ticket. Someone's going to get back to you. It's, hey, we got your ticket
or we got your message. Here's
some information that is frequently asked. So it was almost like
we're replying with an FAQ. And then we did something a little cheeky
where we just said at the bottom, hey, no ticket was created from this. But if this didn't answer your qu
estion,
reply back to us. We'll get you to an agent.
We'll get you taken care of. So that really works. Took a lot of the book off of the teams
back at the beginning while we were looking for
additional support channels, and we ended up saying,
hey, you know what, let's give an AI chat
bot a try and see how that goes. That is really interesting. So how you outline that whole process
at the beginning of what you just told me, one of the things that you said
is it's really important to understand
what your customers are looking for,
what kind of experience they want. How are you going about doing that?
Are you using surveys? Are you working with the VOC team? Are you doing focus groups? What have you found are the best tools for really understanding
customer needs and expectations? Yeah, you know,
we're still refining a lot of that. We have still with both of the separate
brands. We've got different Net
Promoter Score surveys that go out. So on one brand it's
kind of quarterly results. O
n the other it's daily. So we have that as one source. We've got CSat for both of the brands. And folks tend to find leadership
and people who work at the company on LinkedIn or social,
and they'll let us know that. So definitely
the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but it's also the squeaky wheel
might have a point, right? So if they're having a hard time
finding sport or if they prefer to do things one way,
we got to listen. We can't ignore it. As you mentioned,
this is the year of testing, and
I really want to get a better idea
of what it is that we're missing, right? Because we could come into this
as support professionals and say, hey, I know that this is the future
and this is the way that customers are going to want to talk to us. And it's chat bot
first and automation automation. But there's still generations of folks
and demographics of folks that are used
to a different level of support. Now, we're not really staffed for phone
support, definitely not stuff for chat, but what ca
n we do to be able to kind of
bridge that gap of what they want and what they expect versus
what we're able to feasibly handle? So we implemented an AI chat bot through EDA
and we embed that on our help center. So right now
it's just on the help centers, the QR code generator help center. That's right. Now the only choice for inbound support. There's emails
and those sorts of things too. But that's where we want to direct
our customers to. Now, we've also found customers saying,
I can't get Ahol
d of support. I don't know where to find support,
even though in our minds we made it way easier, we unhidden the contact form,
we unhitched all of this stuff. We exposed our support
not just to those that were signed in and could find the chat bot,
but to everybody. And then we decided to. What happens if we turn that off? Let's turn on the submit
a request to everybody and turn off the bot
and see what kind of volumes we get, see how that impacts our backlog
and how that impacts ultimately our
first reply times NRC sets
and it was used like customers used it. They used it would be the 50%
more than our chat bot. And I think it's really interesting
to be able to definitively now say yes, this
chat bot is a huge benefit for our teams and it's an immediate support
for our customers. We're not sitting around
and waiting in queues, and now we're still kind of waiting for all of our CSat
and NPS data to come in so that we could kind of lock that down
and say, okay, onto the next test. That
's so smart, and it's so important
to run those tests and experiments to validate what you think. You know, because I think it's
always a big risk that you run when you start to think that you know what
your customers want better than they do. So validating that with feedback,
validating it with experiments, using data and tracking so that you can
really understand the upstream and downstream impacts of anything
you implement, is really critical. Now, I understand that you have set up
these kind
s of operations at multiple organizations. That isn't your first run at this. So talk to me a little bit about that
and maybe some of the differentiators that you've had with some different sized organizations
and some different audiences. Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of kicked off my early customer support customer experience career
at a camera companies. It started with,
Hey Brad, we've got a ticketing platform that is a plug in for outlook, and we've been running
into all these problems. Help
us find something. And that's what I tried out
a few different platforms, found Zendesk and it became one of those instant
kind of no brainer moments where I'm like, okay, this is the platform
that I intuitively can understand. It does all the things I need. It plays well with others. I could plug it into other things. It just makes sense. And it started to scale
as I started to grow in my role. So it became that toolbox that I knew
I could bring with me into different places. Whether it was lau
nching it
from scratch at one company or, you know, being brought in as a contractor
to improve the existing instance of a company
that's been using it for a while, or to make the decision
at another that, hey, the platform you've got is good,
but we could be so much more efficient and so much more powerful
if we step over to this platform. Wherever I end up,
I know that I have a solution, that I can make work quickly
and I can make it work really well and probably continue
scaling with the need
s of that company. Well, certainly we love to hear that
you found a tool that you like to use, as you said, the backbone to your operations wherever you go
and that you found it intuitive, but obviously you had to build it up a lot of knowledge
to be able to do all of this. How did you go about doing that? What are some of the resources
that you found really helpful
that other people might want to look at? You know, there's support driven and some of the really big communities
for multi-platform
. But really, I think
where I found the tightest group of folks that have been the most supportive
in the most communicative and relatable was actually through Zendesk
support communities. There is one that I've been part of
for a long time, the Zendesk for startups community,
and that's kind of the first place I go to when I am saying,
hey guys, I'm going to test out turning off our chat bar for a bit,
or I'm going to see what channels work
well or what chat bots do you all use? What should I b
e aware of?
What do you like? What do you not like
and how are things structured? And I think just being part of a community
in that sense really helps these days, where
I'm literally the only one in my office, I'm at home,
I don't have anyone to chat with. And then Zendesk
Relate is only once a year. So who do I talk to? Who do I share ideas with? Whose tests
am I going to cheat off of right? Because I'm not the first one
to think of something. I don't need to reinvent the wheel, but
let's copy
that and tweak it a little bit. You know, I think those have been
the most valuable resources for me
in my personal and professional growth. And I think there's a lot of that is tied to Zendesk
and the growth with the platform. But then I've just
I've met some really incredible people. And, you know,
there's been times in between jobs that I go out there
and I, hey, who can help just on LinkedIn? But like, hey, anybody have an idea? Anybody got anything going on? Can you help take a look at a r
esume? Can you take a look at this or what
should I learn in the in between? It's invaluable. Well, Brad, as you know,
when I'm not hosting the podcast, my day job is leading
the community programs here at Zendesk. So everything you had just said
is just making my heart happy. It's making me glow. And I swear to the listeners,
we did not pay him to say that. I didn't ask him to, but I am so glad to hear that
you have found so much help with that. And I think you're right. You know, in this world
where we're all working remotely, you know, my husband is my coworker
down in the living room. It is really helpful
to have those online connections and those people you can talk to. And we definitely see people in the community
that stick around the community through multiple jobs and multiple organizations,
and there's a real throughline there. So that is so helpful. So, you know everyone that's my
that the plug come to relate. Come meet some people. We've got our user groups.
You can join th
ose. We've got our online discussion forums
startups community lots of opportunities to connect you with knowledgeable folks. And we want to make sure that we're always
there supporting you along the way. So thank you so much for sharing all that,
Brad. I'm really pleased. Absolutely. And thank you for helping
cultivate such wonderful communities. I owe a lot to the Zendesk communities. We're so glad to hear it. So we've talked a little bit about kind of
where you've been in the past, how you've
run some of these experiments,
and I think that is super valuable. We all need to be thinking about
how we're testing things and also where we can lean on other people
right in. So maybe you don't have to run the test
because you can talk to somebody that's done
that and they can share their experiences. If we pivot now and look to the future,
what's next on the roadmap? I know that you're always thinking ahead. You're always running those experiments. What are you looking to move in to? What I
'm looking forward to
is on everybody's mind. And that's how is AI and
how will these new tools affect support? How will it affect the landscape
as we move forward? And there's a lot that I don't know. And it's coming out so fast,
and there's so much stuff that it's almost impossible
for me to keep up. So I use my communities
and I use the groups of people that I'm plugged into to say, like,
what are you thinking about? And how does I kind of fit in your scope? Or what are you using these tools
for? And then really kind of just sparking
those sort of conversations. And I think that's the big thing is
I don't know what I don't know. So this I chat bot, it is a baby bot. It is still in its infancy. We're trying to get it, plug it in to other platforms
and make it super smart and super helpful. But then what next? Right? And what is it that we can do
as a support organization, or even just Bitly as a whole? You know,
what kind of technology can we embrace that will deliver better experien
ces
for our customers and better usage of our tools
and our products? Because Bitly is kind of a company
that's everywhere, right? Ever since joining and I see QR codes and
short links everywhere all of a sudden. Right. Miracle how that happens. And I've used it in
every job I've ever had. So right back in, I think when I started
and I activated my account from my Gmail, it said that my first link was from 2010,
and I know that I had been using it before that too. So that was pretty cool. Yeah,
yeah, I'm an Aussie. This is cool. But yeah,
I think there's just so much out there and I think it's really inspiring that
even at Bitly, we've got an AI committee, we've got an AI guild, we've got folks
that are specifically set up in these subgroups
and these teams that are discussing how we can use these different tools
to our advantage, how we can make it work better in our day to day. How can that then spill over onto our customers
experience, which is I always fall back on like we can do a
ll these amazing things,
but how does that affect the customer? How is that going to,
you know, make their day better? How are we going to get back to them
faster, those sorts of things. So I think that's what I'm excited about
is just continuing to learn in that space. Yeah, I am too. I I'll tell you, I actually just joined
a community of people just talking about AI for the same reasons that we can
really be learning and thinking about it. So, you know, neither of us knows
exactly what those i
mpacts are going to be
or what it's going to look like. Is there anything in particular that you're hoping that I will do for you
in the future? Is already doing so much
that I never expected it to do that. It's hard for me to even speculate
or like, think that far out, right? I'm really hoping that
with this kind of rapid growth, that we do continue to make sure
that our humans and our people and our teams are plugged in on that,
and we still have that personal touch and that human empathy that
all of us
value as customers ourselves. But then how do we continue making this information
that our customers need front and center? How do we make it easier
for them to get what they need? Do we do it within our app? Do we do it within a help center? Do we do it within communication, or do
we just build it into part of the product? Then there is so many tools
and so many more people far smarter than me
that are thinking around these corners. And I think I'm really just excited to
stand on the
side and watch this happen. And jump in
when it looks fun and interesting and something that can propel this space
forward. Well,
this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for joining us today. Are you going to be at relate? Will I see you in person there? I think I am, I think I am, I
it has been submitted. We have budgeted for it.
We're ready to go. I just need to buy those tickets
and get everything going. But yes, I really look forward to Relay
and in Vegas to like how can yo
u go Rob? It's going to be a really good time. And aside from that,
I will see you around the community. Thank you so much for joining us
today, Brad. Thanks a call. And listeners, please be sure to join us
for our next episode. Subscribe
and follow us on your favorite podcast platform
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for future episodes, please reach out to us at Schwab
podcast@zendesk.com. As always,
we would love it if you would leave a review on Ap
ple Podcasts or share
this podcast with a friend or colleague. Until next time, I'm Nicole Saunders. Present desk the intelligent
heart of customer experience.
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