(Scott Bury’s Story) Management Training and Customer Success
When’s the last time someone on your senior leadership team literally said they don’t mind if your team produces 0 units of work this week?
I’m going to take a wild guess — — that sounds pretty crazy to you. Believe me, I thought it was the most profound statement in my career. But why would someone say such a thing? When it comes to driving customer success in a remote company, quality is king. If the many teams of our business are not working together to drive customer value, then we’re working blindly in silos. Focusing on quality over quantity means we need to shift our mindset from one where we’re racing to see how many times we can ring the bell to one where we’re able to take negative feedback and turn it into a positive improvement for our team and business.
My journey in Crossover started in Fall 2015. I joined as a Customer Support Manager, back when we had about 20 people in our Support team. I had a handful of management colleagues and really never needed to interact with anyone besides the Account Managers. That being said, we still had plenty of positives! Back then, we were able to increase our CSAT rate to more than 90+ for several quarters in a row. One thing I, personally, drove was being able to solve more tickets in less than a certain number of days (90%+, thank you!). Through this period, though, I knew a shift was coming.
Fast forward to mid-2017 and our Support team was in the middle of a transformation. Our CEO had announced that we would begin acquiring a large number of companies over the foreseeable future. So, as good managers, we adapted our processes in Support to be able to scale with the company.
Since then, our Support team has grown to more than 400 people with several entire teams within dedicated to certain functions like product integration, quality, knowledge management, and even our own systems team. We were one of the first teams to really look at quality.
Then, we heard about the shift toward quality as a company directive. Honestly, this was the best news I had heard since joining the company. While I joined as a Support Manager, I also spent some time as, what we called, a Platinum Experience Manager. I met with our top-tier customers on a routine basis and worked with our Support team to ensure their issues were resolved quickly. I did other things like identifying opportunities for consulting engagements or prepping for renewals, but my main focus was on helping them have a smooth experience. One of the biggest complaints I heard, and still hear, from customers is about resolution time — especially for those issues which need the assistance from our ‘backend’ teams like Operations or Engineering.
Once I started learning more about the other teams, I found that they had plenty of documented processes, playbooks, and other supporting tools to help them ‘complete’ their work units. This took a lot of time to really understand the high-level workflow it takes to take a customer-reported bug from Support all the way through our centralized engineering processes until the product has a new release. In that, I was introduced to this term, ‘quality bar.’
Fast forward to now, and I’m completing my first Managers RemoteCamp. I’m not quite done yet, as I have an Oral Exam tomorrow, and then senior leadership will review my completed work for a final grade. What the heck is this? Well, I think of like an internal Customer Success paradigm. Those of you that are on the front lines with customers might be familiar with some of the tasks I’ve worked on: meeting with individuals and identifying blockers to success; analyzing opportunities to improve and implementing permanent solutions so you can focus on bigger and better ideas; building a success plan for your team so you know exactly what is the definition of a successful unit of work.
I know that it seems weird to take management training and twist it toward Customer Success. I feel that that’s the shift we needed, though! Now that everyone in the company is being trained (especially new joiners) on our major management frameworks, we’re putting in the foundation for everyone to work together. For instance, when our Support team wants to submit a bug to our Engineering team, there is a certain threshold of necessary information we need to provide to that team in order for them to start work and be successful themselves — we call this an Input Quality Bar. Once those engineers review the issue and develop a code fix, the assembly line continues through several stages before the product is tested thoroughly and ultimately included in a future release of the product. Throughout this process, each team has their particular ‘input and output’ quality bars. This ensures that we’re all working with quality in mind, setting up the next team for success.
My experience thus far has been an exciting rollercoaster. In my first week, I really struggled to produce what was expected. I ended up relying on other parties to get the data I so desperately needed, and had to play catch up in the second and third week. That being said, I was able to improve my workflow by timeboxing, managing my energy better, and really understanding how my peers before me have been successful. So for anyone that is about to join, don’t stress yourself. Yes, it is a lot of work and the pace is fast. But, you’ll find your ‘aha’ moment, like me. Mine came in the middle of my second week where I took a 180-degree turn and found my hypothesis. I knew what I wanted to improve and just needed to do the work in order to prove it.
Without getting into the details of everything that’s covered in our Managers Remotecamp, I’ll demonstrate a taste of how I, personally, decided to group up our 15 frameworks.
Factory floor — where the work is!
Just as one would do in a physical environment, I started my Remotecamp by simply talking to people. I had a team of 10 individuals that I met with on a daily basis for the first 2 weeks. From the ‘floor’ I was able to then also look at their work through what we call a ‘Gemba walk’ (Hint: Think Toyota.) That opened my eyes up to their workflow and the exact units of work they spent time on a daily basis. After taking a look at a sample, I gathered more data and began reviewing the information with my external lens towards quality. I asked myself a series of questions: What is their current definition of done? What does success look like to them? How are they measured? What isn’t being measured but should be? After performing several deep dives into areas where they could have performed better, I needed to step outside for some coffee. Okay, it was actually a pot of coffee per day plus at least one Red Bull. For those keeping track at home: Check In Chats -> Gemba Walks -> Deep Dives -> Enforce Quality.
The parking lot — looking from the outside
Once I had an idea of what the team was doing and how they were doing it, I decided to look at things from the customer perspective. What did they think about the team once the work left the building? This helped me observe more data from a different angle that actually helped to make my hypothesis stronger. Woohoo!
Employee entrance — bulletin board time!
Now that I had my own idea of quality and also an external one, it made it much clearer about how I would want to show the team how I felt they stacked up. This involved doing a transparent stack rank of the team based on my new understanding of quality. I also made it clear about who could use some focused coaching through Engineer RemoteCamp. Now it was time to get lean and ready for success at scale.
Gym Lunch — time to get lean!
Anyone who has worked in a normal physical job has probably thought, at some point, of taking their lunch break at the gym. I wanted to take this a step further. I wanted the team to get lean and efficient! This meant taking a look at the perfect way for them to perform (ZBT) and comparing it to their current workflow (TMS). Then, I came up with a new calendar that would help them shed those extra pounds (or kilos!) over the coming weeks. I also looked at tools to help them work more efficiently.
Board room — putting it all together
Now that had spent several weeks gathering and analyzing data, I was able to start preparing for my ‘boardroom’ presentation. This involved a lot of cross-referencing between our internal quality bar as well as seeing if my work really highlighted the points I wanted to come across. I found that my prepared statements went a little too far in one respect and not deep enough in others. This led me to go back to the data and fine-tune the topics I wanted to cover. And now, well, that’s where I’m at today!
So, what have I struggled with?
One might think that being a part of the culture here for several years would mean I should be one of the best. While I certainly have a lot of experience to draw upon and there are plenty of examples of where I’ve implemented the frameworks individually — I’ve never been able to see the big picture as I have in this Managers RemoteCamp. I never went through the 5-whys with a quality mindset, it was always with a quantity-first attitude. When I setup calendars for my teams in the past, I didn’t frame it towards a perfect-world scenario, rather based on the top performers' productivity. In addition, I was a bit complacent about following the web throughout the entire paradigm. Even in this Remotecamp, I procrastinated a couple of areas because I didn’t think they would be valuable. But, I was undervaluing the foundations for becoming an elite manager.
I realize now that these tools might not always be applicable every day or week, but they all need to be utilized at the right time for the right purpose. The advice I would give to those wishing to join our team or have just started Managers RemoteCamp would be this:
Don’t be afraid to pivot or persevere.
You will end up challenging your own thoughts. If not, you haven’t dug deep enough, yet. You will find data that leads you to look at things from another perspective. For instance, I found out that just because automation exists does not mean its role is 100% valid.
What’s next?
In the coming days, I will be doing an in-depth Oral Exam that will test the boundaries of my findings and validate that I have mastered the frameworks we have been taught. After that, my work will be shared with some members of the senior leadership team in order to evaluate my work with an outside (customer) eye. Then, I will graduate and find out where I’ll be making a great positive impact.
Circling back to the topic of Customer Success, I do hope you’ve picked up on the fact that, as leaders, we can drive Customer Success by ensuring our teams are all driving quality. It doesn’t matter if it’s an Engineering, Support, Sales, Finance, or any other team within your organization. They can all benefit from defined quality bars, playbooks, and processes that ensure each are doing their part to help customers be successful with your product(s).
Lastly, thanks to my wife who has put up with long days, early mornings, and short meals in order for me to focus on becoming an elite manager. I couldn’t have made it through RemoteCamp without her. Use your support systems, and keep your energy up! It will all come together in no time!
Want to join our team? Apply to become a Customer Support Manager, Software Engineering Manager, or any of our other positions at Crossover.
