This is the first blog post in a series called “It Takes a Team.” Today, I’m sharing a story about being part of the early stages of Customer Experience (CX) development while the product and user base were rapidly growing. Then, I’ll cover three focus points to help you predict your future inbound conversations and hire in the right locations.
The three main areas we’ll focus on are:
- Setting up your volume forecasting model.
- Developing a plan to reduce conversations.
- Hiring in the right locations.
Early-stage CX development in a rapid-growth product
I want to share a story about building support from the ground up. I think this will resonate with people starting in a new role or with startup founders looking to develop their customer support department.
When I was hired as the first person in customer support at Frame.io, I was excited and ready to build something incredible. I was eager to learn about the product and help customers. But on my first day as the Head of Support, I opened my new laptop and stared at a backlog of 10,000 unanswered conversations. Some of these conversations were over a year old. It was 9:30 a.m., and I was already overwhelmed.
“So, how many customers do we have?” I asked.
“75,000,” the CEO responded.
“And who’s been managing support so far?”
The CEO and CTO had been answering customer questions.
I had to make impactful decisions, and fast. My first day was also the launch day of a new integration with Adobe Premiere. The queue was increasing by 100 new conversations per hour.
First, I realized that the right data wasn’t being collected about why customers were contacting us. I needed to identify the top 10 reasons customers needed support. So, I set up a tagging system. It was manual, but every new conversation was tagged so I could quantify all inbound conversations and start creating solutions.
Second, customers didn’t have a foundational way to learn how to use the product. I wrote support articles and developed webinars where customers could ask questions directly.
Third, I spot-checked many of the conversations in the backlog and found that engineering updates had already addressed customer’s issues. But I couldn’t respond to everyone with a custom reply. Instead, I mass-messaged everyone, letting them know their conversation would be closed and to reach out again if they still had issues. I closed 10 months of conversations and focused on responding to those from the last two months. During the day, I managed the queue; at night, I tackled the backlog.
In the first 30 days, the backlog was under control, and support inquiries were reduced by 90%. I was managing all inbound conversations by myself while the user base rapidly increased to 150,000 in 6 months. It kept doubling.
After 1 year, we grew to 250,000 users in 180 countries and my day looked very different:
- 6 am: Breakfast and answering customers from my phone.
- On the train: Writing detailed responses and sending them when I had a signal.
- 7-8 am: At my desk, clearing the backlog from European customers.
- 11 am: Hosting my first webinar for European and early U.S. customers.
- Noon: Lunch.
- 12:30-3 pm: Clearing the backlog built up during the webinar and lunch.
- 4-5 pm: Sitting with the CTO to tackle bugs, then responding to the bug backlog.
- 6 pm: Heading home.
- 8-10 pm: Answering West Coast and early-morning Asia customers.
I was on a path to burnout. It was time to bring in help.
I calculated that the conversations weighing on my day were primarily from European, Australian, and Asian time zones. They deserved faster responses. I had to decide whether to hire in London, where more customers were located and salaries were comparable to New York, or Dublin, where we’d get a tax break after hiring five team members and salaries were lower.
Shortly after hiring in Dublin, I hired someone to work alongside me in New York, expanded to Los Angeles, and continued building the team in these three cities.
Before hiring these folks, I had to show the future trajectory of inbound support and the efforts I would take to reduce this support. Let’s dive in with predicting those inbound conversations from your customers.
Forecasting inbound conversations
Don’t wait until you and your team are underwater with customer conversations. It’s critical to have time to define and refine operational processes for effective customer communication and the health and growth of your employees.
A customer-centric company that focuses on retaining and delighting customers will see the value in developing a CX team.
First, develop a forecasting model. This is essential as you expand your team globally. Start by pulling the average number of conversations per week. How has this changed week over week, month over month, and year over year? What is the annual percentage increase in conversations? If you can pull 1-2 years of data, you’ll see the trajectory.
Second, track the time of day conversations come in. Analyze trends week over week, month over month, and year over year. This will help you spot patterns and identify time zones that need coverage.
Third, collaborate with Product, Marketing, and Sales to understand their upcoming efforts. Where will increased efforts be focused in the next year? What major milestones are launching? Is Sales expanding outside the U.S.? Is Marketing targeting a specific region?
By aligning with other departments, you can better predict where your customer base will grow and estimate the number of inbound conversations.
Develop a plan to reduce conversations
With a forecasting model in place, you’ll have a sense of future conversation volumes. Chances are, you won’t have the budget to hire the estimated number of people needed to manage the predicted volume!
I have 3 suggestions to reduce conversations that might spark other ideas:
- Solve for the top 5 issues that customers report. Likely, this will take more than updating your knowledge base. Data speaks volumes so collect information about the time it takes to answer each one, and the potential cost of churn without making changes for these issues. Review potential solutions with Engineering to understand the effort. Then partner with Product, Design and Engineering to address these issues.
- Deploy an AI chatbot for informational inquiries. Analyze your data to predict how many conversations AI can resolve versus those requiring human action. I used to have tags called Confusion and Unaware. Confused how a feature worked and unaware that a feature existed. This was useful to develop the knowledge base with the proper direction, based on a feature being confusing or they didn’t know it existed. This information is also perfect for the company-wide Voice of the Customer report.
- Address complex issues by creating brief tutorial videos. Many customers would rather watch a visual solution rather than read and try to piece it together. Add these videos to support articles and macros. Make sure customers can pause or rewind videos. I once used 20-second looping GIFs, but customers found it frustrating to wait for the loop to restart.
Ask yourself: Who will build these solutions? An existing team member, a new hire, or a third party? What’s the estimated impact of these efforts? Add the calculated reduction to your volume forecast model.
Hire in the right locations
Finally, align with company leadership to hire in the right locations. At Frame.io, I knew from day one that we’d need a dispersed team. The product’s global appeal meant rapid user growth across countries.
If a goal for your company is to provide 24/7 support, providing tight SLAs for global Enterprise customers, or Sales expects to expand globally, it is imperative that you align with the company leadership on expansion locations.
If your company is remote, team camaraderie can still thrive through local dinners and events. It’s cost-effective to build culture when teammates are in proximity.
Even in remote-first companies, local gatherings foster stronger connections.
Forecasting your support needs, reducing conversations, and hiring strategically are essential steps to building a thriving global CX team. Whether you’re just starting in a leadership role or scaling a growing startup, remember that every decision you make contributes to the foundation of your team’s success.
