In this conversation, we’re talking about the evolution and maturity of CX leadership , exploring key insights with our guest, Ty Givens, Founder of CX Collective. Together, we discuss the operational challenges faced by startup CX teams, the scope of modern support leader roles, and the importance of managing one's personal brand, sharing real-world experiences, industry expertise, and actionable takeaways.

In this conversation, we talk effective customer advocacy and advocating for support teams with Meghan Gallagher, a support operations professional and consultant. We discuss moving beyond isolated Slack messages to build powerful, data-backed stories for product teams. Meghan shares strategies for bridging the gap with product and engineering, proactive trend spotting, and the powerful impact of improving internal support processes.

In this episode, Neal Travis speaks with Priscilla Brooke, Head of Podcaster Success at Buzzsprout and host of Happy to Help, about how involving the whole company in customer support creates stronger teams, better products, and more connected organizations. They explore why all-company support matters, how to set it up practically, and how to overcome common concerns about value, standards, and participation.

In this episode, Neal Travis speaks with Jamey Lutz, author of Pathway to Purpose and longtime CX and culture expert, about how to move beyond “better sameness” and create truly differentiated customer experiences. They discuss the critical intersection between employee engagement and CX, the danger of copy-paste service models, and why purpose-led cultures drive lasting loyalty.

In this episode, Neal Travis chats with coach and former CX leader Stephen Nock about the deep connection between employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX). Together, they explore what it really means to create an environment where people thrive, how to prioritize the needs of your team without compromising on business or customer outcomes, and why trust, listening, and shared ownership are at the heart of great support work.

In this episode, Neal Travis chats with Kenji Hayward, Head of Support at Front, about how to intentionally build a strong and connected team culture in a fully remote world. From onboarding and accountability to fun, flexibility, and finding purpose, Kenji shares how his globally distributed team became one of the most engaged at the company — and how others can do the same.

In this episode, Neal Travis sits down with Philippe Mesritz to explore what it really takes to grow from an individual contributor to executive leadership. They unpack the mental shifts, strategy, influence, and skill-building that are often missing from traditional support career paths — and share practical insights to help anyone navigating the path to director, VP, or beyond.

Thinking about expanding your Support coverage? Join Idit, and Neal as they explore:

When would you really start to consider the need for additional coverage and global support?

Are there major deciding factors between having a local team with additional hours vs. having a global model?

Difference between 24/7 Support and Global Support and different models

and more!

Being Customer Centric means adding value across the business for customers, teams, and the organization. It's not about labels.

Susana de Sousa joins Growth Support to talk about exactly that.

What does it mean to be customer centric?

Why is it just a buzzword?

How do we implement it in practice?

These are questions we're answering and more!

In this episode, Neal Travis is joined by Kateryna Ostapenko, VP of Operations at BLEND, to explore how support teams can demonstrate their value to the business — and why many people leave support roles before they’ve truly unlocked their potential. From internal career growth to shifting the narrative around cost centers, Kateryna offers practical, blunt, and empowering advice for support professionals and leaders alike.

What's it like working in Support for so many different industries? What about Startups?

Brittany Ferguson joins this conversation to talk about just that!

Brittany is a CX leader that has worked in almost every industry included non-profit, defense, healthcare, and more.

We talked about:

What it's like to change from industry to industry

What its like working in a startup

How you can adapt support to your needs

And about tools that you can use to be successful.

Hope you enjoy this conversation!

Luke Atkins, Senior Support Specialist at Front, joins Growth Support to explore life, growth, and opportunities in Support. We talk through his journey from videography to support, highlighting the unexpected challenges and essential skills needed to succeed. Luke shares his insights on the power of emotional intelligence, the art of the "first reply," and how to drive personal and professional growth by leading by example.

We're measuring the customer experience wrong. Traditionally we use metrics that focus so much on how we handle the experience, but we don't measure the real value customers receive.

That's exactly what Craig Stoss, VP, Partnerships and Success at KODIF, joins me to talk through!

What is friction in the customer experience?

When is it acceptable?

Where should we cut it out?

And how can we maximize value for customers

(and more)

Here is the original article that sparked the conversation, and is referenced throughout: https://www.partnerhero.com/blog/we-are-measuring-customer-experience-wrong

Hope you enjoy!

Ever thought you're just stuck in the day-to-day? Then you tried to move the team forward? Enter: Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)

Stacy Justino joins me to talk through how to set your team up for success with OKRs and get them involved in the process.

What's worked?

What doesn't?

How do you stay consistent?

These are all questions we'll talk through in this really practical conversation around goal setting with your teams.

What does it mean to be a solid Support Specialist?

Thibaut Martin, COO & Co-founder of Smart Role joins me for a conversation to talk about the key skills that it takes to be in Support, and how to develop them.

We're talking about:

How old-school training has worked, and what developing new reps looks like

What the key skills every rep needs are

The impact on AI and the skill development of reps

and much more!

Hope you enjoy this conversation, and let us know in the comments: What do you think it takes to be a great rep?

CSAT doesn't paint the whole picture.

Kateryna Shelest, Co-Founder & CEO of Katico, joins me for this conversation to talk about Internal Quality and how it can be a much more comprehensive view into the success of your teams.

We talked about when to get started with quality, the different stages, and what to look for in conversations.

Katico is a boutique consulting firm designed to keep your support systems optimized for success with all-in-one services. Check them out here: https://katico.io/

Meet Maring 👋 Maring is a Support Content consultant with years of expertise in creating Support Content strategy. Fully managing Help Centers and the self-service experience.

In this conversation, we explore her journey, talk about the benefits of Support content, and how you can also get started with a deeper understanding.

Maring also just released a certificate program: Fundamentals of Support Content which I would HIGHLY recommend to anyone getting started in the space. Check it out here: https://uxcontent.com/fundamentals-of-support-content/

Or you can find her directly at: https://contentbymfe.com/

Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs have been around for a LONG time. But why is it only now that the buzz around the need for VoC is greater than ever?

Ilai Szpiezak, joins me to talk about his experience from the perspective of VoC tooling and about the layers of what a VoC program should entail.

How can we best listen to customers?

What does VoC actually mean?

Who owns it?

We're covering a lot about the sea of feedback in this one, and I hope you enjoy!

Growing with an organization can come with many different phases.

Reagan Helms, VP of Customer Experience @ Planning Center joins me to share his experience from Agent to VP, and how he has thought about growing his teams.

We're talking:

- When to start growing / scaling your teams

- When to think about moving from Generalist to Specialists

- Hiring External vs. Internally

- Delegation and Trust

- And ho you should think about scaling yourself.

Hope that you enjoy this conversation!!

Hot Take 🌶️ Support is a cost center. But.. is it really a hot take? Brian Levine, Co-Founder of Yetto joins me for this conversation to talk about understanding the reality of what Support is, and how we can best leverage that fact to focus on what matters. It's time to break the stigma, and be comfortable! It's. Not. A. Bad. Thing. Check out the articles we referenced here: 1. Part 1: https://www.yetto.app/blog/post/support-is-a-cost-center/ 2. Part 2: https://www.yetto.app/blog/post/support-is-a-cost-center-part-two/

Nando Steenhuis, Co-Founder and CEO of the Academy to Innovate HR (AIHR) joins me to share his perspective from the side of the business on:

Support as a cost center (or not)

How to approach the business to build value

What to report back into the business

Building a culture of customer centricity

With this unique perspective, Support Leaders can get an edge on becoming a better business partner with their organizations, and get Support to become the value driver they know it can be.

Conor joins me for a conversation about how to evaluate your current state of Support and how to go about planning for 2025. We dive into the key areas of focus and get into the gritty details of:

Evaluating your operations

The self-service and proactive experience

Defining people needs

Working across teams

Understanding business needs

Considering when to stop doing something

Resources mentioned in the conversations:

The Full 2025 'State of Affairs' Checklist

The Pain Scale Workshop

Conor's CX Roadmap Services

In this conversation, we’re talking about the power of customer education, with Alison Groves, Customer Education Lead at Help Scout. Together, we discuss the difference between teaching "how" to use a product versus explaining the "why," sharing real-world experiences, the importance of cross-functional relationships, and actionable takeaways for building trust with customers through education.

Paul Tucker joins me in this episode to talk about Company values, and what they can mean for the humans in your organization.

We talk about:

What are good values?

The process of defining values to drive behavior, or rather: culture

What are some best practices in choosing which values are right for you?

And, ways to really live by them and ingrain them in your way of working.

Hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did!

There are so many skills that you pick up throughout your time in Support, and in many instances those roles can also feel wildly unique.

Jared Call joins me for a conversation around his experience, and how, though unique, there are many things that you can take with you into the future.

Hope you enjoy!

Jen Weaver, CSM at Tettra sharing her experience transitioning from Support to Success and some of the fundamentals surrounding both.

This conversation is great for those starting out, and for those exploring some basic steps on how to make the transition from someone who has made the transition themselves.

We talked about:

📌 What is the difference between Support & Success

📌 How you can build a good relationship between the two

📌 How you can start Success efforts as a solo-customer person in a company

📌 And how you can begin to transition into a Success role from Support

Jen Weaver does a fantastic job of breaking this down and making the conversation accessible for those who are just getting started. 👏

Hope you enjoy!

Join Steve and I as we talk about the importance of building relations within your organization and the many benefits that come along with that.

How do you build relations with your team on a continuous basis?

How about with those that may not be as receptive to you?

These are some of the questions we talk through and more!

If you’re a part of Support Driven, you know Lizzie. And if you’re not, you should be!

Lizzie Keiper, the former Director of Events at Support Driven, joins Growth Support to talk about her experience building community, and how to create and engaging environment.

We talk through topics such as:

- Engagement vs. Usage vs. Orchestration

- Getting New Members Value

- Traps to Avoid

And much more!

Join Sarah Betts, the former Director of Alyce Support at Sendoso, and I as we talk about measuring what matters beyond CSAT.

- Why CSAT does function as an isolated metric?

- What can you do to work towards more leading indicators?

- How can you get your team on board?

Hope you enjoy!

Rolf Middendorp, joins Growth Support to talk about scaling Support, and solving the real problems with Ticket Prevention and how GenAI plays a role in creating a fun Support environment for the future!

We talk through:

Ticket Prevention vs. Deflection

How to scale creatively, and work towards a healthy contact rate

How GenAI will create room for more (and more fun)

Human Solutions for Human Problems

and more!

Susana de Sousa, a Customer Experience Consultant that partners with early-stage tech startups to design scalable CX strategies, shares her experience scaling support at early Airbnb and Loom.

She shared some amazing insights into the experiences, and thought process behind it!

We talked through topics such as:

The importance of introducing CX early

The hectic life of 'Everything Customer'

Starting your team

Thinking in terms of the future, not for now

The importance of 1:many interactions and scaling yourself

And much more!

Alex Plasket, Member Support Manager at Paytient, shares his experience growing into Support Leadership, his learnings along the way, and where he goes to for support throughout the journey! We talked through topics such as: Taking the initiative to get involved The silent permission that you give by not providing candid feedback Support for Support leaders And much more!

Marybeth Alexander, the CEO of KnowledgeOwl is back for another conversation! Last time we talked about building your first Help Center, and we’re changing it up this time to talk about creating a people first culture, and balancing business needs from her view as a founder.

Growth Support is an affiliate of KnowledgeOwl! To find out more, click here! Want to see it in action? Check out the Growth Support Glossary

In this episode, we dive deep into the process of building a support organization from scratch, exploring key insights with our guest, Daniel Hoffkins, Head of Operations and Business Development at Certainly CX. Together, we discuss the differences between a greenfield approach and working with existing structures, sharing real-world experiences, industry expertise, and actionable takeaways for new support builders.

Sarah Caminiti, Head of US Customer Service at Abcam and Host of Epochal Growth, joins Growth Support to share her story about what great support looks like in the world of today, and how she approaches it in her work!

Kat Gaines, DevOps Advocate at PagerDuty , joins Growth Support to talk through how to set yourself up for success when it managing incidents and outages. (And more!)

View PagerDuty Resources

Andrew Ríos returns to Growth Support to share insights on how to turn your strategy into a reality and make it happen! How far in advance do you plan? What questions do you need to answer when making the action plan? How do you stay consistent, or pivot when you need to? Ríos answers all these questions and more!

Sara Feldman, the Director of Member Engagement at the Consortium for Service Innovation joins Growth Support to talk about starting your journey into Knowledge Centered Service. What to be wary of, misconceptions, best-practices and more about sharing knowledge. 

Check out her article on getting started with KCS here

Laura joins this episode of Growth Support to share her experience in support, and what it's like to onboard with her in a fully remote company! She share more about creating an engaging experience, and setting clear expectations for success!

Sarah Cullerton joins this episode of Growth Support to talk about her journey in Support Operations, the competencies that can make you successful, and more!

Matt Beran joins this episode of Growth Support to talk about choosing the tools that work for you, how to optimize them, avoiding tech debt early, and managing your vendors!

Matt Beran is the InvGate Product Specialist and Host of the Ticket Volume podcast - News and information for improving IT experiences. Ticket Volume connects a community of Service Management professionals with new ideas and perspectives. He’s worked in technology his whole career and is a huge IT Fan!

Maxime joins Growth Support to share his thoughts on how the state of SaaS Support has changed, where it is now, and where it's headed into the future.

Knowing what information to share with the Business about your Support Function can be challenging... but it's critical. Ríos joins me for this conversation on what makes up a great report that people will love to read and the best practices in making reports that fuel your Organization!

Download the PDF Guide

Andrew is a technologist, runner, and passionate CX leader with 25 years of experience.  He has played every position on a customer experience team and built world-class global support teams at startups and Fortune 100 companies such as Megapath, Fitbit, Cisco, and Turntide Technologies.  He is passionate about career development and the professional growth of CX leaders and teams.

Austin Emser, the CoFounder and CEO of Stylo, joins Growth Support to talk about AI safety and best practices to get started with unlocking the power of AI within your Support Teams, and what it may look like for the future.

Stylo is a generative AI solution for Zendesk that helps support agents quickly write personalized responses, suggest solutions, translate in real-time, and much more!

In this conversation we’re talking about the distinction between mentorship and sponsorship with our guest, Alisha Joseph. Drawing from over 15 years in the support industry, Alisha shares her journey from frontline agent to senior leadership, offering invaluable insights into how leaders can effectively identify, develop, and advocate for talent within their organizations. She introduces a practical framework for transitioning individuals from mentorship to impactful sponsorship, highlighting the importance of strategic opportunity creation and unwavering support.

Key Topics Discussed

Mentorship vs. Sponsorship: Defining the Difference

Mentorship focuses on building skills, visibility, and credibility, often involving guidance and best practices for personal and professional development. Sponsorship, on the other hand, takes those developed skills and significant impacts to the next level by providing major visibility, introducing individuals to key decision-makers, and creating opportunities for career advancement.

"So where mentorship is a lot of that teaching and guiding sponsorship is kind of putting your your actions where your mouth is essentially and getting people in the room, right?"

Insights from Alisha on how a leader's success isn't just about keeping people in support, but helping them grow their careers in any direction.

The Transition from Mentorship to Strategic Sponsorship

Alisha emphasizes a transparent, structured approach to talent development, starting with a comprehensive assessment of an individual's accomplishments, impact, and areas for improvement. Once foundational skills are solid, strategic sponsorship begins by collaborating with other stakeholders to create high-visibility opportunities that align with business objectives and key performance indicators.

"So, I like to meet people where they are and and take a look at what they've accomplished, how it has tied into the bigger aspect of the business, and then I'm looking at what they need to improve."

Real-world examples shared by Alisha, including setting up an agent to present training impact to senior leaders by translating support achievements into business language and numbers.

Navigating Setbacks and Sustaining Sponsorship

Sponsorship can involve "sink or swim" moments. When individuals "sink," Alisha advocates for transparent conversations, allowing time for emotional processing, and a return to targeted mentorship to address gaps. This involves re-evaluating the approach, providing specific feedback, and potentially starting with smaller-scale opportunities before re-engaging at a higher level.

"But you have to be you have to understand the language. You have to understand what's important, what they want to focus on, what those conversation looks like..."

How this impacts the need for leaders to advocate for their teams by understanding organizational goals and translating support value into business outcomes, avoiding the trap of adding work just for the sake of it.

Memorable Quotes

"Sponsorship is just simply taking it to the next level with your career and being able to show what you've done on a bigger scale."

"The transparency is what it is, even though it may sting and it may sting for a while. The transparency is what's helped people overcome it."

"Serving for me is always first. If you don't serve, I don't I don't see why you here. Like, I don't see why. You’ve got to serve."

Takeaways

Strategic Opportunity Creation: When sponsoring, intentionally create opportunities that directly tie back to organizational goals, driving measurable business impact rather than just adding tasks for skill development.

Maintain the Mentorship Thread: Sponsorship doesn't replace mentorship; it builds upon it. Continue providing coaching and feedback, especially after challenging experiences, to reinforce learning and prepare individuals for future opportunities.

Serve with Intention: A core principle of leadership, especially in the support industry, is to serve your team, customers, and stakeholders. This commitment ensures you're consistently working to uplift others and contribute to collective success.

Join Marybeth and I, as we walk through how to get started with setting up your first Help Center. All the way from choosing the right tool, organizing content, making Knowledge Management a process, using AI, and more!

Marybeth is the Knowledge Goddess & Chief Executive Owl at KnowledgeOwl. Her "superpowers" include being kind, giving great service, and solving problems. These days she's largely focused on working to actualize KnowledgeOwl's primary goals, as well as providing direction for the company by embodying its mission, vision, and values.

KnowledgeOwl makes one thing: awesome knowledge base software that helps organizations consolidate information and make it easy to find. Since co-founders Marybeth and Pete bought SurveyGizmo and rebranded it as KnowledgeOwl in 2015, the company has been customer-driven (KnowledgeOwl builds features based on customer feedback) and customer-funded (the company is sustained by its own profits, with no outside investors).

Understanding the why behind performance can go such a long way to creating a healthy and high-performing team!

In this conversation, Amiee and I discuss coaching in performance plans and why building trust with your team is essential. Understanding the why behind performance metrics and what the root causes are can go such a long way to creating a healthy and high-performing team!

Amiee is an educator turned service leader who wants to show others a world of endless possibilities and ways to connect to each other and the world in meaningful ways. Wanting to nurture them and allow them to reach their full potential as people, she found all that in customer service leadership and fell in love with the profession. In her decade-plus experience, she has excelled in roles of service leadership at organizations such as Wayfair and Willa.

Finding out if leadership is right for you can be tough! And developing leaders within your teams, even more so. I was really curious to see how Matt approached this, from his experience as a leader, mentor, and now fractional leader. 

In this conversation, I was able to sit down with Matt Dale, the Founder of Moxie CX, whose greatest joy of his professional life has been mentoring new leaders and helping them develop highly functional teams. Those he's mentored have moved from individual contributor roles to become managers, directors, and VPs in their companies.

Moxie CX is a consulting firm that evaluates where your company is today and then uses their decades of experience to guide you to level up your company’s customer experience. They focus on companies in transition, partnering with them to build out a CX strategy that wows their customers, scales efficiently, reduces churn, and sets them up for success.

Matt is curious by nature and enjoys digging into problems to figure out their root causes. Once causes are revealed he shines at developing creative solutions to fix the underlying issues. He loves helping teams solve interesting problems.

Since 2004, ServiceXRG has been guiding Support, Customer Success, and CX leaders in their pursuit to optimize delivery strategies, adopt technology and automation, improve organizational effectiveness, and transform the role and impact of services resulting in better business outcomes.

What Sparked this Conversation? 

So often we see that teams get stuck in measuring operational metrics like First Response Time (FRT), Handle Time, Time to Resolution (TTR), and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT). But what do these metrics really tell you about the value that your Support Organization brings to the comapny as a whole? That's what we dive in to find out... 

Resource Specifically Mentioned in this Conversation: Support Contribution Index

This Guide introduces critical metrics and practices market leaders use to define and measure service contributions to business outcomes.