Explore every episode of the podcast The Supportive Podcast

Chris Savage, co-founder and CEO of Wistia, shares how staying in the support inbox for ten years, walking away from a potential major deal with HBO as customer #4, and choosing patience over growth helped their team build a video marketing platform where every product decision starts with understanding customer pain—not just counting feature requests.

Erez Zuckerman, CEO and co-founder of ZSA Technology Labs, shares how a focus on craftsmanship, honest communication internally and externally and deep support has helped his small keyboard company punch well above its weight.

What does it take to earn the trust and loyalty of over 12,000 customers, build a team that cares like you do, and hold onto your values for over a decade? In the first episode of season 2, go behind the scenes with the three founders of Help Scout – Nick Francis, Denny Swindle, and Jared McDaniel – and hear how they turned their frustrations with clunky support tools into a business renowned for its customer focus.

For show notes, transcript, and links:

https://helpscout.com/resources/supportive-podcast/S2E01/

Mat answers Ita's newsletter-follow-up question: How can we frame AI chatbots as self-service tools, not worse-than-human support?

Find the original newsletter here:

https://email.helpscout.com/harm-joy

and visit https://helpscout.com/blog/blog/reframing-as-chatbots/ for further links. Thanks Ita for the great question!

Season 1 of the podcast comes to an end, and Mat explores the recurring themes in classic clip-show style. Listen for a sneak peek of season 2!

Priscilla Brooke leads a team of support experts to help podcasters run, distribute, and grow their shows. In this episode she talks about her journey into support, and her approach to service at Buzzsprout.

Elevate CX founder Sarah Hatter chats with Mat (again!). This time, she shares her community building journey from idea to impact, revealing how in-person connections, shared wisdom, and a true sense of belonging have shaped Elevate CX into the community it is today.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links:

https://www.helpscout.com/resources/supportive-podcast/S1E9/

Sarah Hatter — support veteran, community legend, and founder of ElevateCX — joins Mat to talk about the early days of SaaS support, and the human support of the future.

Mat and a bunch of support experts share actionable tips, encouragement, and helpful advice for people new to support, those considering a support career, and even jaded veterans.

For show notes, further reading, and links to our contributors, see https://www.helpscout.com/resources/supportive-podcast/S1E7/

A huge thank you to everyone who contributed their wisdom to this episode!

Andre Linde, Blake Crenshaw (Buzzsprout), Brian Johnson (Buzzsprout), Cameron Mitchell (Help Scout), Chrissy Chavez (Help Scout), Cody Magnusen, Connor Pendergrast (CustomerSuccess.cx), Erica Clayton, Hilary Dudek (Gamma), Jen Weaver (Tetra), Jordan Dibb, Kate Chupp (Buzzsprout), Nivedha Venkatesh, (Page Loop), Priscilla Brooke (Buzzsprout), Raj Stalin, Sarah Caminiti (Abcam), and Shaun Van Heerden.

In the final Supportive Podcast of the year, Santa's dealing with change, just like the rest of us, and Mat has some thoughts and thanks as we consider 2025.

A stranger delivers a USB-C stick from the future, and Mat discovers it contains a recording of a corporate onboarding for new support staff in November of 2028. What does it all mean?

Mat's away on sabbatical, so this month we're sharing an episode of Epochal Growth, hosted by Sarah Caminiti and featuring Ben McCormack.

Huge thanks to Sarah for sharing her interview with us. To hear more from Sarah on Epochal Growth, visit https://www.epochaloperations.com/epochal-growth

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In Episode 6 of Epochal Growth, host Sarah Caminiti sits down with Ben McCormack, currently a fractional executive at Boldr and a seasoned customer experience professional. Ben and Sarah take a closer look at the world of customer journey mapping and its critical role in driving customer-centricity within organizations.

Ben shares the possibilities when you focus on cross-functional collaboration and aligning teams around the customer journey. He provides examples of how journey mapping can pinpoint and resolve issues at various stages, emphasizing the power of naming journey stages to enhance communication and organizational alignment. The episode offers practical techniques for socializing the customer journey, such as customer learning rooms and spotlighting customer stories, highlighting the need for leaders to grasp the entire customer journey to identify trends and root causes of customer challenges.

Discover how journey mapping can unify your company around customer value and drive significant business impact. Tune in to learn how you can leverage this powerful tool to enhance customer experience and achieve greater organizational success.

Mat describes his first customer service experience working as a paper boy. What was yours? Email thesupportive@helpscout.com to let us know.

Mat chats with Elyse Mankin, experienced support leader and former headband girl to talk about her experiences moving from frontline support into a leadership role.

They discuss the challenges of making time to get out of the queue, Elyse's strategies for planning her time, delegation, and focus, her favourite leadership resources, and the power of yacht rock.

For the full show notes, links, and further reading, see https://www.helpscout.com/resources/supportive-podcast/S1E5/

In this episode, Mat shares stories and lessons from six examples of customer service fails throughout history — from poor quality trade goods in ancient Mesopotamia to spectacularly bad motel service in present-day Australia.

The Biden/Harris White House recently announced their "Time is Money" governmentwide crackdown on customer unfriendly practices. What's it all about, and will it make any difference to real world customer experience for Americans...Mat Patterson takes a look.

Here's the White House statement:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/08/12/fact-sheet-biden-harris-administration-launches-new-effort-to-crack-down-on-everyday-headaches-and-hassles-that-waste-americans-time-and-money/

Ben Henderson — product manager, former DJ, and boot Tetris expert — chats with Mat about his role and how customer support leaders can most effectively make their case for product changes and fixes. Plus, an Aussie slang challenge!

For show notes, relevant links, further reading, and a full transcript visit:

https://helpscout.com/resources/supportive-podcast/S1E3/

Self-service technology ancient and modern, a German monk, and Shawna explains Gross Margin in this episode of The Supportive Podcast.

For show notes, transcript and further reading: https://www.helpscout.com/resources/supportive-podcast/S1E2/

Mat makes the claim that the future of online support is self-service. More specifically: elf-service driven by customers, delivered by AI and designed, monitored, and crafted by people is the way most customers will be helped, most of the time. Evidence for that claim:

Self-service first is the only practical option for very large companies like Google.

Improved AI tools will make it cost-prohibitive for smaller companies to remain human-service first in some situations.

There’s a long history of new tech not being as good as the system we already have. For example:

• Socrates was not a fan of writing.
• Trithemius loved writing but despised printed books.

There is a pattern of self-service tech being put in place to replace some of what a service person was doing, but leaving the rest for the customer.

ATMs, typing pools, self-service grocery store checkouts.

Implications for support teams:

• Documentation will be critically important as the source for AI tools.
• A rebirth for Clippy in AI-powered contextual help.
• Managing the transition from AI to humans will be vital.
• Fewer support people per customer, but more complex and sensitive interactions for humans.
• New support quality assurance processes are needed to manage AI And human work.
• We need to find new paths to human expertise in support.
• Support pros need to become customer experience professionals.

Hero(n) of Alexandria invented the first vending machine around AD60

And Shawna explained Gross Margin.

In this in-between non-episode, Mat talks about why Help Scout is not an AI-first company.

AI and the future of support teams, 3 truly terrible predictions, several action items for support leaders, and Shawna explains the Rule of 40.

https://www.helpscout.com/resources/supportive-podcast/S1E1/

3 terrible predictions from history:

• Mail delivery by rocket
• Automation will make a second job as socially unacceptable as bigamy
• Steve Ballmer: iPhone has “no chance” of gaining significant market share

2 people to follow in AI:

• Ethan Mollick
• Genevieve Bell

Mat's predictions for the impact of AI on customer service team structure.

• Self-service will be central
• Lower cost-per-interaction means new business models for support
• Customer support QA will be transformed.
• The future of support will be built on flexibility.

Action items for support leaders:

• Decide (again) what good service looks like for your team
• Stay informed about AI tools and capabilities
• Identify and prioritize key AI opportunities

and Shawna Explains: The Rule of 40.

Check out the trailer for the upcoming Supportive Podcast from Help Scout.