Training the next generation of support leaders with Peak Support’s Hannah Steiman

From technological revolutions and rising customer expectations to the intricacies of change management – in today’s fast-paced world, support teams face plenty of challenges. And when stakes are this high, leadership enablement isn’t just an advantage – it’s a necessity.

Ah, the age-old notion of the natural-born leader – a mythical creature that got its powers bestowed upon them at birth, gifted with unwavering charisma, intelligence, decisiveness, and a commanding presence that was immediately felt by the entirety of the maternity ward. We kid, of course. And we know by experience that yes, some people do seem to have a more innate ability to lead than others. But leadership skills aren’t solely the gift of genetics – they can definitely be taught, cultivated, and mastered over time.

Today’s guest, Hannah Steiman, is a firm believer in that. Hannah is the President and Chief Strategy Officer at Peak Support, a business process outsourcing (BPO) group that helps fast-growing companies provide an exceptional customer experience by taking customer service, technical support, and back office administration off their plate. And that means that a significant part of what they do is hire and train customer support teams as small as four or five agents and as large as 500.

“With the right process, you can create a solid foundation for the next generation of leaders to effectively guide their team through changes in the market”

Many in the customer service industry have learned things from the ground up, often with little to no formal training, advanced degrees, or an extensive leadership background. And so, it all comes back to training. With the right process, you can create a solid foundation for the next generation of leaders to effectively guide their team through changes in the market, balance the need for innovation with the requirement for consistency and reliability, and ultimately, deliver a stellar experience for customers.

In today’s episode, we sat down with Hannah to chat about leadership enablement and why it’s key for support teams in high-growth companies.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• In order to maintain an exceptional customer experience, support team leaders need to encourage proactivity, train and coach agents effectively, and promote team engagement.
• Good support leaders should have proactive thinking, set a clear vision for their teams to motivate them, open clear lines of communication, and promote ethical decision-making.
• Having the active participation of top leaders from the company in the training sessions helps engage and build relationships with the next generation of leaders.
• The best way to approach change within a support team is to get buy-in from key influencers, encourage transparent communication and feedback, and explain the reasoning behind it.
• Innovating while keeping consistency in support ops requires aligning these goals with the company’s mission and core values and involving employees in the change process.

If you enjoy our discussion, check out more episodes of our podcast. You can follow on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or grab the RSS feed in your player of choice. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the episode.

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Leading the way

Liam Geraghty: Hello and welcome to Inside Intercom. I’m Liam Geraghty. On today’s show, we’re joined by Hannah Steiman, President and Chief Strategy Officer at Peak Support. Peak Support is an outsourcing company that specializes in providing customer service teams for high-growth companies. Hannah, you’re very welcome to the show.

Hannah Steiman: Thank you so much, Liam. It is great to be here.

Liam: Let’s dive right into today’s topic. Why is effective leadership enablement crucial for support teams in high-growth companies?

“It’s one of the things I love about this industry – people are working from the ground up. And that means that, if you want your leaders to have training, they’ve got to get it from you”

Hannah: Customer support teams are often big. It could be the biggest team in the company, whether the company is large or small. So, as a BPO, we provide teams as large as 500 agents or more, but we also serve companies that have four or five customer service agents on their team. In those large companies, if they’re scaling, we might have to hire 10 leaders in a month. But the leadership needs on the smaller teams are sometimes just as important, or even more, because if you’re a five-person team, you’re a startup, you’re growing, you’re pivoting. Every day, you might be getting questions you haven’t seen before; every week or month, you could be pivoting; things keep changing. You need the right leadership to make sure your customer service team can adapt as you scale.

The other reason leadership training is particularly important for the customer experience and support industry is that a lot of folks come into this industry without even a college degree. So, most people are coming in without formal leadership training or experience at other companies. It’s one of the things I love about this industry – people are working from the ground up. And that means that, if you want your leaders to have training, they’ve got to get it from you.

“Agents have been taught to follow the rules. They get a rule book this big, they are taught to follow it and are punished if they deviate from it”

Liam: I love that. What are some of the common challenges that support team leaders face in maintaining that exceptional customer experience? How can leadership enablement address these challenges?

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. I think one big challenge is proactivity. Agents have been taught to follow the rules. They get a rule book this big, they are taught to follow it and are punished if they deviate from it. For us and our clients, we need people who are willing to raise their hands, think critically about the processes they’re being told to follow, and say, “Hey, you know what? I don’t think this makes sense. I think we can do something a little bit better.” That’s a big thing – training or, in some cases, retraining people to be proactive problem solvers. That’s what makes this role so valuable.

Another piece is the ongoing coaching of agents. Another great thing about support is you have so much data and customer feedback. You can say, “Hey, the agent slipped on this KPI this week; this agent has more DSATs.” But all of that data is worthless if you’re not actively using it to improve. So, it’s about training team leaders on how to identify performance challenges and coach agents effectively. What are effective ways of providing feedback?

The final thing I would say is engagement. Engaging teams. We think happy agents deliver the best results, but engaging and motivating a team is not necessarily a skill that comes naturally to everyone. And a lot of times, people have had really bad role models in the past. You can train new leaders on this: How do you motivate teams? How do you engage teams? What are the best practices?

Skills and strategies

Liam: You spoke about skills. What are some of the key skills and qualities that support team leaders should possess to lead their teams effectively?

“What is that north star that you are working towards as a leader so you can really be a role model for your team?”

Hannah: Yeah, that’s a great question. I should say that, fundamentally, we believe leadership can be taught. Leaders are made and not born. And research actually supports this. Research shows that most leadership skills can be learned and taught. Number one, and where we start our leadership training, is with proactive thinking. As I said before, leaders don’t say, “This is just the way it is.” Leaders say, “I have agency, and I can change this.” That’s what we want our leaders to do. We set that expectation upfront.

The second piece is setting a vision – setting that north star that the team can work toward. A lot of that starts with setting a vision for yourself. What is that north star that you are working towards as a leader so you can really be a role model for your team? The next piece would be motivating the team to work towards that vision. How do you make and execute a plan to actually get that done? How do you communicate clearly with your team? And then, the final piece is ethics. There are a lot of different ethical decisions that team members and managers face on a day-to-day basis. How do we tackle those decisions?

Liam: At Peak Support, how do you approach leadership development and enablement to make sure your support team leaders are well-prepared for their roles?

Hannah: There are a lot of great third-party programs out there. We have chosen, for now, to build our leadership training internally because leadership is so core to what we do. We sell teams of people, so we are only as strong as our line-level leaders. For us, it’s really important to be directly involved in how they’re trained. So, we have a two-day training that new leaders go through that covers all those topics.

We’ve also done it differently. We’ve experimented with it over the years. We used to do it as a session every two weeks, with reading to do ahead of time. So, there were eight sessions over four to six months. I think that works for a lot of companies. And we actually have our curriculum for that available entirely online if folks want to download it.

“A lot of C-level leaders would say, ‘Oh, that’s not my job. I don’t have time for that.’ But for us, engaging with the next generation of leaders is one of the most valuable things you can do with your time”

The problem for us was we needed to train so many people that a four to six-month training program just didn’t work. So, we’ve basically taken that and condensed it into two days. When there’s pre-work, folks are just kind of doing it as part of the program. That’s not our only training. We also have data analysis training, and there are additional communications exercises, but that’s the core of our leadership training program.

Liam: That’s great. Are there any examples of specific leadership development strategies or programs that you’ve seen to be particularly successful?

Hannah: Yeah, one thing we do that’s really successful that a lot of companies don’t is we have a lot of the top leaders from the company involved in the training. We used to have either myself or our CEO present in every one of those sessions. Now that it’s condensed, we’re working on a new approach that hopefully involves other senior leaders on the team. But I think that’s really important. A lot of C-level leaders would say, “Oh, that’s not my job. I don’t have time for that.” But for us, engaging with the next generation of leaders is one of the most valuable things you can do with your time. You’re training them, you’re teaching them, and you’re getting feedback from them. You’re building a relationship with them, so they know you and can come to you if they need. The approach to include senior-level leaders has been really effective for us.

Ch-ch-changes

Liam: We mentioned that we’re also going to chat a little about change management because it’s a topic that I don’t think is as explored as it should be, and it’s often a critical aspect of support operations. What strategies do you recommend for effectively managing change within a support team to maintain that service quality?

Hannah: We’re dealing with this all the time. We’ve got 50 clients, and there are always some going through some sort of change. We also had this internally – we transitioned a thousand contractors to employees. That was a massive internal change management challenge for us, and we learned a lot of lessons that we now try to apply every time we’re implementing change. One would be getting buy-in. Engaging key leaders and influencers first and getting their buy-in because they’re going to help get everyone else on board.

“Every chance we got, we talked about what we were doing, showing them how the sausage was made so they were brought along for the ride, always sharing the why”

Another, I would say, is feedback. We tend to be very transparent. For example, when our CFO, Danny, was leading this project, we were changing everyone’s pay structure. How people are getting paid is going to change, and they’re getting benefits, but taxes are being taken out of their paycheck, so it’s a big shift, and you got to get it right, or you risk losing a huge chunk of your team. And so, we would actually go to people and say, “Hey, here’s what we’re thinking of for pay structure. You can have more benefits, but there’s going to be a trade-off. Your base pay might be a little lower. Or, we could have your base pay right here, but we might be giving up some benefits here. How much do you value life insurance? How much do you value X, Y, Z?” We were very transparent. At first, our CFO, Danny, was like, “We can’t hold a focus group and ask people how much they want to get paid.” But that’s basically what we did, and we got a ton of really valuable feedback from that. And we got buy-in. So now, when we say, “Here’s what we’ve decided to do,” people feel like their voices were heard as part of that process.

The other piece is you can’t over-communicate. Every chance we got, we talked about what we were doing, showing them how the sausage was made so they were brought along for the ride, always sharing the why. This is something people forget. Saying, “Why are we doing this?” We’re doing this for our clients, we’re doing this for our team members who want to have benefits, and we’re doing this for our long-term stability as a company. And reinforcing that every single time. Even if you feel like you’ve said it a million times, you’ve got to say it again.

Liam: I love that. How do you balance the need for innovation and adaptation in support operations with the requirement for consistency and reliability in customer support?

“You have to make sure they’re involved in that change. You don’t just say, ‘Your job is different now, go’”

Hannah: Yeah, I think we really feel it’s not either/or – it’s both/and. You’ve got to innovate, and you have to be reliable. One of our core values is invest to grow. We’re always tying it back to our mission statement and core values. So, our mission is to empower our team to innovate and deliver beyond client expectations. Our mission is to innovate. Our mission is to deliver beyond expectations. And then our core values – invest to grow is one of them. Aim for wow is another one. Always tie things back to that. And you don’t just let your mission and core values sit on a shelf – you really talk about them. It is all part of that sharing why we’re doing this.

You don’t just spring a new innovation on your team and expect them to adapt immediately. You’ve also got to be doing all those things we talked about before – be transparent, get buy-in, share the why, and get feedback. You have to make sure they’re involved in that change. You don’t just say, “Your job is different now, go.” You’ve got to treat your employees like adults. Adults want to know why they’re doing something and want to have agency. Kids do too, actually. Human beings want to choose. They want to have agency. They want to feel like they’re doing something that makes sense.

Liam: Is it possible to keep those support team members and leaders adaptable to change while maintaining high-quality customer support? Are those things possible at the same time?

Hannah: Yeah, I think so. Absolutely. And I think it’s partly just reinforcing that need. “Hey, we’re going through this change, but in the meantime, we have to deliver because our goal is to adapt to the future.” The future’s not going to exist if we’re not delivering for our clients. Or, if you’re a company, the future’s not going to exist if we’re not delivering for our customers. So, I think it’s all of those elements. We’ve got to be motivating our team to do whatever it is we need them to do now at the same time as we’re preparing them for change.

Meeting customers where they’re at

Liam: Before we wrap up, I’d love to get your thoughts on AI and customer support.

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. A couple of years ago, we were trying to get some of our clients to adopt AI, and they were not interested, and now, a lot of them are interested, which is fantastic. Our approach is working with our clients. A lot of them are still hesitant, but for those who want it, we want to help them implement AI. We want it to work seamlessly with our team. We want to be a part of this change to make sure it’s working as optimally for our clients as possible.

“You need to do a lot of things to prepare. You can’t just turn the switch on a bot and expect it to work well”

Do they want to improve their existing chatbot or implement a new chatbot with generative AI? Are they more interested in backend deficiencies? Some clients are really wary about having a bot interface with their customers. So, we meet our clients where they’re at and work with them to implement a solution that’ll improve quality and efficiency.

You need to do a lot of things to prepare. You can’t just turn the switch on a bot and expect it to work well. It’s garbage in, garbage out. So, first of all, you have to make sure your whole platform is optimized – your knowledge base, macros, processes, and tags, all of that stuff has to be up-to-date. If that’s not really, really clean going in, your bot’s just not going to work. You’re going to have a dirty bot giving bad answers. So, optimizing first.

The other thing we suggest is to automate things you can on your existing platform before you add AI. Because typically, you might get charged per resolution, and a lot of that stuff, you can automate. Even existing platforms without AI have a lot of automation built in. And so we can work with optimizing a platform like Intercom, automating what can be automated before AI, and then implementing AI on top of it so we’re not overpaying for stuff we could have just done without AI in the first place.

Liam: Absolutely. And what’s next for Peak Support? Do you have any particular plans or projects coming up?

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. For us, this technology piece is huge. We want to be a full-solutions provider for CX. We want to be able to provide not just the people but the technology as well. So, we are partnering with platforms like Intercom that can help desk platforms and have AI capabilities, as well as other external tools that can provide voice-of-the-customer insights. We have a partner called Island, a secure browser that we use for all our remote agents.

“Our goal is to find all the best technology platforms out there, like Intercom, and partner with them”

We’re working on building partnerships with the best-in-class technologies out there so we can be experts in bringing those technologies to our clients. We are not a technology builder. Our goal is to find all the best technology platforms out there, like Intercom, and partner with them so we can help bring those to our clients to improve their customer experience and bring it to the next level.

Liam: I love that.

Hannah: Meanwhile, to your point about innovating while maintaining excellence, we’re focused on our core business, which is providing and hiring the best people. We hire one in every 30 applicants. So, we’re really finding the best people out there, training them, putting them on teams with great leaders, and then managing them to provide exceptional customer support. So it’s not either/or, it’s both. We’re doing both.

Liam: And lastly, where can people go to keep up with you and Peak Support?

Hannah: Yeah, absolutely. Come to our website, peaksupport.io. Follow me on LinkedIn. I post as often as I can on LinkedIn. I’m the only Hannah Steiman out there, so you can find me pretty easily. Connect with me, follow me, and reach out – I’m always happy to chat with support leaders.

Liam: Hannah, thank you so much for joining us today.

Hannah: Thank you, Liam. It’s an honor to be here. Thank you so much.