{"id":11178,"date":"2023-03-09T10:00:28","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T10:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.intercom.com\/?p=11178"},"modified":"2025-02-12T17:58:33","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T17:58:33","slug":"keeping-and-growing-great-customer-support-talent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/keeping-and-growing-great-customer-support-talent\/","title":{"rendered":"How to keep and nurture customer service talent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Imagine a customer service\u00a0team with high turnover and low tenure across the board.<\/p>\n

Your customers will only ever speak to people who haven\u2019t had the necessary time or mentorship to become experts. They\u2019ll receive continuous poor service, become frustrated, and \u2013 despite your great product \u2013 churn.<\/p>\n

Then consider employee morale in an environment void of solid team foundations or successful role models. Unhappy teammates are less productive and the circle of a poor customer experience continues. Why do many support teams fall victim to this cycle? They fail to provide a promising career path to those that join.<\/p>\n

Support at Intercom isn\u2019t a career stop gap. It can be a stepping stone to other departments or roles for those who want that, but we\u2019ve built a team that nurtures customer service talent \u2013 and where a long and successful career can be fostered within support. Many teams provide limited progression (agent \u2192 supervisor \u2192 ceiling) and experience high turnover, which leads to poor support. Here\u2019s what we’ve done at Intercom to ensure Customer Support is a team where people can grow, develop, and be really proud of their work.<\/p>\n

1. Create a plan to develop and nurture customer service talent<\/h2>\n

During their first few months, we expect all Support teammates to become product experts and customer conversation ninjas, focusing on little else. Once a teammate is nailing the day job, we gradually involve them in other tasks. Some build internal tools for front-line teams. Others write blog posts<\/a>, create educational content, and mentor and onboard other Intercomrades<\/a>. This gives them a taste of people management, a voice in the direction of the team, and helps them understand how and why we hire who we do.<\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span><\/i>Ultimately, we try to find the balance between helping teammates expand their skills while maintaining focus on our customers\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a small global team of five at the beginning of 2015, everyone did a bit of everything. But as we grew, things became more disorganized. There were too many cooks in the kitchen for some tasks. Others would stagnate with little to no attention. So we launched a project to define and assign Areas of Responsibility<\/a> (AoR), which gives teammates autonomy, ownership, and full control of their AoR.<\/p>\n

Frontline support isn\u2019t something to be escaped from; helping others solve hard problems is a valuable skill, and it\u2019s fun! Ultimately, we try to find the balance between helping teammates expand their skills while maintaining focus on our customers.<\/p>\n

2. Define customer service success and progression paths<\/h2>\n

Developing teammates\u2019 skill sets is all well and good, but you need to provide roles to put them to use. When our team was very small, it was made up of Support Representatives, Support Engineers, and Support Leads. As we got bigger, and teammates became more tenured and skilled, we had to start defining career paths while allowing people to shape their own progression.<\/p>\n

Ensure people management is not the only progression path<\/h3>\n

We\u2019ve moved people to lead positions, which is primarily people management and team leadership. But one of the most important things to consider when developing people is to ensure that people management is not the only progression path. So many support departments promote good reps and engineers to management as there’s nowhere else to go. Having amazing CSAT<\/a> doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019ll be a good people manager. Likewise, you may not be the most technical person<\/a> but you could be a fantastic leader.<\/p>\n

We were careful not to create roles for the sake of holding on to teammates, but we also saw gaps in what we needed and filled new positions with the right people. Early on we experimented with a Senior Support Representative role, which was customer-facing but heavy on process implementation. It simply pulled these folks in two very demanding directions, so instead we built a focused Customer Service Operations<\/a> team. We transitioned some team members there and reconsidered what a Senior Support Representative or Senior Support Engineer really should be.<\/p>\n

\"Nurture<\/p>\n

The key to our new structure is focus:<\/p>\n