We sit down with Alexandria Shrader, the Support Lead at Slite. Alexandria is a knowledge management expert with over a decade of experience in tech support. Alex explains the importance of customer centricity and the “red flags” that indicate when a company is not taking it seriously. She emphasizes the need for the support team to actively use customer feedback to inform product decisions and to feel empowered to be the champions of the customers. Alexandria also talks about the challenges of having one person write the knowledge base and suggests that it is the wrong approach.

Alex and Devon are discussing the importance of customer support and how it should be treated. She shares her experience from working in software as a service and tech support, and explains how data can be used to show that supporting customers while in freemium can lead to retention. They both agree that support should be given the respect it deserves.

The conversation between Alex and Devon focused on the importance of internal knowledge bases for companies and how to encourage employees to contribute and utilize them effectively. Internal knowledge bases can help to address distributed knowledge issues in an organization, such as what teams do, and what they know. Alex suggested that companies should go into creating a knowledge base with the mentality of encouraging everyone in the company to contribute and keep the content up to date, as the product can change quickly. She also suggested having a knowledge manager and empowering everyone to write policies and keep the documents fresh. Lastly, she warned against the idea of only having one person maintaining everything.

Alex and Devon discuss how knowledge management can be used to enhance the customer experience. Alex discussed how at her company Slite, they use an all-hands support framework where everyone in the company, even the CEO, has traditionally done support shifts every week. Overall, it was clear that knowledge management plays an important role in ensuring a great customer experience.

Timestamps

00:03:00 Exploring the Impact of Customer Experience on Retention and Revenue

00:04:00 The Benefits of Internal Knowledge Bases and Encouraging Employee Contributions

00:08:00 Conversation on Enhancing Customer Experience Through Knowledge Management

00:10:00 Fact or Fiction Segment

00:17:00 Exploring Slite's AI Assistant Feature, "Ask"

00:20:00 Conversation on Empowering Support Teams and Replacing Weekly All Hands with Written Updates

00:21:00 Experiments in Collaboration: Exploring New Features and Cutting What Doesn't Work

00:26:00 Conversation on CX Trends and Documentation Challenges in Rapidly Growing Startups