We're back with Val Liberty from Balsamic, talking about having interactions with hard customers. You know...those people you can never please. One way to combat the burnout of dealing with terrible customers over and over, Balsamiq has created a culture of trust and boundaries in their employees to empower them even in the worst of circumstances. It's worth a listen just to hear how they de-escalate and diffuse and send people off with a smile.

Sarah has a great conversation with Stephanie Lundberg from Abstract about the opportunities in the customer experience world. There are helpful insights about growth from support to product. Stephanie shares her own experience exploring the two paths of support, the leadership, and technical side, and speaks of the importance of all teams working together in a company.

Sarah sits down with Carter Gibson, an internal community manager at Google. They discuss what a community manager does, the importance of a strong community in a company, and fostering a strong culture. The two have a wonderful conversation about cultivating a strong community with consistency and transparency at the largest tech company in the world.

Sarah speaks with Mike from Trello about having difficult conversations with customers. The two chat about the fine line between customer advocacy and company loyalty. Mike provides insight on dealing with pushback, building up trust with customers and your team, and understanding the importance of team policies, especially with larger teams.

Sarah sits down to talk with Lance Conzett from Uber. The two discuss customer support as a great resource to learn how the customers interact with a company’s product and services and how that translates to working in all departments. Lance shares excellent stories from going through a massive merger that Uber went through in 2020.

Sarah speaks with Matt Patterson from Help Scout about making customer support better for not only the customer but also for the support specialists. Matt and Sarah discuss customer-centric mindsets for companies and their products. The two share thoughts on building the right team with effective recruiting and avoiding the pitfalls of building a team.

Sarah speaks with Natalie from Plaid about personal and professional growth, going from an independent contributor to a manager. Natalie is building a consumer-facing team at a new company and shares some insights on the trajectory of building a career in support, looking to future projects at a company, and the importance of knowing your team and their goals.

You know Wistia, right? We love Wistia. They haven't even paid us to say this, in fact WE pay THEM to be friends. That kind of raving loyalty from customers comes from having a healthy relationship with those customers, and we all know healthy relationships have firm boundaries. But what does that look like? What does it mean to set boundaries for customer support? What's that weird sound, by the way? Yeah, sorry, audio quirks are weird in this episode, but it's a great conversation you can use to set your own boundaries for your own CX teams.

We can't tell you how needed this talk with Val from Balsamiq was. Uplifting, funny, positive, empathetic - all those things we all need in one big conversation about life, careers in CX, and bad customers. We had so much to say it turned into a 2-part episode! Let's start with talking about finding your peace at work, even if you hate it.

What is customer success? I have no idea. Too many companies use the term for too many things, and most of them are doing it wrong. Our dear friend Rick at Linode is actually doing it right by defining clearly the structure of customer success for their team and refining it to better serve their customers. Sounds easy, right? Hmmmmm, is it?