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 [email protected] 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/

Evidence that Australia loves Tina Turner, and how new technology may prove Tina wrong - in that support teams may actually need another hero.

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.