Let them grow or watch them go

This article was originally published in Top-Tier Support, Front’s Head of Support Kenji Hayward’s LinkedIn newsletter for customer service leaders. For more frontline advice and actionable insights, subscribe today to get them delivered to your inbox every other week.

You know that moment when you see one of your direct reports really thrive at something in their job? Maybe they get really excited about troubleshooting a highly technical problem. Or maybe they got your entire support onboarding program off the ground.

Over time, they become your go-to person for specific projects. Sometimes even beating you to the punch to raise their hand at opportunities that pique their interest. I think it’s important for managers to play to their report’s strengths — you never know if even your smallest gesture of encouragement can be life changing (as cheesy as it sounds, it’s true!).

This advice holds true for support leads too. They can help spot members of the team who might not be as vocal about their passion and foster their curiosity with enjoyable projects.

Support has highly transferable skills

I know support agents often feel “stuck” as they knock down the queue, day in and day out. Support roles often get a bad rap for being a thankless job, but at least from my experience at Front, this couldn’t be farther from the truth (helps that we have really awesome customers).

That’s why I feel strongly about paving the path for my team to feel fulfilled in their roles — even if it means leaving support. We recently built out our support operations team, internally promoting tenured customer support specialists to Support Operations Analyst (Lemuel Chan), Senior Support Program Specialist (Karen Nguyen) and Support Operations Developer (Jason Dugdale). We promoted leaders like Cori Morris to Senior Customer Support Manager and Anthony Galleran to Technical Support Manager.

But I think what’s been really awesome to advocate for is a term I heard from Katie Klinzing at Support Driven’s Leadership Summit earlier this month: positive attrition. While positive attrition could mean an underperformer leaving to the org’s benefit, I’m focusing on those who are promoted and why it’s a good thing. Here’s what that looked like for my team over the last few years:

Joel Okoigun → Solutions Architect

Helena Li, M.Ed. → Product Education and Community Lead

Patrick Lago → Solutions Engineering

Jessye Levy → Product Education Manager

Andrew James → Technical Support Engineer

Dean Gallagher → Solutions Growth Specialist

Shree Mundra → IT, Help Desk Engineer

I’m proud to see the foundational product knowledge and technical expertise they gained from being in support serve them well in their new roles. It cements their approach in creating custom automated workflows for customers as a part of the Solutions team. It guides them when structuring Front Academy learning paths as the Product Education team.

But the top transferable skill is definitely customer empathy. Empathy shows up when they’re troubleshooting a technical problem and translating it back to the customer (internal or external) in relatable terms. Empathy grounds their assistance when a customer reaches out in Front Community. Empathy is the root of understanding the kinds of problems the customers are trying to solve and exploring various solutions on consult calls. These support alumni have formed incredible customer relationships, spearheaded impactful initiatives, and best of all, they’re having fun doing it.

Setting your team up for success

To be a great manager who fosters professional growth, you have to be a catalyst. Help your reports network. Build allies in other parts of the org. Introduce them to the managers of the team they’re interested in joining. Set up shadowing opportunities for them to join their calls to help them get a feel of what that role is like. Keep the support alumni network active to coach future hopefuls.

Don’t forget to bring the success stories back to your support team. I like to encourage that this is a path that anyone on my team can take. That’s where having transparent and open dialogue with managers helps support agents explore their interests. Bringing awareness to internal mobility within the org with real employees who’ve made that journey invites more discussion.

We even got a little creative about it. This year I kicked off Support Alumni Chats, which is where I invite the support team to watch a live 30-min interview of a former support agent and their career journey beyond support. There’s time for a Q&A at the end, and it’s just another great way to continue the conversation about growth.

Do I have regrets helping my team grow into other roles? Not even for a second. I’d much rather see them happy and excelling in another part of Front. Feels like wins all-around to me.

More tools for your support team

• Speaking of Helena, did you catch her interview with me about building Front’s support culture? Give it a listen!

• Sarah Caminiti has a great Epochal Growth podcast episode about Future-Proofing your Career with Kel Kurekgi