Why everyone — from sales reps to C-suite — should hop in the support queue

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.

I still remember the day I heard Alfred Lin speak at one of Front’s Lunch ‘n’ Learns back in 2018. As the former COO of Zappos and now partner at Sequoia Capital, Alfred talked about Zappos’ customer-centric culture. One thing that stood out to me was every Zappos employee does a rotation in customer service, regardless of job title.

The idea was so cool — I had to shake Alfred’s hand after his talk and find out how I can do something similar at Front. Several iterations later, we landed on Hop in the Support Queue. It’s where Front employees (aka Fronteers) help respond to customer inquiries with a support agent by their side — virtually or in-person — to coach them through the process. Right now, Hop in the Support Queue is a requirement for onboarding new hires, but we also host sessions roughly once a week (shout out to Phoebe Killick for launching and rolling out the program).

The feedback has been incredibly positive with a kudos from our new CEO Dan O’Connell:

I think it’s really important to get your entire company to care about customer support — especially at the leadership level. The top-down effect really does work: after Dan talked about his experience at an All Hands, we saw a spike in sign ups for Hop in the Support Queue. It really helps instill the customer-first mindset throughout the org by:

1. Bringing more visibility to customer challenges and their journey with your company from pre-sale through post-sale

2. Deepening empathy with the customer experience, e.g. what does it feel like to engage with your company?

3. Validating support as a revenue driver and not a cost center. All employees can become experts at solving customer problems — strengthening product knowledge across the company — to better anticipate customer needs and answer their questions with care

Hop in the Support Queue has opened so many doors for support to collaborate and engage with the wider org, like:

• Teaming up with our product and marketing departments to launch initiatives like Support Report (our public-facing support team metrics)

• Reinforcing support in company culture by baking programs like Hop in the Support Queue into onboarding, team offsites, and ongoing training

• Having a seat at the table with other teams when making decisions, e.g. when engineering wants product feedback, when product plans their roadmap, or when finance allots team budgets

• Establishing my team to be subject matter experts (SMEs) and reinforcing their confidence to diversify their passions and projects beyond the queue

• Connecting with other teams given that support is distributed. One of my favorite examples is how our relationship with customer success managers has evolved in resolving customer issues. We see fewer escalations and faster resolutions because they’ve learned to get the necessary context from the customer before handing them off to support.

If you want to hear more about how we built Front’s support culture, I had a nice chat with Helena Li, M.Ed., one of the original three support teammates I’ve worked with since first starting at Front over six years ago. Listen to our convo over at Front Community.

More tools for your support team

• Awesome quote I stumbled upon in the Support Driven community, shared by Nykki Yeager and Jared Call: "Culture and connections are an antidote to the burdens of support work.” 💯

• Curious to know how we built and rolled out our Hop in the Support Queue program? Check out our guide.