Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the Table Service podcast where we'll dish on all things support, success and beyond with the people and companies building the future of customer experience.
Table Service is presented by Tableau Consulting and I'm your host, Jordan Hooker. Andrew Rios is a global customer support leader who combines an energetic leadership style with a strong technical foundation and a deep understanding of customer experience, support and engineering operations.
As a technologist, runner, mentor, speaker, and experienced CX and technical support leader, Andrew brings 25 years of BPO and global experience in team building and resource management. He has successfully led, developed and worked with individuals and teams in diverse environments and roles ranging from startups to Fortune 100 companies such as Turntide Technologies, Fitbit, Cisco and Megapath Networks. Andrew is known for inspiring and developing others through his leadership by example, creating developmental opportunities that foster leadership development while driving business value.
Outside of customer experience, Andrew enjoys coaching his son's youth soccer and football teams, getting lost in a good book, and time at the beach with his family. Andrew, welcome to the table.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Hey, Jordan. Happy to be here. Excited to pull up a chair today?
[00:01:14] Speaker A: Absolutely. So glad to have you here. Well, for our listeners who may not be familiar with you, I would love if you just tell us a little bit about yourself. Let's hear the story.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I guess. Location. I'm a California native, born in San Francisco, but relocated to Southern California once I realized how great the weather was down here. You know, been fortunate enough to be a techie my whole career. I think my first boss ever, my first job assignment, and my first job was, oh, you want a computer at your desk? Go ahead and build one. So that's kind of what put me on my path into customer experience, customer service and support. And I think, you know, I have to call this the third chapter kind of in my career. And one of the things you mentioned there that I'm really enjoying doing is coaching, coaching those kids out there, coaching those youth. So coaching youth soccer, youth football, youth basketball, and, you know, currently reading Madhouse at the End of the Earth, which is based on a true story of a Belgium boat that takes a tour to the Antarctic to make some history. So I'm excited about that.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: I know that we've got a few different topics and things we can talk about, and I think that the first one I'd like to dig into is just thinking about the thought of what it looks like to build a team. And one of the things that you've got a lot of experience with is building teams from scratch versus what do you do when you Rebuild building a team. You're a brand new manager that comes into a team that perhaps is in a little bit of disarray from the previous leader or from just lack of leadership generally, or a brand new role. For instance, I've seen companies that, you know, we're bringing in a new senior CX leader, whereas previously we didn't have somebody in the position. Would love to hear your thoughts on the differences of those experiences and what support leaders can do to ensure success.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. One of the differences, you know, through my experience that I've, that I've come to realize is the time it takes, it takes to make change.
Right. And the time it takes to understand the current state. So when the new company you're going in, employee, you know, number 20, but the first customer service hire, the current state is, you know, us. As you're going to ask is how's, how's the product, how's the service? Who are we marketing to? Who are those Personas? Kind of from the support perspective, what's going to be my, my arrival pattern? What's that volume look like? You know, potentially that hard umbrella first. I think when you're going in to kind of rebuild a team, an existing team already, it's still understanding the current state, but now you're understanding the current state of the workload of the individual, the current state of kind of what their mission and ambition was when they joined the team, joined the company, the current state of the environment and everything I talked about earlier, but then where we're going next. And I think one of those questions is that you kind of want to ask yourself as a leader in that position is is everybody in the right position at the table to maximize their strengths? Right. And then as a whole kind of where are our opportunities for improvement? Right. Start to sunshine those moments of okay, as a team in the next 60 days, we really need to strengthen this muscle. Right. But in the meantime we're going to continue to develop this muscle. And that's like, you know, people, service and the, and the product that you're supporting. Right. So those are the kind of main differences is assessing and then understanding the timeline of change and what that first change looks like.
[00:04:20] Speaker A: I'm curious too in your thoughts and both of those places, one of the key things that's going to come up is we need to build trust, especially with a team that you are potentially inheriting versus a team you might be building yourself. So how do you think a leader can go about ensuring that trust gets built from early on in Those environments.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: Jordan, I love that question. I'm going to speak from some recent experience and maybe share a little bit of vulnerability and amiss. Even after 25 years, we don't always have the answers.
Trust takes a long time to build. And trust is about really listening and understanding and putting aside, you know, previous pro tips or previous things that you've seen work.
Right? And really listening to the folks that are in the situation right now that you've just walked into and really taking the time. So I always say, and it. And it takes longer each time to build that trust as you move from one organization to another.
So where it may have taken you in a previous opportunity, previous chapter, oh, it took 30, 45 days and we were off and running. And another opportunity based on the dynamic, the environment, the people, the situation. Right. The climate, it could take longer.
And as leaders, that might be. And speaking for myself, that might come as a, as a shock, as a wall, like, wait, hold on, this has always worked. Why is this not working now? And that's where we gotta step back, recalibrate, and really start asking some why questions of yourself. And that's kind of what I found myself doing recently, asking why questions? Why isn't this working? Why should I do something differently? And what is that? Something else? And then I think the other thing, Jordan, is when you're in that situation and you're looking to. To build that trust in new situations, go back to your community and look for people that have experienced that with you and share that with them and get some ideas from the folks in the community about how to continue to build that trust. And I think that one of the things that I've always seen be successful and I always do is share stories, right? Share stories of the vulnerability and the Mrs. That you've had in your career that are relatable to folks in the team.
Right? Share that. The frustration that you have with this process you're working on. Hey, hey, Jordan. I have that same frustration, but let me tell you kind of what I'm working through, and I'd love to hear your ideas on what you think we could do better. So, you know, if I go back in time and I could redo something, I would probably come in with a lot more questions and give myself a lot more Runway to really just understand, listen. Because as a new leader coming in, we have to remember, sometimes as personable as you think you are, as open, as vulnerable, as candid, as transparent, there's still humans that have a new boss that, that are reluctant to Maybe share everything right away. Not everybody's going to come like Andrew and just start talking and talking and sharing and we have to remember that. So we have to create those environments and, and they're all going to be different for each individual and the team as a whole. So listening and listening to understand, I would say listening to really understand and put aside your perceived notions.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: So let's have you put on your coach hat here for a little bit and think about some different scenarios and places like that. Let's say you're a new leader that stepped into a role, taking over a team, you're working with that team, you've built that trust, you've taken the time, things are moving smoothly, but you do have perhaps one or two folks who are really struggling in their roles. I'm curious what your thoughts as someone. Let's say you've been in the organization for 90 days and this person perhaps has been there for much longer than you've been there. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you could effectively coach that person to better performance. A different role. What, what would that look like in, in your framework?
[00:08:05] Speaker B: So first, you know, I want to think that, I want to hope and expect that all the leaders in that position are kind of that mindset of no surprises.
So there are, you know, you're having a weekly communication cadence, a one on one. So there's a, there's a standard cadence of communicating with that team member.
I think through that assessment as you start to see like, man, we're, we're not really making headway or they're not moving the direction or there seems to be some friction or some wall between us. What I found to be the most successful, and it might sound as basic and as cliche as it might sound, is one or two examples of things that the individual is knocking out of the park. And you can tell they enjoy doing.
I can see you enjoy doing this. When you do this, your eyes light up, you're typing differently. Here you go. And then identify those one or two things that you can tell. We know they don't like doing it and then ask why. Because that could be the area where they're not performing or not making that change or you're not seeing them get on board and row the boat a little faster. Then sit down in that standard one on. You know, I like to do them outside, right? I like to do them with no distractions and just ask the candid question, hey, I noticed this. And I like to start those conversations by saying, please Stop me. If my assessment is wrong or what I'm saying is completely way off, I want you to stop me. But I'm usually then going to come and say, hey, I noticed that when you're talking to customers about service availability and when we're going to be in their city, the energy that you're, what you speak with, the passion is awesome. But when I hear you talking to customers about troubleshooting and tech support, you know, you're not, you know, not as excited, not as passionate. So I try to frame it in those ways. Not that you're not delivering that there's something there that you don't like. Can you tell me? And I like to just open the door like that. True, you know, true open, kimono style and say, just tell me, tell me. Because if I know, you know, I can help and I'll know what to help more of and then be vulnerable. Say right now, hey, I'm struggling a little bit. I'm not really sure. And I don't want to assume. I do not want to assume. So, Jordan, please let me know. Please tell me and have that conversation. Conversation like that, eye to eye, no distractions, and be really empathetic about it, right? And listen to them. Once they start going, just let them go. And even when they pause, pause with them. This is something I recently did in the conversation. You might want me to say something, and if I take the mic, I'm gonna take it. And here we go. But no, this is not what this is about.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: So pause. And I found that to be successful because it becomes, and, you know, something I was thinking about or hey, do you mind if I share this?
And there you go. And what I always like to do in those conversations, especially when they're going to get really, you know, courageous, is remind them, this is a safe space. This is a safe space. And I think you have to live and say that, too. They have to hear when you say this is a safe space.
They're in their mind. They got to hear that story you told them about your failure, about when you were fired, or about when you had to fire someone, or about when you were laid off, or about when you had a manager or when you were learning a new skill. Hopefully those stories continue to resonate as you're going through that conversation. And I found that to be successful, people will then share. I'm not going to ever say too much because as support leaders, we sign up for that. We sign up to hear everything. But then they'll start to share those Things that will help you understand.
Ah, that's why there's a previous experience that you haven't overcome yet, or you didn't want to show this as a weakness because you thought it would make you look not as competent as the other team members, and you start to dive in. Or.
And I'll share this from personal experience, and I've always shared this story with folks, is you're going through something pretty traumatic in your personal life.
Okay, I get it. And that's something that 15 years ago I went through, and I take that story with me. So remember that, too. People have a life outside of work, so understand.
[00:12:00] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I think for so many years, there's been this mentality of you should leave your life at the door when you come into the office to work. Or in most of our cases now, you come into whatever room you happen to do your work from if you work remotely. But I found over the years, particularly in support roles, where we are dealing with challenging things day in and day out, in no way suggesting that other roles in a company are not challenging and they don't have things that they're dealing with day in, day out, but customers, sports, hard. It's a. It's a place where you sit all day and sometimes you talk to somebody really nice. Some days you talk to 20 people, and not a single one of them is nice. They're all angry. They're all frustrated.
So learning to let people know that, gosh, you know, it is okay to come tell me that you've got something going on. You don't even necessarily have to give me the details. Just, I've got something going on in my life and I need to step away. Or that's why this last week I was really struggling and creating an environment where that's. That's acceptable to share. Not only acceptable, but encouraged to share, I think is a really critical piece of leadership that I think we often miss, particularly as young support leaders. I think it's easy to miss. Miss that piece.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Absolutely. Jordan. And something that I'll kind of bridge from your earlier question is that it's a chess game as well. So as you build trust with your team members, which what you're hoping as a leader is one of them is going to quickly trust you, and then they're going to start talking to the other team members about your conversations. Right. I always tell people in a call center there are no secrets. Right. So you want to build that brand of, hey, when I talk to Rios, I Shared A, B and C. And he didn't judge me on it. He looked me in my eye. He shared a story about, about his failure, which was, you know, hopefully they're like, wow. And then what happens is you'll start to see. And that kind of goes back to earlier. It takes a little bit longer when you're rebuilding and assessing because there's tribal thoughts in there as well. There might be little clicks in there as well in the team. So you kind of just got to go in and say, okay, who are going to be my, my cheerleaders, my champions? And you just, we never know who that is. But you're hoping and banking on once that happens and those relationships start to begin, they'll start to talk to each other. And I say this from experience, then over time, next thing you know, that other person will come to you and say, hey, can I talk to you about something? Brios. Yeah, yeah, please. And then they'll start sharing. Hey, you know, I'm really struggling in this area personally and I'm looking for some help. And you told a story in our team meeting last week that really resonated with me. Can, can I ask you for, for some thoughts about that, that and this. I'll say this too. That is sometimes not going to be work related.
It's going to be personal. It's going to be something going on. That, because they come and you cannot check your personal life at the door. Those, those, they're like this now. And it's about balance. Right? Balance and intention.
Right.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: So yeah, for sure.
Kind of thinking still with that, that coaching hat. I'm curious your thoughts on, on particularly young support leaders or managers in general. This isn't necessarily have to focus just on support who have had some level of failure early on managing in their career. I know for me, my, my first management role, I was made a manager because I was really passionate about customer support.
I was also knocking out the highest volume of anybody on the team. And then my manager left to do something else and I was promoted to manager.
I had no idea what I was doing. I got no training and no development. And so I spent about a year and a half really fumbling my way through that and doing a really poor job. 9 Very gracious, kind people who were working with me at that time that I know the experience was challenging for them. I'd love to hear your thoughts to a, to a young support leader or young manager in that case who has had that failure but still wants to continue on a path of management and Developing people. What would you say to that person coming out of that first failure and thinking about what's next?
[00:16:04] Speaker B: Embrace it, learn it and make that your anchor story, right? Make that your anchor story. And when I say learn and embrace it, I mean really be reflective of why. Why did you miss? Why did you fail? What happened? There's going to be part of it that's experience, right? You didn't have the experience. And one of those things I always say is a RIOS cliche is like the thing about experience is you get it after you want it, but before you need it. It kind of just works that way. In my case, my first manager role, right, I failed because I tried to tell everyone what to do and I was managing 25 people, all older than me.
Similar to your kind of story there. I was recruited over from a previous company because I was a great dedicated support resource for that isp. They brought me over, they said, come run our support team, which was a remote team, a field team, support engineers, help, desk, internal it. And I thought, well, I'm technical, people listen to me, I'm going to go in, I'm just going to tell them, tell them what to do and how to do it because that's how I did in the past. Epic failure there, epic failures. And here was my biggest takeaway that I would tell that new manager is listen more and learn more as you're a first time manager. And every time from there on out, then you teach coach lead, right? Because there's that saying that, you know, nobody's going to care about how much experience you might have unless they know and believe in how much you care about them, right? So going in and understanding who they are, what their role is, what they do, listening to them, right? First time manager, just go in and listen and then take lots of notes and what I like to say, set up your communication cadence and compass right away, right? In those earlier days, I had no communication strategy compass at all. It was, I'm gonna just walk around or maybe I won't walk around or maybe I'll have you come to my desk. Nothing written, just talking. So no actions.
And then establish early on, as a first time manager, a single source of truth, a single source of truth for your team to go get the information they need to do their job as, as well as communicate within each other, right? Another thing I, I missed on earlier, one person was emailing me. Someone else would write word docs, someone else would write on a paper and drop it on my desk. So I had all kind of things. And I thought I could manage all of that. So communication, cadence, and compass. Listen and learn from those people who are doing the job, because that same concept will take you through your career and make you successful, which is they're the experts.
Right. You're hoping to be the expert in leadership and guidance and coaching and moving and bringing out their strengths. Right. Working a little bit on their weaknesses, building a great team that's collaborative. Right. And fits well together.
That's kind of my early advice right there.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: Thanks for sharing that. I think that that is such a key thing to think about.
Making that your anchor story, I think, is such an incredible thought. And for me, I often go back to that first story when I think about how I manage now. You know, seven companies later and eight teams later. Like how how I manage is very directly related to how did not manage in that first role and learning what it looks like to. To never forget that. I think that's also one of the challenges. To never forget how challenging that was for me and how hard that was for me and how hard it must have been for the nine people that reported to me in that season. I don't to want. I don't ever want to feel that way, and I don't want people who report to me to ever feel that way. So it's definitely a key, key anchor story for me in that regard.
Well, just thinking a little bit more around communication. I'd love to hear some thoughts just in terms of teams generally. Like, how do you find it's best to communicate with your team, small or large? I mean, we're talking for me right now, I have a team of five. It's pretty easy to communicate a lot of information to five people. But let's say you got a team of 25. What are the best ways as a leader to ensure you're communicating in a way where nobody feels left out, where you're ensuring that the information is heard and understood and then you're able to hold everyone accountable. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how to go about that level of communication.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And it's about communicating the right things in the right moments, in the right places, with the right cadence. So I say it like this. I like to think that, you know, as a support leader, we. I'm go back to that single source of truth. So that's home base. Single source of truth is your home base. Right. Then there's three kind of written styles that I believe have to happen within the team at some sort of cadence. And that's one kind of a weekly report or bi weekly report I'm not into. You have to do it weekly. I have to do a bi weekly. But something where a team, where your team members take 15 minutes and write up highs and lows of the week, ticket win of the week, whatever it is that you want to hear from that group of team members. One of the structures I usually use is just answer three questions for me. What went great this week, what could have gone better this week and next week, what are going to be your priorities? Right? So the weekly report or the bi weekly report.
I also believe in a team meeting, a whole team meeting or a staff meeting, you know, 20 people team meeting. Whether that's bi weekly, monthly, at the right cadence, at the right time. Also these evolve. So where it might be a weekly, weekly report, it could turn into a bi weekly. The team meeting could turn in from monthly to bi weekly as well. So that can evolve and be ready to open up that. The key with the team meeting though is consistency with agenda. So, hey, as a team, we know what we're going to talk about, right? So the framework, there's maybe some free time, there's maybe, hey, project updates, there's maybe individual updates, there's maybe updates for me that go through. So we know in this meeting what we're going to cover. And those are the things that we all need to know as a team and are usually things that you've been talking about with your team members throughout the week, throughout the two weeks hearing in their weekly report. So it's just another reminder, a summary, you know, a bow on the, on the box. Then the third written form of communication I believe in, and this is, is for the team as well as your partners in the organization, is a support report that goes out to the company, available to the company. Right.
Passively, as well as where they can just, you know, go get it, whether it's in a team's channel, an email or whatnot. And that goes over, here's what we're doing in support. Here's how support looked. And it's not about graphs and charts of metrics and KPIs that should be a part of it, but it should be the story of support that week or that month. Hey, this is what happened. And here's what it means to you, marketing. Here's what it means to you, product development. Here's what it means to you, sales. So those are the three written pieces and between that, those are the stories of what's happening in Support and answers the questions, how are we doing? How, how are we measuring ourselves and how are we performing that? How are we servicing and supporting the customer? And then how's my team doing? Because all that is meant to say, yes, we're the support team, but here's who we are. We're Jordan, we're Rios, you know, we're Kim, we're Stephanie. That is what those three things mean. And then I'll say this then, then there's also the meetings. Right, the meetings. And I want to say that staying communicative with your key partners in the organization, someone in product, someone in engineering, and then bringing them in to the team meeting once in a while to be like a guest speaker or to just answer and listen to some questions. That right there, I kind of relate, that is to, you know, my communication compass for leaders. If you do those things consistently, regularly, continue to build on them and make sure that everybody knows this is their communication. Right. It's everybody's communication in there. Then for the most part, you'll be doing all right, keeping everybody moving in the right direction. And if people forget where to go get an answer to a question, you can remind them, oh, the single source of truth, that process document or that folder. And then what's also key is give people more time to talk than you talk. And make that clear as the expectation in those meetings, in those presentations, you know, in the time that you guys are communicating.
[00:24:12] Speaker A: Yeah, think of that. That piece, I think is so key.
Still going back to being a really young support leader and thinking, you know, I get into a one on one, I get into a team meeting, I've got to be prepared to talk for 30 minutes. Well, not really. I probably should be prepared to talk for maybe 10, and then they've got the other 20, maybe it's even less. And I found, and I think you found in your experience, that element of realizing that we've got one mouth and two ears, that definitely changes the way that we, we lead our teams.
[00:24:43] Speaker B: Absolutely. To go back to your earlier question too, when go into a new team, setting the expectations, hey, as this weekly meeting, bi weekly meeting evolves, sure, I might start talking the most at first, but every week that cup should get less and less and less because this is your meeting, hence the agenda. And I always like to put out and say, hey, there's the agenda, here's our topics. I'm going to put something up, one or two things to go over. And I always share this too. In this meeting team, when I come and share Things here, they're learning experiences or they're those managerial things. I got to tell you, hey, time cards or it's time for open enrollment or don't forget to sign up for your 401k or we're going to have tacos on Friday kind of those things. But I want you all to come here and celebrate those wins. Right? This is eventually what it'll be. So setting that expectation that this is your meeting, you do all the talking, bring me the problems and challenges and let's work on them together and let's celebrate those wins together. Together as well.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Andrew, as we bring this conversation to a close, I'd love to just take a few minutes for any closing thoughts you may have for our listeners related to this or any topic you'd like to share on.
[00:25:52] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, I would say be, be brave. Be brave, support leaders, be brave. Remember, we don't know all the answers. Right. Our, our job is, is to go out and bring the best out of people.
Right. And I think, remember, don't forget your front line days. Right. And I think what I'll say is as support leaders, we do wear many hats. And for a support, I'll go, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put a bow. Great question, Jordan. To the first question you asked to those early support leaders starting out, right. And don't be afraid to ask yourself that question.
Do I really want to be a support leader based on everything that it means in an organization to the team? And I always say that, remember, as a support leader in a support team, we are dealing with all of the decisions or non decisions that are made in the company. They're manifested in our team. And we have a great opportunity to bubble those up and share that feedback to potentially drive change.
So I'll tell those early support leaders ask that first question, do I really want to do this and have these conversations.
And if you do, then you have a great opportunity and a tremendous opportunity to impact and drive change. And I'll say more importantly, after, you know, 25 plus years of doing this, you have an opportunity. And I speak for myself and I know, Jordan, you've done this too, is to watch other people grow and propel them in their career. And I think as a support leader, that that's the greatest thing that I think I've ever done is watch people move from thank you, can you reset your router to running programs to doing coding to becoming VPs of other organizations. You know, I think that that's what I would say great opportunity, great career, go do it.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: Love it. I think that's a fabulous bow to put on top of that. And that particular that thought of the highest thing we'll ever experience as leaders generally is when you see the people that you have been leading become leaders themselves. That is a key, key thing in all aspects of leadership. So thanks for sharing that with us. Well, Andrew, if anybody wanted to connect with you, hear more from you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?
[00:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. I like to post about my my youth soccer journey and youth sporting and maybe share a few pro tips with those customer support experience leaders out there. I'm happy to connect. Would love to connect.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: Awesome. Sounds great. I'll make sure to include a link to your LinkedIn down in the show notes below for our listeners if they'd like to connect with you. But Andrew, thanks so much for joining.
[00:28:22] Speaker B: Us here at the thank you so much, Jordan. Have a great day. It's been an honor.
[00:28:25] Speaker A: Yeah, you as well. Thank you so much.
You've been listening to the Table Service Podcast. You can find out more about today's guest in the show notes below.
The Table Service Podcast is presented by Tavalo Consulting, hosted by Jordan Hooker, music by Epidemic Sound.
