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. Ty Givens is the founder and CEO of CX Collective. After leading customer experience at See's Candies, Thrive Market and Shoedazzle, she launched her own consulting agency. Now nine years strong at CX Collective, Ty helps CX leaders move from firefighting to strategic leadership through custom engagement and practical playbooks. Her philosophy? Stop trying to earn your seat, start using it guides her work, helping leaders scale teams, measure what matters and deliver world class customer experiences without burning out. Ty, welcome to the table.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Hello. Thank you so much. I'm glad to be here.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: So glad to have you. For our listeners who may be familiar with you or for those who aren't, would love to hear a little bit more about you. Let's hear the story.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Yeah, so I am, I've been in this space for what, 25 years. It feels so weird to say that because I don't feel like I'm old enough to say that, but I am, obviously.
But I started out working in a large company, so I worked at Office Depot, you know, answering phones for six months and then I went right into workforce management. So I've been on the operational side of support for, you know, since I was literally 19 years old. And over the years I learned a few things about myself.
I am not a fan of managing large teams, so you find that out when you grow a team from 6 to 130 like I did at Thrive Market, or when you are managing a team of 300 at peak at a company like See's Candies.
At that point, it's a totally different job than the one that I want to do. So put that aside.
And then I also learned that I love working with startup because I am a builder. So I'm more of an architect or a fixer of things than I am one who likes to just sit and kind of like make it run. I like to hand it off to people. Like a beautiful gift.
[00:02:09] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: So, yeah, so I, I ended up building my business around all the things that I needed when I was starting out. And it has its ups and downs, but I love it and I look forward to doing the work I do every day. New challenges. It's fun.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Yeah, sure. Awesome. Yeah. I love the work that you're doing and I love how you just mentioned there you're building the things that you wish you had had when you got started. And for me, that's. I talk about on this podcast pretty regularly of my first leadership position and support.
I went from having never done any kind of management to doing the job really well. And then my boss leaving and the company going, you're really good at this job. Here's nine people who are now your responsibility. We'll train you. Don't worry. We'll teach you how to manage people. We'll teach you how to do this. A year and a half that had not happened. And so I wish I had had tools like you. You've presented here. So I'm really excited to. To dig into these a little more.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: And, you know, that is exactly the person that I. That I want to help. I feel like when we get promoted, right. Like, there's this excitement around it. I'll give you an example. I used to be the, I guess, director for workforce management at Molina Healthcare, and I remember my direct report, sweet lady, she said that she wanted to be a supervisor. And I thought to myself, you think you want to be a supervisor, but you have no idea what it means to manage people. And I think that for many of us, that is the natural progression. Like, you look at your. If your boss does a good job, then you look at their job and you think it's easy to do. That's the sign of someone who's doing well. If you, I can do that. It's no problem. It's not until you walk in those shoes that you realize, oh, my gosh, there's so much that's going on. There's so many different things that he or she juggling that I didn't even know existed.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: Absolutely. I love that. That picture that I see float around every once in a while, that talks about a good manager. And I think it's a. It's a picture of somebody holding an umbrella and all the bad things are hitting the umbrella and your team's under it, and they just think it's sunny and bright and everything's great, but don't recognize the. The challenges. And you're right. A good manager knows how to do that work, how to play, how to play blocker when they need to, to keep the dysfunction or the issues in the company from getting to their team. And so it does. I feel like it does look easy because I try not to bring that. That into a meeting with my team. I try to come in more prepared, more focused, not to create confusion or dysfunction or fear. And so oftentimes I think maybe that lack of Transparency can keep our teams from realizing, boy, that's, that's a hard job to do. It's not super easy.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: It really is not. And you know, when you're managing or you're running a support team and then understand too, this is my entire career, so I'm taking nothing away from anyone who's done anything different. But you're working in the past, present and future, across people, process and technology and all of those things split you into a different direction. There's no way to be in charge of all those things at one time. And what I have seen over the years is that the company will hire a leader feeling like they can manage all those things because realistically they don't understand the day to day functionality of the job.
So they don't understand when you have the person sitting at your desk crying because something's going on in their personal life. And that's why they had a bad day, you know, supporting customers today and they're worried that their quality score is going to tank and they don't want to lose their job because they can't. And that goes on and on, you know, versus, you know, oh shoot, our Zendesk just went down or we're losing tickets and I can't find it. Like being able to switch, you know, those hats is one Taxing mentally can taxing emotionally and can be taxing physically. And I think that someone who's, you know, sitting in the tower directing things, they don't really see that part. And if you bring that up, it almost sounds like you're complaining. It's like, I'm not.
[00:06:12] Speaker A: This is just, yes, absolutely. What do you think?
What do you think good advice would be? Let's say for somebody who, who is in this position of thinking, hey, I, I do want to manage people, I do want to lead. How can, how can a manager give them enough of a picture of what it actually looks like for them to make an informed decision? Because I, I, I love that we're building this world now where especially in somewhere like support, like management is not the only track. If you don't want to manage people, there are individual contributor roles that are incredibly valuable. Build your career, grow your income, all of those pieces. But for somebody who maybe wants to manage, how do we peel back the layers a little bit and give them the chance to see and make an informed decision?
[00:06:57] Speaker B: You know what I think you should let them do? Submit prompts through ChatGPT.
And the reason why I say that is because ChatGPT is a lot like Managing a person in the sense that what you ask it for, it will give you and it will teach you how to properly ask for things, how to properly frame things. So imagine asking Chad GPT for something and you realize you get back exactly what you asked for and now you have to redirect it and coach it. That's managing people.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Sure. Yes.
[00:07:28] Speaker B: Right.
The same way that it is very challenging to hold ChatGPT accountable for giving you exactly what you asked for. That's managing people.
You know, I often say that if you don't give clear instructions and expectations, then you cannot create accountability.
Right. And sometimes the accountability doesn't look like a reprimand, it just looks like a correction. Right. Or a change in path or, you know, do something a little bit differently. And I'm a big fan of helping people make new mistakes, not the same mistakes. So if you're not a patient person who is okay with someone not meeting 100% of what your expectations may be, but at the same time you feel empowered by working with them to meet their, like, highest level, and managing people may be for you. The other thing to consider is that managing people is one part of an operational role as well.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:08:36] Speaker B: So in addition to helping that person meet their potential, you still have the responsibility for the operational aspect of the business because it's very rare that those things are split.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. Yes.
Yeah. Taking a step back now, kind of looking at the wider picture, as we think about the work that you do and the playbooks you've built and the strategies and frameworks you built, what. What are typically the first signs when you're looking at a team that you start to see that signal of, boy, this team's in firefighting mode. They're not operating at high efficiency, high quality, in a healthy state. How can you first identify that? And then what are the steps to start moving them towards a place of health?
[00:09:18] Speaker B: A lot of times it shows up in their ticketing system, whatever help desk they're using. You'll see backlogs or complaints of lost tickets or lots of customer complaints or the inability to report on what's driving volume.
All of those things are indicators that they're just not set up properly.
[00:09:36] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: And then in order to start to fix that, we go into what we call investigation mode here at CXCO Collective. So we essentially try to become part of that team and let's say that we're going to dissect or diagnose the help desk. We'll go into it and we call it pulling it Down. So let's use zines. We work with zines a lot. We're looking at triggers, we're looking at automations, we're looking at tickets filled, we're looking at forms, we're looking at views. Views is actually the last thing because for us, when we do an implementation or we do an optimization, our workflow that we introduce our client to is all built around the theme, the views. But if nothing is set up on the back end, probably the views don't mean anything.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Right?
[00:10:19] Speaker B: So we really dig into those triggers, those automations, and instead of assuming anything, we ask why? Yeah, why do you have this? Why do you have that? With no judgment? Because you don't want anyone to feel like, you know, why are you asking me that? Or what should I be doing? We're just trying to understand why do you have this? Why do you have that? If we wanted to change this, how would you feel? If we wanted to remove that, how would you feel? We wanted to add this, how would you feel? So we go through that process and then we tend to organize it so that the client can actually read through our recommendations and say yes or no.
As a consulting agency, we understand that our.
That. Sorry. That our client's job is not to just do our work.
We are actually additional work for them. So the easier that we make things for them, the better it will be. We try to set everything up to where it's, yes, no, if you want to discuss it afterwards, that's fine, organize that. And then the next thing we're doing is we build it out in our test environment to see how things work. If we make these changes, what happens? And then we go training around it and then we, you know, introduce documentation. So we're really trying to help our clients reach their goals with minimal to little interruption because we take on the bulk of understanding them, which is not easy. And so we just hired someone. She's lovely, by the way. Hey, Mana. And she, I was telling her before she signed on, I said the hardest part is actually switching hats. Because literally work inside of all of these companies, and that's the hardest part of the job. But really understanding where the client is, what the client wants, and that's when we decide how they'll get there and remaining flexible enough to understand that sometimes they might get there and it doesn't feel like they thought and they don't want it that way.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Yes, yeah, absolutely. I, I think, and I know this is true for me, and I think this is probably true for a lot of younger Support leaders, but even, even more experienced support leaders. And we want to build something that we've pictured in our head. You know, we come in. Well, I, I've, I've worked this desk for five years. I know exactly what has happened. And you know what? I, I probably do have a lot of really good perspective and understanding to bring to the table, and I don't want to diminish that at all. But I think especially newer leaders, like, I want to build this thing that I can say is like mine, it was my imagination. And I think that often leads to the type of help desk that you encounter when you're doing these optimizations of. I built it, I built it, I built it, I built it. Oh my gosh, it doesn't work like I thought it was. And if I try to tear it down right now, my whole company is going to be in trouble. So one thing you've introduced is this concept of playbooks. What does it look like to, you know, for each of these different scenarios and situations to go attack at this certain way and, and evaluate. Why do you think it's important for leaders to do that, to follow playbooks to, to listen there as opposed to going and just building out of their imagination?
[00:13:18] Speaker B: Well, one thing is that there is no such thing as right necessarily. It's what's right for that business or that company. And if there's no guidance in how to approach a situation, you may be solving a problem that doesn't actually exist. Right.
So with the Playbooks, you know, I, like I said, I've been doing this for a really long time, and I've, I was fortunate. Like, I'm also that generation that grew up with no technology and then got introduced to technology. So I can wear both hats. I came in under a different area. And I'm saying that in my support career as well. You know, I came in under leaders where there was just phones. And then I've worked through the transition to this omnichannel world that we're in now. And the way that you operate in today's world is very different than the way that you did before.
So the. I know for me personally, not having any guidance is the reason why I made a lot of bad decisions at no, sometimes at Thrive Market or different places that I've worked at where I thought I was doing something the right way.
And because I didn't have anyone to look to my left or right on who understood my role, I would make a decision. But like, that didn't go go the way that I thought or it doesn't look the way that I thought. And so with the playbooks, they're not actually designed to tell someone that there's only one way to do it. They're designed to tell people or to explain concepts. So if you are rolling out a quality program and you've never done that, the first question is what does a good quality program look like? I'll give you an example. Doesn't mean it has to be yours. Then the next question is, how are other companies using quality case studies? Those are wins. And then we go into, well then how do I apply that in my environment?
And then that's the exercise.
Then we do a knowledge check after that to make sure you get you got captured the concept. Then you move on to the next chapter. Right when you're done, you can actually download your playbook.
And that playbook is like, here's my implementation plan. So you can use that, take that to your leader and be like, hey, I've got a plan on how we're going to roll this out now.
You know, we're gonna look at this, we're gonna grab that. I wanna interview the team. Self accountability with coaching, whatever that is, you're gonna walk out of it feeling like I know what I need to do now.
So one of the things that I wanted to do is, and I got pushback on this too from people that I've tried to partner with and I understand it's okay, but the price point is really low for a single playbook.
But the reason why I made it so low is because I wanted the leader who might be embarrassed about what they don't know, to feel okay with spending a little cash to figure out how to do their job better.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:16:06] Speaker B: And for the ones where the company will pay for it, subscribe for the year. But if you're just like, I just want to know how to do this one thing, the price point is set low enough for you to go and just really enhance your skill. Because realistically, nobody's coming to save you. Nobody want to come to you and be like, please let me teach you this thing. That's not going to happen. If you want to know how to do your job and you want to be the best at your work, you're going to have to make that happen. And so I wanted to create a space for self motivated leaders who were like, I'm trying to get to the next level. I mean the job market is hard right now and I hear that from a lot of people.
And I remember One of the guys who had worked with us for a little bit, he was saying that he kept getting turned down because he didn't have BPO experience.
And I was like, so we created two playbooks, one on how to find and launch a bpo, on how to sustain a bpo. So that is for the person who doesn't know and, and doesn't know how to do an rfp, doesn't know how to hold a vendor accountable. All of that stuff is laid out for you. You make it your own, though.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I love, I love that concept too, because the reality is there's no way any of us are going to be able to have this whole breadth of knowledge. I have worked with a few offshore resources that I've hired through upwork and other places for, you know, individuals. Very simple to do. BPO becomes a whole different ball game. I've never managed that. If I get to that point, it's so helpful to have resources like that. And I, I think just even going into an interview, being able to speak about it in an educated way after you've worked through that will provide so much, so much more traction. So I, I, I love that concept. Thinking about Thrive Market, which you mentioned, and, and as we were going through that last, that last question and hypergrowth, we're moving, we're scaling super quickly, which, what are some things you maybe had, wish you had known and done before to prepare for how that happened?
[00:18:08] Speaker B: So when I went to Thrive Market, I had never worked in a company as head of support that was growing that fast.
And they actually heavily recruited me from See's Candies. And so I went. But I don't think that I had the confidence to say we shouldn't do it that way.
Um, because of that. One of the, the requests that I had, I think I joined in April was like, in the first three months, to hire 30 people. And okay, sure, I can hire 30 people. But what I didn't realize is that if I'm interviewing and hiring 30 people, then I'm their point of contact.
And if I'm their point of contact, whomever I try to give them to, after that, they're not, they're going to bypass them. They're going to want to come back to me because I'm their source of truth. And I think that, I don't think that the directive was hire 30 people directly. It was hire 30 people. I should have used discernment to say, no, let me build up a lead level or a supervisor level or even a manager. Level and then have them build up a team. I didn't do that because at that time I think I was still, you know, and I have playbook on this. I was still functioning more as an individual contributor than I was as a leader.
Meaning that I was wanting to show that I could do it.
And by showing that I could do it, I ended up hurting the team longer term because they didn't have a good foundation to grow from.
So one thing I would say is if you're growing a team, don't hire directly. Hire leadership.
Let leadership build from there. That would be my recommendation. Another thing is don't hire first. Even though I live with that. Look at your systems and your processes and see how much work you can get done through your systems and processes before it gets to a person.
Excuse me. I think that that's key and critical.
I remember our CEO, who was my boss at the time, someone has sent him a presentation saying, I can help you set up your Zendesk. Again. Me operating as an individual contributor and not as a leader.
I was like, I can figure it out. Could I figure it out? Sure. Obviously I do it every day now. But then at that time I should not have figured that out. I should have outsourced that.
[00:20:28] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:20:28] Speaker B: But I'm trying to do everything right. And so not taking advantage of that help hurt me longer term. Right.
So systems is one. I'll also say this, and this is not specific to Thrive Market. This is anywhere that you work. It is the leaders of that company's goal to create a fan like environment within that company.
[00:20:50] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:20:50] Speaker B: And so when you're in management, you see both sides. You see the rah rah that they're trying to get everybody on the front line to understand. And then you see what's really happening. As a person who has to enforce that, I would say to be true to yourself without any, you know, detriment where you can to the company, but be true to yourself. And if that culture doesn't fit you, don't fake it because after a while it, it's going to come out. And so, you know, be authentic. Also, don't be afraid to say what you don't know because I feel like the most experienced leaders are able to say, yeah, I can't do that or that doesn't fit.
And the, the leaders who are a little bit more green or like, I can take that on, I can take that on like I did. And you know that you end up, you know, working for a few years and getting cystic acne and gray hairs in your 30s and going, I don't think I should be doing this.
[00:21:43] Speaker A: Right. Yes.
[00:21:44] Speaker B: Those are some. That's some of the advice. And I, you know, I'm more of a realist.
I'm not the biggest true leader.
I know that sometimes the work is hard. And so I'm not going to tell people that it's all roses and everything because I actually did it. So my feedback and recommendations are not going to come from the softest place, but it comes from a real place.
[00:22:03] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. One area that I know you've talked about over other things that I've heard and as we were preparing for this episode is you work with a lot of women who are given opportunities without a lot of guidance. Big roles, big opportunities.
How. How do you go helping with mindset shift for particularly women that you work with, of helping them understand how to go into that space and be successful and have a shift in their, in their mindset and the way they work?
[00:22:34] Speaker B: 1 forget that you're a woman.
Right. There's a lot of stigma that's attached to it. Like, for example, an assertive woman is called a different word than an assertive man.
He takes charge and she's something else.
And you have to be able to shed that and stick to the principle and the fact that, um, I am a, obviously a double minority. Um, a lot of times I am the only person that looks like me at a table in multiple ways.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: And so in those areas, what I have to do is let the work lead. I think for women, we are often. We often lead with our beauty in different environments. And don't get me wrong, it works. But the reality is that when you lead with your mind, sometimes people don't really know how to take you.
And there's a lot of spaces that I've been in where I lead. Well, I always lead with my mind. I don't lead with anything else. Not that I'm the most beautiful or anything like that. I'm not saying that. But I lead with my mind. I. I minimize any distractions. Let's focus on the facts and let's get down to it. And so that's what I try to instill in other is show up at the table like you belong there, not like someone gave you a seat, you earned your seat, you're there, you know, and when you're having conversations, you know, you need to earn your respect. And that means that you have to show up as a voice that makes a difference in that space. Yeah. You know, and I mean, it's unfortunate that that's something that people will hone in on or focus on. Like I remember doing this panel and I had on jeans and a CX collective T shirt and all of the ladies on the panel were like in pumps and dresses and they were very like, uh huh. And you know, and I was so not trying to play up on that because we're in a room full of men and I don't, I don't need them to focus on any of that stuff. I need them to hear the words that I'm saying.
And like I said, it works. You know, it works. But, and I'm not saying that you can't dress pretty and do all, do all that stuff, whatever makes you feel good, be your authentic self. But at the end of the day when you walk out that room, make sure you have controlled your brand.
Right. You want people to say, say, you know, she knew her stuff.
[00:24:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Right. That's the main thing.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: That's great. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. I think that that's a really key thing and I think that's also such a key thing for people already at that table to understand how to, how to encourage others who are sitting down at that table maybe, maybe for the first time that maybe have some concern about how do I navigate this space in this world to, to be able to reflect and think well about how we invite people to that space because they've earned the right to be there.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:25:30] Speaker A: Thinking about the next few years of CX and support and all these pieces, what do you think some things that leaders right now should be paying attention to or potentially just underestimating that could make or break their success in the coming few years?
[00:25:48] Speaker B: I mean, I'm gonna sound very cliche. I mean, we all know about the AI movement, the generative AI for agents, things like that.
[00:25:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:56] Speaker B: So, same way that I mentioned earlier on that, you know, I came up in the customer service world where, you know, the leaders, like I was lucky I was hired in by, you know, 10, 15, 20 year vets and that's where I was developed. And then I moved into workforce management and then, you know, as the, the trajectory, you know, went from service to experience and ye. Omnichannel support, I was able to transition with that. But I know leaders who were still like, I saw one of my former colleagues who took a job as a rep because the market had so outgrown the skillset from back then.
[00:26:32] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: So one is staying on top of your skill set and what's new and what's happening in the market is very key and critical. Two, as we move into the, the world of AI, I'm recommending that people start to leverage it and use it instead of letting it use them, it's gonna use you. But you know, let's make this at least mutual, mutually beneficial. Now I, I'm on social media and I see all the posts about, you know, jobs going away in 2028 or 2020, whatever this is, I can't say that with confidence. I don't know.
What I can tell you is that on the support side the frontline role is changing and I don't know, I'm not saying that this is exactly what's going to happen, but whereas companies would leverage offshore support to still give you like the human experience.
But it was very logic based work, you know, if this, then that, yes, no, I want to cancel, take them down this path, that kind of thing.
[00:27:32] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: What I'm seeing now is that because we're all on our phones all the time and people don't really want to talk anymore, we're leaning on bots to do that. And with generative AI, these bots are having the same conversations that a human would have, probably in some cases better because there's no emotion there. They're just going to take you down the path and that's that. Another thing is that AI is not going to be something that you can turn on like a light switch. If your foundation is faulty, then your AI is, AI experience will be faulty. So I think that leaders have to start shifting to being more aware and keen around knowledge management and the agents are going to have to become more strategic problem solvers because by the time a customer gets to an agent, it will be identified that there's a real true issue here that needs some investigation and it's not going to just be something like I lost my password. So I think that in ways, in some ways the level up that's going to happen with the support team is going to be around more critical challenges for, for customers and then AI will continue to leverage for proactive support and for logic based support. And that's just what I see now. But I mean, in one year I might tell you something different because you know, AI is growing and changing so much that who knows what it's going to be?
[00:28:56] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Well, as we wrap up our conversation here, any last thoughts you'd like to make sure we share with our listeners things we didn't cover, topics that you think are really critical. Love to give you a few moments for that.
[00:29:09] Speaker B: Thank you. So I just want to just share that, you know, like I said, we've been in business nine years, and we are trying to really make sure that everyone knows that a company like ours exists. We do customer engagements, and we also have the DIY side, which is a playbook site. And if you get a chance to look at the playbooks and you don't see something that you like, you can request one. And if we can build it, we'll build it for you. So we're really flexible. And at the end of the day, the goal is to help leaders be successful. Successful in their roles and beyond. And I'm really trying to help people become confident in their leadership.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:29:46] Speaker B: And not feel like, kind of like how you said in the beginning, hey, I got promoted. And they were like, hey, I'm going to train you. And that just kind of never happened. That's a lot of our reality.
And we should have a place to go to learn and. And not feel bad about not knowing what we don't.
[00:30:01] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. I would have loved to have had that on that first day of getting that promotion when I few weeks in where I realized, boy, that training's not. It would have been nice to know where to go and definitely helpful. Well, if folks wanted to connect with you, hear more from you, or learn more about CX Collective, what's the best way for them to do that?
[00:30:19] Speaker B: So Our website is CxCollective.com if you're interested in the playbooks, it's CxCollectiveAdvantage.com I'm on LinkedIn. I try to post on LinkedIn a few times a week. So if we're not already connected, please connect with me there. And I have the most boring Instagram in the world because I forget to take pictures. But it's. It's Ty Givens. Feel free to follow me there. Occasionally I'll remember to share something. But, you know, I would say if you really want like to converse with me, LinkedIn is probably better.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Well, Ty, thank you so much for sharing this insight with us and thanks for joining us here at the table.
[00:30:55] Speaker B: All right, thank you for having me.
[00:30:56] Speaker A: Absolutely.
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 Tavolo Consulting, hosted by Jordan Hooker, music by Epidemic Sound.
