How to Balance Agent Growth with Relentless Productivity

Meredith Metsker: Hey everyone. Welcome back to Beyond the Queue. Today, I am very excited to welcome Ashley Sachs. She's the director of support and success at Whereby. Ashley, thank you so much for joining me today.

Ashley Sachs: Thanks for having me. I'm excited.

Meredith Metsker: Me too. And I love what we're going to talk about today. So I know that you are really passionate about leadership. I think I saw somewhere that you call yourself a leadership nerd. I think that was in the bio of your Medium blog. So today I want to talk to you about leadership and in particular, how to be the kind of support leader that helps agents grow personally and professionally, but while also still maintaining a productive team that's still hitting your very real day to day goals and metrics. So to get us started, can you just tell me a little bit about your leadership philosophy and where you draw inspiration from?

Ashley Sachs: Yeah, so my leadership philosophy's been years in the making right now. So it comes from several different places, different mentorship relationships, different books or classes I've taken, but really it's rooted in a human approach to relationships and curiosity, honestly. And I actually just had a little bit of a, I would say, an epiphany for myself. Just a few months ago, I was doing a re-watch of Ted Lasso before the season two premier. And that ended up inspiring me to go on a little bit of a fan girl spree and listening to some podcasts from the actors and writers of the show, and actually was able to tie that back into a little bit of my leadership philosophy. There was an interview on a podcast episode with Brené Brown and Brendan Hunt-

Meredith Metsker: Love her.

Ashley Sachs: Yes, don't we all. Brendan Hunt and Jason Sudeikis were talking about the creative process and how leaving space in that creative process is really important. And I got to thinking, you know what? That's a lot about how I approach leadership, leaving the space for growth is really a big part of what I do and how I've built my teams. So there's a lot more in there, but I was excited to be able to think about that a little bit more. And then in the podcast, Brendan Hunt had called that kind of creative process, a lattice.

And so I latched onto that and I was like, "That's really cool." So I like to say now that my leadership style is like a lattice, building the frameworks and the processes that you need to for your team for them to grow and leaving space for their creativity and their input. Especially, on remote teams it's really important. So yeah, so to sum it all up, leadership is a lot for me and something I'm really excited to build on more in my future now too.

Meredith Metsker: I love that. Yeah. And when you told me about that in our pre-interview process, I went and looked for the episode and I was reading the transcript and it's such an interesting concept to think of leadership as a lattice, as opposed to the traditional ladder. It's not that leaders are up above trying to talk down to their employees or anything. It's that, like you said, you've created those processes, you've left space for them to figure things out on their own without you necessarily telling them what to do every step of the way.

Ashley Sachs: Yeah. And the really cool thing with the metaphor of a lattice is there's different types of lattices. So not all of them are, wood checker board, as you would think. There's different plants that grow different ways. Sometimes that make their own infrastructure honestly, eventually as they get to be mature plants. So I think that's really cool way to think of it. I haven't really dove in too much to relate that back to leadership yet, but that's been something I've been noodling on. But it is really cool to see, and that can tie into a little bit to situation leadership too. There's different ways of leading in different situations or with different people. People like to be led differently. I mean, we're humans, we're all different so yeah, definitely.

Meredith Metsker: Okay. So I'm curious, as a support leader at Whereby, how do you go about helping your agents grow and how do you promote that culture of growth on your team?

Ashley Sachs: Yeah, so I start these growth conversations really early on, honestly, like in the recruiting process, we talk a lot about growth. Whether that's an ambition of moving into leadership roles in support, or simply getting exposed to a new business, a new crew carrier path. Growth doesn't necessarily have to equate to a title change. It equates to a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So getting at least a starting conversation around that in the recruiting process is always something that I do like, "Hey, what does growth mean for you? Where do you feel like you want to dial into your growth at Whereby? What are you hoping for?" So we talk about that really early on. And then we harvest that a little bit more with our team culture with support.

So we do a QA process that we love. And so we do a QA process with chats and tickets and that's a peer review process. So we all take part in that. And what that does is it just really keeps that conversation of feedback going and it makes everybody really comfortable with feedback and learning from each other part of our DNA. So when it does get to that point where we have to have those not so fun feedback conversations, it's a lot easier to get through. And yeah, just to have that habit in place first, and then also we have the whole team take part in onboarding new teammates. So, that's really cool. And in a part of that onboarding process, we build in intentional reflection time.

So our onboarding process is about 10 days to two weeks. That's what we give our new hires. And then so two days into their onboarding, we have a quick check in with myself and our support leaders and we say, "Hey, how's it going? Do you feel like the content and the learning is too fast, fast enough for you? Is there anything that you want to backtrack on and dial in a little bit more so far?"

So, that's our temperature check that we start with. And then at the end of the onboarding the end of the two weeks, we'll usually bake in about 15 minutes in our regular team meeting sync that we have on a weekly basis and then do a reflection period. What went really well about onboarding? What could we improve for the next new hire that comes on? And it's really cool just to see the whole team take part and really get value from it. And also builds relationships on top of that. So that's one of the unique things that we've done in regards to growth and learning, and just having that as part of our culture as a whole.

Meredith Metsker: Yeah. I love that. It seems like for you, part of promoting that culture of growth is getting everybody actively invested in it, regardless of job title, regardless of rank, they are all invested in helping each other grow. And that's really cool.

Ashley Sachs: Yeah. And I think it's really important not to discount the little things that you can do too for remote teams. So like one of the things that we also have is a CS library in our Notion, any kind of articles, podcast books that any of us have read and learned from, we have a library of those in our Notion. So we add on to that as we get it. And that's really cool. I mean, that's something really small, it's really easy to start with. So that's always a good thing to have too.

Meredith Metsker: Very cool. Is that external inspiration, learning outside of your organization?

Ashley Sachs: Yeah, I threw the podcast that I spoke about earlier, that's in there, any kind of leadership podcast that we talk about is in there. Yeah. And then things directly from our people team as well. So that would be something that I would say growing from a series A startup into a bigger company with more formalized processes around leveling and growth, you can't discount the support that your people team is going to have for you. And being able to actually put a lot of formality around some of these things as far as growth is concerned. So our people team has been instrumental in helping us in that. So I would also say there's great things you can do inside support at a certain level and a certain size, but then eventually as you grow bigger you will need the support of your people team.

Meredith Metsker: Yeah. That makes sense. I'm curious, in what ways has your people team assisted you with creating this culture of growth on your team?

Ashley Sachs: The really cool thing that we have at Whereby is that our people team they're set up as... The way we have them designed is people as a product is what our VP of people has done for us. And so our direct people partner that we have is dedicated to support sales success, like our whole commercial team. And she actually came from a support background, so that's really cool. And so when we can talk to her about specific challenges in support, whether that's with growth or how we want to make the leveling process, or anything around that, she understands she's been in support before and has run support organizations. So, that's a really cool unique thing that has been really helpful. And me being able to actually formalize some of our leveling processes and make sure that there is a clear path of growth within Whereby for our support team.

Meredith Metsker: I'm curious, what does that path look like, if you're able to share?

Ashley Sachs: Yeah, so right now we do have support specialist, senior specialist, and then leads. And we have expectations for each one of those roles that includes the amount of time you're spending in tickets and the queue, the amount of time you're spending in projects. And then what is also really cool that we've baked in that's helped a lot is the concept of bridge work. So say you are a support specialist and you're looking to excel to a senior role, and you want to explore what that might look like or delve into maybe some projects that might be a halfway point in between the two, we've already identified what those projects look like. So we have that concept of bridge work to be able to explore and say, "Hey, if you want to start having these conversations, let's try these things that might help you elevate you to the next level and start taking on what might be what a senior does, but still be able to be on your plate as a specialist."

Meredith Metsker: Okay. Very cool. I want to back up a little bit to one of the first things you said that you introduced this concept of growth, very early in the process when you're interviewing people. And I'm curious what made you decide to go that route and what have been some of the results you've seen from introducing it so early?

Ashley Sachs: Yeah, so really, it shows ambition right at the beginning of the relationship, I think is really, especially as a remote fast paced startup, you have to hire people that are comfortable with learning all the time and having a really good ambition and a really good forward thinking mindset, because it's not just about their personal growth too. When they have that forward thinking mindset and can think outside of just the box of a ticket or a chat that they're having, they think about the customer journey as a whole. So I think it's a characteristic just of a great support person too, wanting to be able to think outside the box, wanting to grow and impact change that would ultimately influence a customer journey. So I think it's dialing into the learning characteristic and being able to harvest that into support and into the role and give them the freedom to be able to flex those muscles really well.

Meredith Metsker: Very cool. And I assume it's worked pretty well for you.

Ashley Sachs: Yeah, so far it's been really good. We have a great team great culture and they really do some great things and it's exciting to see and talking with other support leaders support teams are very agile and they evolve very quickly. And it's a unique set of people that can really, I feel like, conquer the world sometimes you feel like that. So yeah, it's done well so far.

Meredith Metsker: Awesome. Well, you mentioned the fact that your team is fully remote, so I want to go in that direction a little bit. So how do you make this space for agent growth? How do you promote this culture of growth when your team is fully remote?

Ashley Sachs: Yeah. A big part of that is documentation. Of course, I think anybody in any team, regardless of support or not, but any remote culture will say it's definitely about documentation. If it isn't documented then it's not real, but I will would say along with that, it's setting expectations early and often. I think that that's really important, always having a space for conversations and being intentional about those. Intentionality, I think, is one of the biggest pieces about remote work. We don't have those really easy conversations when we're co-located tap you on the shoulder, see how you're doing, or the water cooler talks as people like to call them since we don't have that, we have to put extra energy into creating those spaces. So yeah, I say set the expectations about the role early and often, go ahead and get that in your documentation, check in with your people on that.

And one on one, and that also helps harvest the evolution as the company grows. I think that's really important too to have a little bit of flexibility there because the company is going to change your customers are going to change, so that has helped a lot. And then cross-functional relationships have been really helpful for us. I think in the sense of impacting the customer journey, you have to engage with product managers. You have to be able to have a good feedback system for that. So I think that has helped a lot for our remote team and just really helps them feel valued which can also be really hard in a remote space as well because it's very isolating. But yeah, and then in the intentionality piece, make sure your checkpoints are really calculated.

So my one-on-ones are only ever rescheduled, they're never canceled. They're always done. We don't really ever sacrifice a one-on-one, other meetings can be sacrificed but one-on-ones cannot. So invest in those and invest in any workflows around that that would help your team. So for what's been successful for us, I have one-on-ones every other week with my team and the weeks that I don't have a one-on-one with them, I use a tool called 15Five and it sends them an email. Has them fill out three questions sometimes four, I will rotate the fourth question just depending on what's going on in their journey, in their business. I have different questions for my leads and my customer success managers than I do for my regular senior support specialists. So those happen every other week and they help shape some of our one-on-ones and also just gives me a check-in point.

And I think that that's really important. It's consistent. It gives them space to tell me things that might be going on. And then if they don't want to tell me there, they can tell me in the one-on-one the following week. So I think that that's really important, however, that works for people. Some people use Notion to document their one-on-ones with a shared page or there's other really great tools out there that will help with that, or just a plain old Google Doc will work wonders as well. So, yeah.

Meredith Metsker: Okay. I'm curious. What kinds of questions do you ask in 15Five?

Ashley Sachs: So the typical ones are around what'd you do the past two weeks, what were you proud of? What do you want to work on the next two weeks and where do you feel blocked and how can I help with that? So ask those questions. They might be asked in slightly different ways, but that's pretty much the spirit of the main three questions that always come up the fourth question we'll do some things around, like at the end of the year, I always ask the question about, what are you hopeful for your role in the business in 2022, at the next year? So at the end of the year I'll ask questions like that for my leadership, I'll ask certain coaching questions. Like, where have one of your direct reports had an interesting idea this week.

How did you dive into that kind of thing? Or how did you highlight that? So very pointed questions. I have some that are rotating and then if there's any... We have a little bit of seasonality in our business, so if it's a really busy time I might ask questions, like what was difficult about this season and what could have possibly made it better? Was that a process maybe that we need to work on? Or if there something else maybe that we need to find, to prepare us for the next seasonality spike.

Meredith Metsker: Okay. I see how using 15Five fits in with your goal of documenting everything, documentation.

Ashley Sachs: Yes. Exactly. Yeah. So I say don't discount your note taking and so don't ever skip that and also just be really purposeful about your reflection as a leader too, I think is really important. Just sitting down, giving yourself 15 minutes after a one-on-one and being able to digest what happened during it and in documenting that. So it's just better for you to be more present in the next one as well.

Meredith Metsker: Yeah. I love that. And I can see how combining both in person one-on-ones with the sending questions every other week, I can see how that would be helpful for people who might, maybe they feel on the spot when they're asked something in person and maybe they want more time to think through their answers and be thoughtful. So I can see how having both approaches would be a nice balance for a lot of folks.

Ashley Sachs: Yeah. And that could actually lead back to the when we talk about lattices looking differently and being made out of different things, you tie it back to that, right? Like, meeting your direct reports where they are some prefer to have really deep intentional one-on-ones where the written word may be better for them just meeting them in that right place. We do that with our customers. Why not do that with our direct reports too. It's very human approach. And I think that it's been helpful for us so far.

Meredith Metsker: Yeah. I love that. Transitioning to my next question. So how do you encourage and empower that individual growth while still acknowledging that your direct reports have lives outside of work?

Ashley Sachs: So what I really like to do is I like to, I say, I dial in to what sparks them so I pay really close attention. So for our project time, so at different levels you have a different amount of project time. So when we do project time and we have our support people work on specific projects I like to see after they finish that project, I like to talk to them and get a little bit of a reflection period with them and see if there's a spark there and ask them very directly like, "How did you feel about this? Did it feel cumbersome to you? Did it feel like a lot of work or did it excite you or spark something in you?"

So I like to find out what sparks people and see how we can amplify that in the support role and in the customer journey. And they can directly tie that back when it comes to starting a new role, hopefully within the company or anywhere else they can tie some of their project work back to let's say, for example, I think you get really good example of this is we have support people that are embedded in our product teams. So our product teams follow similar to the Spotify squad model. And so what we have done is we have embedded a support person in each one of the product teams.

So their role is to be a voice for the customer in those planning meetings let the product managers know hey, this is a big pain point for our customers. This is driving up our ticket volume and anything that comes in between that and that kind of feedback. And what they can do in these next roles that they go to, they can say, "Hey, I was directly involved in a cross-functional relationship with my product team. I know how product teams work. I know what sprints are and how they prioritize projects." So I think that that's really cool to be able to have that as a skill too on their resumes going forward as well.

Meredith Metsker: Okay. This might be in the weeds, but I'm curious, how do you decide how much project time folks get depending on their level?

Ashley Sachs: Yeah, so we actually schedule out our project time. So our operational lead, she does our scheduling and we have decided that based on our ticket volume and based on our leveling structure. You've got your support specialist that will do about 80 to 90% key work, and then about 10% to 20% of projects, just depending on what's going on. And then we schedule that time. So we make sure we have ticket coverage, make sure we have chat coverage.

And then it's a shared calendar and schedule between the entire team to say, "Hey, this person's going to be out of the queue for an hour on Thursday, working on X." And that's really helped just to get a break out of the queue one, which is also very helpful. And then just to highlight being able to see that everybody is working on something besides just tickets in different levels and different forms or helping the leads on certain projects too which helps amplify a little bit of that relationship piece there as well.

Meredith Metsker: Okay. So they do 80 to 90% and then as-

Ashley Sachs: As you move up, it's less tickets. Yeah. And a little bit more project work. Yep.

Meredith Metsker: Okay. So I'm curious, what kind of projects does your team work on?

Ashley Sachs: Yeah, so processes are important. So we had one of our senior specialists work on our QA process and was able to help myself. We sat down together and we were able to get that launched and he's been evolving that as we go. So, that's one thing. Also, with company wide we goals and OKRs quarterly. So the support team will have a little less obviously, because we have a lot of just day to day work. But there'll be some OKRs that we'll have to reach whether that's around helping influence churn or operationalizing the support experience a little bit better to where we're able to solve tickets faster.

So those are kind of how we pick our projects just depending on what's going on in the business and what the company needs help on and how support can influence that directly. So that's also one of the big remote pieces and support value just as a whole, I know support can sometimes feel like an island sometimes in companies, but we tie our work directly back to our company goals and OKRs. So I think that that's helpful as well.

Meredith Metsker: Nice. Yeah. I can see how your team getting to work on those kind of projects, especially the ones that are working with other departments or tying back to business goals, how that could help them in their personal and professional growth.

Ashley Sachs: Yeah, definitely.

Meredith Metsker: So on that note, how do you find and promote the right people on your teams for roles in people management, more advanced technical support, and other leadership roles?

Ashley Sachs: So going back to what we were talking about earlier, I start in the recruiting process. So I'm always looking for learners, creative thinkers, forward thinking mindset. I think those are the hallmark characteristics that really make great support people, but always, and also really it drives ambition and also makes people that are more likely to evolve into other roles and just a good type of personnel around. So I start with that, making sure that we're finding the right people. And also, I really like to take a look at where are some strengths that I already have on the team and where are our weaknesses and how can we in our recruiting process find those people that might be able to amplify our weaknesses a little bit.

So whether that's needing a little bit more data driven people, for example we're really good in the relationship piece, really great at doing delightful customer experiences, but our operations could help because our operations could need a little help because our customer base is growing so dramatically. So those are the things depending on what stage of company that you're at and what your growth looks like and your customer base, you may need different skills at different times within support or different expertise for that matter.

So recruiting process is really important. And then after recruiting, when it comes to promoting and career growth, all those characteristics that I look for in leadership roles really show up in taking initiative on certain things like being really fired up about a customer issue and not really asking permission to do something about it but feeling empowered to say, "Hey, this is a problem, and we need to address it."

So I see a lot of leadership things that will come out of those kinds of situations that we might come into. So I look at that and also leaning on that bridge work and leaning into those sparks that I see when it comes to projects. Like if it's a more technical project seeing if there was a spark there and then how they accomplished the project was it something that they wanted to dive more into? Did they finish it on time? Was it done well did they stay up to date with it as we needed to?

So really, I think, it's a lot of different things, but it leads back to recruiting and hiring the right people giving them space to find their sparks and find the things that really drive them and having some processes in place that will be able to let them do that. Having defined ticket time and divined project time, having those bridge work things in place a lot of different things for that.

Meredith Metsker: Okay. So I'm curious, for the folks that you promote to maybe team leads, they start supervising people. How do you go about identifying if they would be a good people manager?

Ashley Sachs: I think, again, initiative is really a big thing there, initiative for their team. And being really concerned about the health of their team, I think, is one of those hallmarks that I look for. Seeing them be really excited for their teammates' personal growth, and wanting to take part in it, whether that's with having them really jazzed and excited about the onboarding process. The way we do that is each one of our team members will take a portion of training, whether that's a product walk through, whether that's learning about the more technical backend of our system, whether that's talking about how to use our ticket tooling system. It's cool to see your potential leaders. You'll see a lot more spark there too. You're like, "Yes, I really want to teach this person. I want to see them excel and succeed here."

So I think I start seeing that a little bit early, maybe in the onboarding process and then trying to follow that bit of, I keep on using "spark." There's not another way to describe it for me, but keep on following that and making more space to have that show up more. So I think people leaders you'll definitely see a lot of jazz for seeing the rest of their teammates excel and being very concerned about the health of their team.

Meredith Metsker: I love that.

Ashley Sachs: My overuse of "spark" or just-

Meredith Metsker: Well, it's funny because it makes me think of Ted Lasso again, which I know we talked about earlier.

Ashley Sachs: Yeah, for sure.

Meredith Metsker: Speaking of people who like to help other people find their spark.

Ashley Sachs: Yeah, exactly. All roads lead back to Ted Lasso in some way.

Meredith Metsker: Exactly. So as you're going about fostering this culture of growth and your team, how do you do that? Like, promote that growth while also keeping your team feeling happy, fulfilled, but also focused on your day to day business goals. Like you have very real metrics that you have to hit. It seems like a lot to balance. So I'm curious how you work through that.

Ashley Sachs: It's super delicate. And I think the best thing that we've been able to do is being realistic about like, there's going to be bad seasons or hard seasons, there's going to be... We all just came through a worldwide pandemic. That was a very hard season. And I feel like there wasn't really any growth for us. We were just actually just treading water as best we could at that time. So I think it's being realistic about that. And being able to be vulnerable about that too. Like as a leader going through that time with my team, I was very much like, "This is really hard. And if you're struggling that's okay, I'm struggling too."

And so I think that that's really important to be real and honest and allow space for that specifically first and foremost but also then leading back to those processes that you can build. I think what really helps us is having those schedules they can be flexible and they can evolve, but being able to schedule our time and know when somebody's going to be in the queue or when somebody might need help in the queue. I think that that has helped a lot for us to set forecasting and be able to be realistic about our OKRs and our quarterly goals of what we know our regular ticket volume is and what we can handle on top of our regular ticket volume.

Meredith Metsker: Okay. So yeah, I'm curious, how do you balance your time and energy as the support leader between setting up those processes, helping your people grow personally and professionally, but also making sure that you're still hitting the metrics you need to hit for your company's OKRs?

Ashley Sachs: That is a hard one. So for that one, I'm going to lean back into our documentation and being able to forecast the time that we need to reach a certain goal that feeds into our specific company goal. For example, I'll take when we launched live chat for our customers, we had to look really hard at what our busiest times of the day were, how many people we needed during the busiest times and we had to experiment with what kind of chat volume we could handle during those times, there was a little bit of guessing, estimating to start with, but we set ourselves up to realistically say, "Okay, maybe we might need one to two people in chat worst case scenario, we might get four chats at one time." Let's start with that and then this is how many tickets we typically get during these hours.

So we need a forecast for that. So I think being very intentional about what our current volume looks like, projecting a little bit more volume in a different medium, and then aligning that with okay, maybe there is a season where there is a little bit less of a growth project, because everybody's going to be focused on that. And that's okay. I think, what the really important thing is after you complete that goal is to make sure you highlight that really well with your team. It is a huge win. Yes, we didn't get to do as much of our project time that we wanted to do. We didn't maybe get as much personal growth in during this four week process that we launched live chat, but we launched live chat.

Our tickets are probably going to go down because now we have a live medium and then we get to do something really fun. Like, actually a lot of our support specialists love doing live chat more than they like doing tickets. So I think it's yeah, being, like I said before, being realistic, setting those expectations early, hey, we've got this goal to meet the personal growth through the extra projects may not happen as much as they usually do. And the team being aware of that and being okay with that.

Meredith Metsker: Okay. Yeah. It sounds like it's all very interconnected. From your one-on-ones to your QA processes, everything is set up to support both that growth, the personal growth, while also still hitting your goals.

Ashley Sachs: And there's really cool things you can do. I feel like support's a Swiss army knife a lot of the times. Support people do so many different things and wear so many different hats, but it does all lead back to the customer experience in the customer journey in the end, it just gets there in different ways. So it's finding those different ways that the support role affects that and then putting the people in those right places and helping build out those right processes to get there.

Meredith Metsker: Okay. I'm curious, if you're able to share, what are some of your major team goals? And I'm curious how you use that growth mindset to hit those?

Ashley Sachs: So right now we are actually in the process of switching our support strategy from a B2C to a B2B approach. We've introduced a new product for us. And it's based on an API where customers can have video meetings inside of their product and not necessarily come to Whereby to have a meeting, they can do it inside their own product and build an experience, their own experience around it. So, that's a whole different support. And it's been a huge pivot for our support team. So the first thing that we started with which was one of our last OKR goals was we had about half of our support team that was really prepared to support that was a little bit more technical, understood our API a little bit more. We had that group of that little squad of support people help develop a training for the rest of support.

And that was one of our biggest goals. It literally included everybody. However, I had one of my senior support specialists project managing it. He's the one that really likes our training piece and is really great with our new hires. He helps schedule all the new training for our new hires. So he was like, "All right, I'm going to get the schedule going and I'm going to..."

And we actually got the whole company involved, because there was different parts of the company that also needed a little bit of product training around this. Our marketing people joined, we had a refresher for some of our sales people, so that was really cool to also see this like... It wasn't just a support thing it was a whole company thing. Yeah, so we had our senior specialist that was really our trainer came in, helped with the rest of the squad, organized everything, organized content, and then they did a two week training the first week that was asynchronous.

So it was all just documentation and Loom videos that we put in Notion where you could follow along with specific parts of the customer journey, how the customer signs up for an account, how they generate an API key all that. And then the second week we had three one-hour sessions where it was a synchronous training where we actually went through live walkthroughs of the product or situations that we've had customers ask us about. And yeah, it went great. And what was really cool from that is we have a mailbox specifically for that segment of customers.

And you look at the ticket times pre-training and then you look at the ticket times post-training, and you see a huge difference. And that was something I highlighted with the team. I was like, "Yeah, it's great you all feel confident in answering these questions now you know how you feel about it, but look at the metrics now. And you can see the direct effect of the work you all did coming together, teaching each other and learning from each other about this new product in a scary situation honestly."

It's really scary to go from just supporting direct to consumer customers about a specific SaaS product to then looking at actually supporting API and a business customer. It's different. So I was really encouraged when we had those numbers come out and I could show them and celebrate with them, and I was just so proud of them and they were really proud of themselves. So I think that that was just the cherry on the sundae for us. And it is a great representation of how it looks to be able to combine project work that directly correlates to a really good company goal. Really good customer experience in general.

Meredith Metsker: I love that. That's the perfect example. It's like not only did you hit, but you exceeded the goal by a lot, but I mean yeah. Just think of all of the cool learning and experience that your team gains by getting to take the lead on something and learn how to teach and how to support their peers.

Ashley Sachs: It was definitely a great experience. And I think that that's one that we'll be riding the high on for a while with that, for sure.

Meredith Metsker: Very cool. So I'm curious, now that you have experience with this and you've had some very real successes, what advice do you have for other support leaders who would like to better balance investing in agent growth with also still hitting their team goals?

Ashley Sachs: It takes some creativity for sure. I think that, that and it's okay to lean into the creativity there. I think with the example I just gave it was really cool to see how yes, we had this need to support new business and new product. And we have some people that were really passionate about seeing others grow and teaching and learning and being able to see the connection between the two. Okay. I can highlight this person's personal growth by allowing them to do the training that will push our support team to a new level. So that might seem a little bit obvious. There's a little bit more things are harder to connect of course with other business goals, but I think it's really important to lean into creativity there.

And then I would say, don't be afraid to ask really pointed questions of your team, like in your one-on-ones and or any other exercises that you do, be really curious and try to gain as much perspective as you can. There's several different questions that I like to lean in and just ask people very directly. Like, "How do you like to be led? What is the definition of growth for you? Is it a title change or is it not, is it just learning a new skill?" That's really important to highlight as well? What was really cool with another example I have one of my leads when he, second year of working with him, we had a need for us to redesign our support documentation, our help center.

And scrappy startup, we didn't really have the design dev power that we needed to just hand it off. We had to own some of that. And so he was like, "Okay, I really have a desire to be a little bit more technical and I need to ramp up my HTML and my CSS skills." And I was like, "Okay, how can that apply to the role as we have in this seed startup to, what's the need that support has to take on right now that could highlight you being able to do that directly?" And that was our support center. And he was able to work with one of our designers.

So we had a little bit of help, but overall, being able to shape the content and then how it presented on the website, he was able to do all that. And so he accomplished a support goal, but at the same time was able to highlight some of the skill that he wanted to learn and become an expert in at the same time. So, that was really cool. And I think that's one of our other success stories that we like to talk about a lot too. So yeah.

Meredith Metsker: I love that. Okay. So it sounds like it's being creative, it's leaning into those processes-

Ashley Sachs: Asking questions. And asking the right questions. Yeah. Just be direct and be like, "What do you want to learn and how can we find a way to relate that back to support?"

Meredith Metsker: Love that. May as well take the guesswork out. Okay. Well, I think that's probably a good spot for us to start wrapping up. But before I ask you my last question, is there anything else about our topic today that you would like to add that we haven't covered?

Ashley Sachs: I don't think so. I think we can, I'd had a note, but I think we can skip to the last question and go for that. I think we'll be good.

Meredith Metsker: Okay. So my last question, this is the big one and the broad one, but in general, what advice do you have for up and coming support leaders?

Ashley Sachs: Yeah, so I spent a lot of time here talking about pouring into your direct reports, how you really build your culture. And I think what I would like to go back to is the leader directly, I think is also really important in this equation here too. So I would say make your commitment to your values and boundaries really early in your leadership career and be intentional about checking in on those on a regular basis. They're going to evolve, they're going to move around a little bit as you grow as your life experiences are different in different ways.

But it's really important to commit to those because that just really makes you a better leader. You got to make time for yourself. You have to make time for what's important to you. And just solidifying that really early is great because as you grow, as your company grows any kind of career progression, but later on down in life it's going to be a lot harder to set those guardrails. So I always like to say that and it's something that I was told early on and see a lot of value in that now. So yeah. So make your values and your commitments to yourself really early and stick with it and be flexible in those as you need to be, but keep checking in on those and make sure you're you're within those.

Meredith Metsker: Okay. I know I said that was my last question, but I thought of a follow up. I'm curious what committing to boundaries has looked like for you. How do you do that?

Ashley Sachs: So I think this is extremely real for remote workers. When you are a remote worker, there's not as many physical boundaries of work. So I think that that's really important. So you have to be creative with those. So for me it was being very pointed about where I work and work was there and wasn't in different parts of my house. So, that's really important. And then also for having a family I think is really important. I'm very much like, "This is family time and work does not impede that." And I think encouraging your direct reports to do the same is very valuable, but practicing what you preach is also what you need to do there too.

Yeah, so for me, it was having physical boundaries and time boundaries that I set aside. And then when you take a break, take a break, and set yourself up and your team up with all the tools they need, make sure while you're gone and then disconnect. I think a rested mind and arrested body is way more productive. And I feel like we hear that in so much research and other podcasts and books and stuff, but it's a really good reminder to hear that often.

Meredith Metsker: I imagine that's especially important in a high empathy, high emotional intelligence job like support.

Ashley Sachs: Exactly. With people with high empathy meters, it's a very specific need, and it's very important to remind people of that. I know burnout is a lot more real for support people, and it's good to have a good check on that. And it's good to talk about that. I think that there's, I think sometimes depending on the direct report and the leader relationship, sometimes it might be uncomfortable to talk about. So again, making that space to be like, "It's okay to talk about burnout. It's okay to talk about the struggles that you're having." And I think that that just helps the relationship even more.

Meredith Metsker: I love that. Cool. Well, I think that's a good place for us to wrap up. Ashley, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today and sharing your wisdom. I'm really excited to see the response to this episode. Because I think there's lots of really valuable stuff in here.

Ashley Sachs: Yeah. And we'll all go watch the episode of Ted Lasso after and pick out our leadership characteristic.

Meredith Metsker: Yes.

Ashley Sachs: Thank you so much for having me.

Meredith Metsker: You're welcome. All right. And one more thing, if anyone wants to contact you or learn more from you, what's a good way for them to do that?

Ashley Sachs: Hit me up on LinkedIn. Drop me an email or I'm on Twitter. It's just @AshleySachs, and I'll respond to you.