Tone Matters: The Document That Keeps Buzzsprout’s Support Team Unified

How do you keep a support team sounding human, helpful, and on-brand as it grows? When scaling, tone drift can turn great support into inconsistent and robotic interactions. Priscilla Brooke, Head of Podcaster Success at Buzzsprout, joins us to share how her team created a Tone Document that ensures every interaction stays clear, friendly, and aligned with their brand.

In this episode, we cover:
✅ How Buzzsprout’s values shaped their tone guidelines
✅ The 4 key tone pillars they use to maintain consistency
✅ How they train, QA, and reinforce great communication
✅ The impact of a unified tone on trust and efficiency
✅ Steps to build your own tone document for scalable support

Links & Resources:

🔗 Listen to Priscilla Brooke on the Happy to Help podcast: https://happytohelp.buzzsprout.com/
🔗 Exclusive resources for this episode, including a worksheet and template: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1f3h-ZDr2Z7eSECr3Rd1h-PESsib2I1EQ?usp=sharing

Take Action:

📩 Get Weekly Tactical CX and Support Ops Tips: https://live-chat-with-jen.beehiiv.com/

🦸 Check out our sponsor: Supportman.io

Episode Time Stamps:

00:00 – Introduction to the episode & topic
 02:15 – Meet Priscilla Brooke & Buzzsprout’s Support Strategy
 05:30 – The importance of tone in written support
 10:45 – How Buzzsprout built their Tone Document
 15:20 – Training and reinforcing tone within the team
 20:40 – Measuring success & impact on customer trust
 25:55 – How you can build a Tone Document for your team
 30:15 – Final thoughts & actionable takeaways

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the episode & topic
• 2:15 Meet Priscilla Brooke & Buzzsprout’s Support Strategy
• 5:30 The importance of tone in written support
• 10:45 How Buzzsprout built their Tone Document
• 15:20 Training and reinforcing tone within the team
• 20:40 Measuring success & impact on customer trust
• 25:55 How you can build a Tone Document for your team
• 30:15 Final thoughts & actionable takeaways

Transcript

Priscilla (00:00)
you hear from customers, you hear them use words that you

put in your tone document and that is so reassuring. when someone says, man, it just feels like Buzzsprout is on my team. Thank you so much for the help. You're like, boom, 100%. And then when someone does that and they say, man, you make this so simple, you screenshot that and you post it for your entire team to see.

you make noise about it when that happens because that is the coolest thing When you've defined your goal and then someone speaks it right back at you. It's the best

so a couple years ago, well, I guess now it's like five or six years ago, we were a team of just two people on the Buzzsprout support team and we were starting to grow into a larger team. And when you're smaller it's a lot easier to kind of work in a unified tone

And for my team, me and this one other person, we worked together a lot. We were in the office sitting side by side a lot of the day. so it's really easy for us to collaborate and be aligned when it comes to or when it came to how we worked with podcasters via email. And I should say most of our support is email based written word.

And so as our team started to grow, I realized that we really needed to have a better way to be aligned on the tone that we use in our support team. And so what I wanted to talk about today was just how to develop a tone for your support team, how to develop a tone for your written support, which I think is really important, especially as you're building a team that's growing beyond just a couple people.

Jen Weaver (03:38)
Yeah, so for fast growing teams, nailing that tone and still sounding like a small team, like a cohesive unit, is really crucial. Yeah. OK, great. Yeah, tell us more about that. So that's a journey you've just been on. And let's say I am just getting started. I'm growing my team. And no, we're starting to sound not unified. What launches me into this?

Priscilla (03:45)
Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah.

Well, it's

funny. I I think about what customers want when you're writing into a support team when you want. Well, you want accuracy. You want it to be fast. But you also want it to be consistent. You want to know that when you write into that support team that you're going to get the same great quality this email that you're going to get the next email and the next email so that you have confidence in that team. And so that is kind of where this came from. You were just saying a cohesive team when you're really small, but as you scale, it's lot

harder to keep that cohesion and then it's a lot harder to be confident that your team is going to handle each email with the same consistent quality. so basically, you know, another aspect of this is the fact that written communication leaves a lot up to interpretation because you have the words on the page but you and I are having a conversation digitally

you know, virtually right now, but I can see your face, I can see how you're reacting, and so that helps me to interpret the things you're saying. Whereas when we're writing, I don't see you, I don't see your body language. You know, there's studies that have been done that show, I mean, I think it's like 7 % of communication is verbal and everything else is nonverbal. So if you think about that, then you've got 7 % of, you know, your ability to communicate well when you're writing because you have nothing

nonverbal.

And so it leaves so much up to

I don't want to say chance, but it just leaves a lot of room. Imagination, exactly. It leaves a lot of room. Yeah. And so writing a tone document and having a tone document very clear for your team helps them to work with an intention so that you at least have the best possible chance at making sure you're communicating what you want the other person to receive, if that makes sense.

Jen Weaver (05:26)
Imagination. Interpretation.

Right. It does. yeah.

Well, so let me say this. Most support teams know that tone is important, but maybe can't quite define it. Can you tell us what is tone?

Priscilla (05:53)
Yeah.

What is tone? mean, tone is a hard thing to define. I mean, that's real. I think it's so much about the feeling of how you leave an email. That's kind of how we approached it anyway, was, OK, what?

do we want our podcasters, in our case, but our customers, what do we want them to feel when they leave this email? And so that's kind of like, tone can come down to super nuanced phrases and things like that. But when I think about kind of like a broader definition, what I'm thinking about is, how is this making you feel? What is the tone I'm setting for this conversation in a way that I want you to leave it with a certain feeling? So when I started to kind of step back

Jen Weaver (06:20)
Mm-hmm.

Priscilla (06:40)
and go, OK, I need to develop this document. I need to figure out what this tone is for our team and how I'm going to develop. Like, how am I going to decide what the most important things are for our tone document? But then also, how am I going to communicate it to my team in a way that we can stay consistent with it over time?

balance. So that's where I would say to start. Most companies are going to have a set of values. I think we all know some companies they're more forefront and some companies they're not. For Buzzsprout, our values are in front of your face every day. We talk about them all the time. And so it's really a great place for me to start when I'm thinking, OK, what do we want?

customers to feel when they write in to support and they leave an interaction with us, how do want them to feel? Well, that's going to kind of depend on how our values are structured. And so that's where I started, kind of going through our values and what are the things that we find important in how we treat people beyond the reality of the product that we're supporting. You know, it's kind of like, it's bigger than that. And then you want to look at your customer needs. So what is it that your customer is expecting? So when you're setting

your tone, might think, okay, well, I want it to be a super fun, casual, exciting tone. Well, if you work in insurance, that might not be the tone you want, because you might want a tone that's a little bit more professional, because you're working with some really serious situations. But if you're working in podcasting, you might want a little bit more fun and casual.

document. The second thing that I did that I think is really important, and it kind of goes back to what I was saying about customers wanting to have them leave with a certain kind of feeling, is that that was really the question I honed in on. OK, what is the ideal situation when a customer writes in and then they are done? They close the email. They've now worked with us. Everything's resolved.

how do I want them to feel? What impact do I want to have had on them as the customer support professional they're working with? And that really guided me to create some communication goals for my team. So before we even get to like tone, these were like communication goals. Like how do want them to feel? What do I want them to think about our product?

when they're done interacting with us. And so I came up, I'll just tell you what we came up for ours because hopefully that'll help maybe inspire some people to think about what it would be for them. So for us, we want people to feel like Buzzsprout is simple. When you're done with an email conversation with Buzzsprout, I want you to be like, man, that was easy. I don't want you to feel like, that was difficult. They helped me, that's great, but it was super difficult.

I want you to think, Buzzsprout is simple, this is so good. I want you to think that Buzzsprout is on your team. I want you to feel like you just talked to someone on your team. You didn't just talk to a random support team person who you'll never speak to again, but you just talked to Kara who is on your podcasting team. That's what I want you to feel. I want you to know that Buzzsprout is always improving, right? So when you close out that conversation, I want you to feel like, gosh, they really care about getting better. They really care about making updates.

clear in the way they were just talking to me that they care about improving the product that I'm paying for. And then for podcasting, this is maybe kind of unique, but I want them to feel that Buzzsprout cares about their voice and cares about their story. So it's more than just like, I'm here for you if you need me, but I care about you. Like there's actually some care there. Sometimes I think about the way people approach customer support and it's like, I want you to feel like I care

you but I actually want to care about you and I want everyone on my team to actually care about the people who writing in and so I think the only way that you walk away with that real feeling of I feel cared for I feel like they care about what I have to say is if the people on the other side of whether it's an email communication or phone or whatever it is that they feel that they actually care it's hard to fake that if you know what I mean to say like okay I'm how do I convince this person I care about them

them

when I don't actually care about them. So we try to look at it in a way of, we actually do care about the people. So those are like four pillars, and they drive the tone that we use to write emails and communicate with our podcasters. And so they're not necessarily like...

these nitty-gritty like individual ideas or strategies, these are these more broad driving factors. So it might not be that every single email hits every single one of these goals, but I want these four things to be consistent when I look at our emails and the way people respond to our emails. If someone comes back and they're like, this is so complicated. And I'm like, man, we really didn't hit that goal of making them feel like it was simple. We want to accurately communicate that it's simple because that is a value that BuzzFeed

Sprout has as a company as a product.

Jen Weaver (11:34)
Are these the goals, the tone pillars that you came up with originally or did those shift over time?

Priscilla (11:43)
So they really have stayed pretty consistent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, in the customer's perspective, along with our values. Because a lot of times when

Jen Weaver (11:46)
You grounded them in your customer's perspective. And so that's, you know, that's pretty basic.

Priscilla (11:59)
you're evaluating whether your customer support is good or if it's not, the question is where do you go to find that, like to find if it's good or not. And I think there's a balance between some of it is what the customers want and some of it is what we believe and feel as a company. And so there is a balance. You know, it is very important for us to make sure that Buzzsprout is simple and to make sure that it is easy to use. That is one of the main things about Buzzsprout and one of the reasons why a lot of people love to

use it is because it is simple and easy to use. If there's a super complicated issue that we're trying to figure out with a customer, then the question might be, hey, actually maybe we need to figure out how to simplify this because it doesn't align with our product value.

And so it might not be that the customer is actually frustrated about it, but I don't want that to be the norm when we're communicating with them. And so in the beginning when I was setting these, definitely, like they went through iterations of what do we want these four big ideas to be. But once they were set, it really has felt pretty consistent over the last several years that these are our driving pillars.

Jen Weaver (13:09)
And that makes sense to me as a Buzzsprout customer, because it's one of the primary things I tell people about podcasting with Buzzsprout is you just click a button, and it goes to Spotify. it just walks you right through it. And so that's a brand consistency that I think support teams need to be thinking about.

Priscilla (13:22)
Yeah.

Jen Weaver (13:29)
You know, when you bring it back to your company values, you're bringing it back to your whole unified experience for the customer from UI to a support ticket.

Priscilla (13:38)
Yeah, absolutely. Because if you, as a support team, are trying to communicate that Buzzsprout is simple, and then they go into Buzzsprout and the UI is so confusing and you can't find the billing page and it just doesn't make any sense, that's not gonna feel cohesive between support and development. And so it is really important to make that remarkable experience overall to have that cohesion in the entire brand.

Jen Weaver (14:00)
So

for teams, I know there are support managers out there listening and watching who maybe don't have as cohesive of a company that they're working for, or maybe their company doesn't have a values first perspective. What would you say to help those people, those managers, those leaders, to develop a tone without setting unattainable goals?

Priscilla (14:23)
Yeah, I think it can be hard because you might want to sit down and go, I'm just going to define these kind of in a silo, what my opinion is on this product and our customers. And I'm going to define it. And then I'm just going to tell everyone to follow it. But I think that it's really important to go to.

management leaders, whoever is setting that for the whole company and make that a really important piece of it. Say, need to sit down with someone who is setting the culture here, who is setting the intention behind our product and why we do things. And I want to make sure that I am aligned with you before I start building out what these look for or look like in support. So you might not have.

like set values as a company or they might be so broad that you can't narrow it down but you can go and talk with your head of product or you can talk with you know your head of customer or whatever it is wherever the you know people making those big decisions are and have that conversation and it might be hard to get in front of them but I think that's an important first step when you're trying to build that cohesion into support and the rest of the product.

Jen Weaver (15:08)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it might be like step 1a. So use your company values. in the absence of those, or like you said, if they're just too generic, then find an ally who you know is also thinking about these things, who you can start to unsilo yourself in that project. That makes perfect sense.

Priscilla (15:32)
Yeah.

Right. Yep. And if you

don't have that ally, because I have worked at...

places where it's not there, it's just not possible, then you might have to build them in the silo. And you might have to think, well, as the person who is running the support team, how do I want our customers to feel? And you might actually have to lead it. And then once you're doing it and you're seeing customers react well in support, then you reach out to the marketing team and you go, hey guys, I did this. This is how we communicate. You might want to look at this and

consider

it for your team or adjust it for your team. You might have to lead that if it's something where you're at a company that's not valuing that or putting intention behind developing that.

any hard pushback, which I think is unique to me and my position here. I don't think I'm doing anything necessary to get that, but I work at a company that really values that. And so I think that's a little bit of not the answer you were looking for, but I think that for me it was really whittling it down and finding,

Okay, what are the things that we're gonna focus on? Because you cannot focus on everything. If you set up 12 communication goals for your team, you're not gonna achieve any of them because there's too many to achieve. So we sat with four and we said, these four encapsulate what we want people to feel when they leave an interaction with us. any more than that, and even four might be too many, but any more than that is just not attainable. People aren't gonna be able to

to

do that because it's too many things to try to communicate through an email while being accurate, while being quick.

Jen Weaver (17:24)
So you're folding those into a rubric that doesn't just include those pillars of tone. They're also thinking about other things. So you have to think about keeping it minimal.

Priscilla (17:31)
Yeah,

tone is one part of how we communicate.

Jen Weaver (17:35)
And you mentioned earlier these pillars that you created these for are, they're the core. They're where you start, but they're not necessarily actionable. So where do you go from there?

Priscilla (17:46)
right.

So from there, I went to characteristics.

And I said, OK, if these are the things we want to communicate, how are we going to do that? How are we going to communicate to someone that we're on their team? Right. That's one of our goals. So OK, what characteristics are we looking for that will communicate that? And so I'll go through these that we have here because basically I took all this and put it into a document. Very simple. Into a Word doc. Well, I guess not a Word doc. Into a document inside of our project management tool.

clarified this and kind of gave a lot of details about what this characteristic looks like and some examples of how this might sound in an email so that when people are reading this they go, that's what that means. Like that's what she's saying and that's why we do it that way so that when you're reading it or training people on it there's the buy-in. So, okay, so the first thing I say at the top of this document is that all of our communication is intentional. When I was in college I took

took

a course on writing and there were a lot of

projects that we had to do that were like very intentional sentence structure projects. So it was like, it wasn't, write a four paragraph or a four page research document on whatever. It was like, write one paragraph, but you have to include a sentence that's shaped this way, a sentence that communicates this, a sentence that communicates this, and one that communicates this, and that's it. And it was so hard because you had to be so intentional with every word that you used. But it really taught me

that the best writing is super intentional writing. so that's our overarching thing when we talk about this tone is that we are intentional with what we write. We are not throwing in sentences without a purpose. It's really unusual to hear someone on the support team at Buzzsprout go, you know, I really don't know why I said that because we have a reason behind everything we're saying. And whether it's communicating information and fact or whether it's communicating tone, everything is there for a reason.

characteristic that we use is friendly. So the Buzzsprout support team is friendly.

It's pretty self-explanatory. It's pretty easy to know, but we are friendly. We like people. We are people helping people. We are not getting caught up in the fact that we are experts in podcasting because there's some facets of podcasting we're not experts in. And so we want to be human about that. So we are friendly people. We're kind. We're not going to be rude to you. You should enjoy writing into us because you know we're friendly. Okay. There's number one. Pretty easy. We're casual. We do not get super professional when we

speak. For the most part, we type and write how we would talk. And so we keep things casual. And again, this is specific to Buzzsprout. For your company, you might not want casual to be your second characteristic. But for us, it is really important that we keep things casual because it keeps us approachable and it means people feel comfortable coming to us because they know that they're not going to have to jump through, you know, AI word.

bubbles to figure out, you know, what we're saying when we're trying to use all these big fancy words, you know, we're empathetic, everyone in customer support talks about empathy, right? Or at least they should, if they're not, they should be talking about it. But that's really important to be empathetic. We know as support professionals, that the time and effort that people are putting into their podcast, that is real, and it is personal. And so if someone writes into

us and says, my goodness, I deleted my episode. We're going to be super empathetic about that because we know that it means a lot to them. Even if it doesn't mean necessarily a lot to us because we aren't connected to their episode, we are connected to them because we are humans and we have lost things before. And so we're going to be empathetic in that. And that's just such a big part of having good quality support.

Jen Weaver (21:37)
It's beautiful. Yeah.

Priscilla (21:39)
We're thorough. So that's another characteristic of the Buzzsprout team. We're thorough. We're going to take the time to be detail specific. We're not going to make you fill in the gaps of information. We're going to lay it out for you. And that means that we're going to send you resources alongside explaining the answer to the question that you have or the super technical issue you're running into. We're going to use clarifying words. We're going to anticipate questions.

just going to send you the fastest response and move on to the next email. We're going to be thorough and we're going to give you the time that you need.

We're excited. This is my favorite one. We're excited. We really are like we all think about you know happy to help I'm happy to help and it's like are you happy to help though like you're on the other side of this email It's the middle of your workday. Are you really happy to help me right now? And the answer for our team is yes Everyone on our team is happy and excited to be doing the work. They're doing now There are definitely days that we are off and it's like man. I don't want to be doing this and so it's a challenge sometimes to

actually be happy about the email that you're in. In some cases, we'll say, hey, if you're really struggling with that, like take an hour and get out of the inbox because people can see if you're not excited. And so for us, one of them is being excited. It's a joy to do this job for us. We enjoy working with podcasters. That is like a big driver of how we hire people is you love people. You love helping people. Well, then this is the job for you because we need you to be excited and joyful about it when you're

doing it because that really does come through to the customer even if you don't intentionally put it in there. You know what mean? One time I think we had a customer leave a review and they said something like or I think this was somewhere on a social post or something like that and they said every time I write into the support team I feel like they're actually excited to talk to me and I don't think I've ever felt that way about a support team and it made me just like so happy to hear it because I was like that is what I want you

Jen Weaver (23:18)
Mm-hmm.

Priscilla (23:40)
feel and we are like everyone on the support team is so happy to help you and I mean that with the full meaning of the word happy which is great.

Jen Weaver (23:51)
Yeah, can you speak to, this is a whole other episode topic. We can't get too much into it, but can you speak to ways that you support the team? Like you said, you can take an hour off if you're just not excited to answer these emails in terms of like proportion of queue time to how much time they are there or like other staffing issues that just support them and being happy to help.

Priscilla (23:54)
Sure.

Yeah, well if you think about what people want from an email, they want it to be fast, they want it to be accurate, but they also want it to be enjoyable. I mean that's part of it. That's what separates good support from like fantastic, remarkable support. And so you can be accurate and really unhappy and in a queue for eight hours straight. Or the way that we structure it is you're not in a queue for more than two hours.

I if you're in the support queue for Buzzsprout, you're in for two hours and then you're out for an hour and that hour can typically is working on projects outside of support. But if you're like, man, I'm not in a great headspace after that two hour shift. I need to go on a walk like I need to get outside. need to touch grass as the, you know, Gen Z kids would say. But like that idea of I need to just reset. That's encouraged. It's like, hey, go outside, like do that other work later when you need to. But right now it's

Jen Weaver (24:55)
Mm-hmm.

Priscilla (25:05)
most important that you get yourself to a place where you feel good and excited about this work again. And then we also just, you know, what other things? We have a lot of...

the ability to kind of pass emails back and forth between the team.

So if you're working with Sally and you go, man, we've hit a wall. I really cannot give Sally any more patience. I am done with this email. You have the freedom and are encouraged to pass it along to someone else who has a fresh reserve of patience or empathy for Sally, and they can come in and give that

And so I think that those kind of things that are just known and it's known that at any point if you need a break you can get up and take a break. I've heard horror stories from other support teams where you cannot leave your seat.

Or you have to start a timer when you walk away and you only get 30 seconds to be away from your computer. Like that is not going to put your team in a head space where they are excited and happy to help people. It's just not. And so we try to be really intentional about saying, hey, you know your own mental space better than I do. And so you make those calls and do what you need to do to get into that. And if that means taking some time and going outside for a few minutes so that you can come back

Jen Weaver (26:22)
It sounds like making tone a really important part of the whole conversation really reinforces that. In addition to the staffing choices that you've made, just as a support specialist, knowing that I'm essentially going to be measured on these elements of tone makes a big difference to just knowing what the leadership prioritizes.

Can you just connect the dots for me real quick? you mentioned the tone pillars and the characteristics. Do those characteristics map to the pillars? Are they sort of like under them?

Priscilla (26:44)
Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Yeah, so if you look at those goals, those pillars that I said in the beginning, and then you look at these characteristics, they are gonna fall into it. you know, the we're excited and we're empathetic and we're friendly, all of that kind of maps back to the characteristic of Buzzsprout. So the casual is back to Buzzsprout being simple, right? Or friendly, we're on your team, the encouragement, we're on your team, we're always improving, that's the...

Jen Weaver (27:00)
Mm.

Priscilla (27:21)
That's the thorough side of things, right? We're always going to be really thorough with how we're explaining something because we care about the technical stuff too. We're always trying to get better. We care about your voice. So we're going to be empathetic to when you run into an issue that you can't resolve. We're going to be empathetic there. So all of those characteristics map back to one or more of those pillars in a way that reinforces that as a feeling when someone leaves an interaction with us.

Jen Weaver (27:50)
Is there another layer too? So you've got your goals and then your characteristics. Do you have examples you provide the team or like specificity?

Priscilla (27:57)
Yep. Yeah,

so within each characteristic, I'll talk about why we are communicating that way and so how that like maps back to one of those goals. But then also some examples of what that might look like. So for example, with empathy, when you're trying to be empathetic with someone, a lot of times people think that that means apologizing.

But that's not what it means. Empathy does not equal apologizing. Sometimes you can apologize and there's empathy in that, but they are not the same thing. And so in our tone document, we'll explain like, this doesn't mean we apologize for things that aren't our fault, but it does mean that we can relate with someone and be there for them and care about them. And here are some ways you can do that. Here are some sentences or some phrases that will help communicate that in a written way. And then we'll include strategies underneath that too.

So for example speaking on empathy if you are writing an email and you want it to be empathetic Don't put your empathy aspect at the very end because by the time someone gets to the end of your email They've already decided the tone

And so if you have this empathy part at the end, they're not going to believe you. At least in my experience, they don't believe you. So lead with empathy. Start strong. Like that is what I want you to get out of this is that I care about you and that I care that this thing happened. So I'm going to lead with empathy before I get into starting to solve the problem. That sets the tone for the rest of the email. And so we'll put those kind of strategies under each characteristic so that when you're training on this document, you really have a good idea for, OK, if I'm being thorough, that means I can use sent

that start with, know, let me clarify or I hope that makes sense is a good one at the end of a sentence to say, does this make sense? I'm giving you the ability to say it doesn't because I want to make sure that we're on the same page here. Does that answer your question? Okay.

Jen Weaver (29:48)
Yeah, it does.

And it really gives me a picture. And I think we'll create a resource that's maybe an example document or a template that kind of follows that sort of, let me think, goal, characteristic, example, strategy kind of framework. Yeah, I love it. That's brilliant. And you mentioned training your team on it. You're training your team now as they come on. But when you first developed this document, there was a time when you had to introduce it, right?

Priscilla (30:14)
Yeah.

Right. So we sat down, we did it in per well, I think some of us were remote at the time. So we didn't do necessarily all of it in person, but we did it all synchronously. So we were together, and we walked through every piece of this document together as a team. Actually, now that I think about it, we were all together, we were at one of our team meetups, our company meetups. And so we're all in the same room. And we went through it piece by piece. And we discussed even more than what was written on, you know, the page. And I went and I pulled examples of

Jen Weaver (30:15)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Priscilla (30:44)
emails that showed, this tone really lined up with these goals and showed these characteristics. so it helped to see it in real examples. Because I think that, you know, training new people that come on the team, that's really important, of course.

But when you're building this and you have people on the team already, it's going to be harder to get them to kind of move into that tone because they've already been writing in whatever way they've been writing up until now. And so it was really important to take the time that was needed to go through all the examples and everything and to really have a discussion about why we're doing it so you get buy-in from everyone on the team. Mm-hmm.

Jen Weaver (31:20)
It's really a change management initiative. And something you said earlier is

impactful that when they have an understanding of why we're doing it, you get buy-in from them. Did you feel any resistance? can you imagine? Well, let me say that a different way. Was there any resistance to that change?

Priscilla (31:30)
Yeah. Yeah.

Outwardly no.

So when you're sitting there and talking with everyone, everyone, you know, we were all in agreement and it was great. In practice, you could see some. So there would definitely be times where people, the intentionality behind our emails wasn't showing up. so there would, and this was, you know, years ago when we were first trying to get this habit, you know, there were definitely times where I was like, hey, did you take the time to think through the tone of this email before you sent it? And I'd like, I don't know, I was moving too quickly or something like that. And so it definitely took

Jen Weaver (31:53)
Hmm.

Priscilla (32:14)
some time in some cases for the tone to become a habit that was not necessarily having to be worked on every single email. But for the most part, the buy-in was there. It just took some time to get it in practice.

Jen Weaver (32:27)
Were you using a QA system or some kind of conversation review at the time?

Priscilla (32:32)
Well, we would do, this was a couple, several years ago, we had a very relaxed email review process. We've since really shaped that up a lot more. But back when we first were defining that tone, our email review was a lot more relaxed. It was just me selecting emails, getting together with the support specialist and reviewing it with them. And it was, there wasn't a big, there wasn't a rubric necessarily.

Jen Weaver (32:46)
Mm-hmm.

Priscilla (33:00)
we

were kind of relating it back to that tone document, but it wasn't anything super structured at that time. Now it's a lot more defined and our measurement is there is a rubric that we're measuring emails against and the way we select emails is different and all of that is a little bit different of a process. And so now I don't want to jump ahead, but now the way we review those emails is we select five

random emails a week and so we're constantly reviewing emails so it's a weekly thing which I think there's something really beneficial about doing it weekly so you know this week I'm reviewing five emails that I wrote last week so it is fresh in my mind it's not from two months ago and we have a rubric where we measure them against are they educational and so that

you know, the thorough falls under educational, It like encapsulates some of those characteristics and some of those goals. So are they educational? Are they accurate? Accuracy is a really big deal, right? It needs to be correct. Are they clear and are they human?

those are the four scales that we kind of measure our emails against. And then we rate them, and that's how we go through that.

Jen Weaver (34:16)
It sounds like that QA rubric grew after your tone document. And your tone document kind of informed it, which is now I'm realizing kind of an unexpected benefit of developing this tone document. Because then it really informs your QA as you build that. Yeah.

Priscilla (34:32)
Yeah, it did.

It definitely did. sat down as a team and we said, okay, these are the characteristics that we have all decided are important and we want to have a better way of measuring if we're meeting those goals because, know, we've all, know, CSAT, the customer's opinion of the work is one way to measure, but it is not the only way and should not be the only way because we all know that we can write a really great email that's super in tone

it still doesn't get interpreted the way that we want it to, or a customer might hate it just because they don't like the answer.

that it's not a yes or it's a no or whatever that is. And so you just can't always go based on what the customer is saying. So we wanted to make sure that what we were doing was we were measuring the quality of our work on our end. And so that's why we kind of sat down and built it. And so we said, OK, these are the things that we care about. And we wrote down every single characteristic and then a bunch of like sub ones underneath. And then we figured out how to come up with in our we were looking for four scales that would kind

of encapsulate all of those things. And so we came up with educational, accurate, clear, and human. And as a team, we developed that rubric because, again, it's all about buy-in. And we're a small team. There's six of us. And so it's pretty easy for us to sit down and do those things together. I would imagine it's much harder when you have teams of hundreds, obviously. But you might be able to get your leads together and get them buy-in. And then they can, with their smaller teams.

Jen Weaver (35:40)
Mm-hmm.

Priscilla (36:05)
It really was a really great way for us and it has been a really cool process to do consistently as a team.

Jen Weaver (36:15)
I guess I'm going to ask a question just kind of around speed bumps and cooperation from the team. So you developed this tone document and you pretty much knew what you wanted in it, but you also wanted to get buy-in and collaboration from your team. How did you balance those in terms of like someone gave an example that you then folded into the document as it evolved over time?

Priscilla (36:40)
Yeah, I mean with a lot of respect and authenticity and honesty, I think, you you sit down with your team and you want feedback and not even just feedback, you want input because a lot of times, I mean, I don't know if it's clear from this recording, but I am a talker. like to talk. And so hard for me sometimes to be quiet and let other people speak first, especially. And so, you know, I think I was very intentional when we were having these meetings when I knew what I

wanted and I knew what my opinions were but what I want is for the people on my team to have their thoughts be heard. Not feel heard necessarily always but be actually heard. I want them to know that they are heard and so I would sit back and be silent and let them have their input and share their thoughts and then in some cases you might have to tactfully say okay this is important and what you've just said is important but it's not one of our pillars. It doesn't align

in this way. And so while it's important that that is a way we talk to someone, it's not something that's going to be measured in this rubric. And so finding tactical ways to express that with a shared trust between the team I think is hard sometimes, but is important without making people feel like, man, I don't want to ever speak again. So you have to be really careful in that way.

For me, a lot of it was able to be done because we have such a small team that has a lot of shared trust.

Jen Weaver (38:11)
And so you did you have gone back over time and adjusted that document it's been several years since you created it, right? What is that? does that revision process look like for you?

Priscilla (38:21)
it really is probably should be more consistent.

But it really, for me, is just every time there's someone new that comes on the team, in any part of the company, they'll read through the document. And so I always want to make sure I look through it. I make sure it's refined in any way. If there's things that have changed, I update it then. There's not so much of a consistent go back every two months and look through it. But typically, it's a couple times a year that new people are coming onto the team. And so at that point, I'll go back and I'll revise it and make sure that everything is still accurate.

or if something has changed or if we've decided that this is no longer important, then we'll adjust it. But, yeah, I don't have like a consistent process for that yet, but maybe I should, I don't know.

Jen Weaver (39:00)
No, that's great. That's great. mean, it

sounds like the trigger is really people coming on the team, or you notice a change that needs to be made. And that's just as valid of a trigger for doing it as an arbitrary amount of time.

Priscilla (39:14)
Yeah. Well,

and the reality of the situation is this hasn't changed a ton since we built it. The things that we care about as a company, the things that the way that we want you to feel as a customer, that hasn't changed. Those core values are still our core values. And so the strategies we use to get there are not changing a ton. And so that means that it doesn't have to change the document that much either.

Jen Weaver (39:37)
Also, you mentioned training. Do you have advice for us on how to work in tone to your training process? And you're welcome to mention tools or if you use an LMS or whatever.

Priscilla (39:49)
Yeah.

For training, I usually will have someone on the team. It usually isn't me. So I'll usually have one of our senior specialists meet and walk through the document with the new hire and make it really personal. The same way that we did it when I was training them and say, you know, this is why we do it. Here's a strategy for how to make sure that you're able to be empathetic. Here's this. If you ever have any questions about this, come to me.

until you can get to a point where you're doing this without having to think about it so intentionally. And so I think, you know, it's a one-on-one.

synchronous process in that training. We like to do a lot of our training, a balance of async and sync, and so that's one of the things that we think is really important, that that first time you're seeing it, you're walking through it with someone, and then everyone on the team is expected to study that and revisit it often so that it is part of their makeup as a Buzzsprout support specialist.

Jen Weaver (40:49)
So let's say they do that and they're trained and they're reviewing it, but a support specialist just is consistently not quite getting tone right in their QA. What's your way, what's your go-to for communicating that, correcting that without making them feel like they're in trouble or losing an amount of dignity?

Priscilla (41:09)
Yeah, well, it'll usually come up during the QA. It'll usually be that we go, hey, you're consistently getting not great scores on this human side of things. And so I need you to go out of your way to do that. Or what I'll do is I'll...

Jen Weaver (41:18)
You

Priscilla (41:24)
pair them up with someone who's really good in that area. And I'll say, I want you to study Brian's emails because he is so personable and he never misses a chance to celebrate someone. And I see that sometimes you, that's not one of your strong points. Like other things you're really great at, the tech you have down, but the celebrating people, that's not as, it doesn't come as naturally to you, but it comes really naturally to Brian. So I'll pair them up with someone who's really strong in the area that they're weak and help

that kind of crossover training work a little bit. And most of the time,

there are plenty of ways that most of the time when I run into those situations where someone is lacking in one area they are excelling in other areas and so you can really balance it you can say hey listen you are really good in ABC but in this last one you like this is not where we need it to be and we all hold ourselves to a high standard and so we got to figure out how can like we work together to bring this up and and so I think

I if someone is really struggling in every area of our rubric, that's going to be a lot harder of a conversation. But most of the time, that's not the case.

Jen Weaver (42:38)
So we talked about how you measure this with your QA system, but

How do you measure the success of your tone document and of this process?

Priscilla (42:46)
There is a higher level of consistency when it comes to our emails. And that is because of the tone document. It's because we've all gotten on the same page with what we expect and what we want our podcasters, the customers to feel when they reach out to us.

Also just like, you you hear from

customers you hear them use words that you

put in your tone document and that is so reassuring. So when someone says, yeah, when someone says, man, it just feels like Buzzsprout is on my team. Thank you so much for the help. You're like, boom, 100%. And then when someone does that and they say, man, you make this so simple, you screenshot that and you post it for your entire team to see. And you say, Kara made Sally feel like this was simple and accurately communicated that. Like shout out to Kara who was successful in doing that. Everyone else should read this.

Jen Weaver (43:10)
comes full circle.

Priscilla (43:36)
Email and see how she did it like you make noise about it when that happens because that is the coolest thing When you've defined your goal and then someone speaks it right back at you. It's the best And then people outside of support have reached out and said hey can I see your tone document because I'm working with our Facebook moderators and They are struggling to find that tone and so I would love to have some of those strategies for my team or hey our marketing department our marketing tone is different but

but I want to make sure it aligns with what you've done in support or how you've built this. And so kind of that.

Now it's a tone that the support team has set and that we are following, but the rest of the team is starting to use that as a guide for themselves. And so that's really what we've seen over the last several years. And it's been really rewarding to see that and to see how just writing down the things that you're already doing when it comes to tone and when it comes to how you talk to people can have such a big impact on everyone in the circle.

Jen Weaver (44:38)
I love it. That brings it full circle from creating that document to just releasing it into the whole team