Customer Support Leaders
Customer Support Leaders have been there, on the front line with customers. They understand how things work, and the value of support. They understand the needs and foibles of their customer base. Unlike most other disciplines, there’s no training for this role. No two CS Leadership roles are alike. No two CS Leaders are alike. So this is our opportunity to hear from those leaders and learn from them. Whether you’re a CS leader now, or you aspire to be, this is the podcast for you! Hear different leaders discuss a topic with me, Charlotte Ward.
Episodes
376 episodes
313: Build with AI and Bring the Team with You; with Italo Belandria
You can feel the ground shifting in customer support right now: AI is giving non-technical leaders the ability to build. I sit down with Italo Belandria, Head of Customers at Ringover, to unpack what that actually looks like day to day when you...
312: We're Going to Die, So What?!; with Valentina Thoerner
You’re going to die, and pretending otherwise is a terrible project plan. Val Turner joins us with a blunt premise and then makes it surprisingly hopeful: if you accept the timeline, you can design better defaults for your family, your future s...
311: Stop Escalating And Start Routing; with Alex Batchelor
“Escalate to engineering” sounds normal, but it quietly shapes how your whole company treats support. We challenge that default and replace it with a more accurate model: routing work to the right skill set, while keeping escalation for the mom...
310: Bringing Cohesion To Chaos; with Colin Flanigan
Chaos in customer support rarely starts as chaos. It starts as “organic” growth, a few heroic workarounds, a helpful engineer jumping into Zendesk, or a fast acquisition that bolts on a new product and a new team without a shared operating syst...
309: Servant Leadership In Support; with Nadia Ivanova
Servant leadership gets talked about a lot, but it’s often treated like a vague “be nice to people” slogan. We take a sharper angle: servant leadership in customer support is competence plus care. That means knowing what you’re doing and genuin...
308: Leading Without Trust; with Ash Rhodes
Trust doesn’t magically appear because you got the title, and it definitely doesn’t return because you delivered one heroic win. When a customer support team has been burned by toxic management, constant escalations, broken processes, or a prod...
307: How Customers Experience AI; with Shep Hyken
AI can make customer support faster, cheaper, and more consistent, but it can also quietly destroy trust when it becomes a wall between customers and real help. Charlotte Ward sits down with customer experience expert Shep Hyken to get brutally...
306: Outcomes Over Optics; with Carl Lenocker
Great support can look “perfect” on paper and still fail the customer in real life. That tension is what we dig into with Carl Lenocker, a senior customer success executive, executive coach, and longtime support leader, as we unpack a simple id...
305: Measuring Your Support Maturity; with Neal Travis
Support teams don’t usually fail because they “don’t care” or “aren’t working hard enough.” They fail because they scale on instinct, accumulate tribal knowledge, and measure whatever is easiest until the whole system starts to wobble. We sit d...
304: Reverse One-to-Ones; with Greg Skirving
Your one-on-ones shouldn’t feel like a weekly status treadmill where we do all the talking and our team does all the nodding. Charlotte Ward sits down with Greg Skirving to unpack a deceptively simple leadership shift: the reverse one-on-one, w...
303: Practically Perfect Support; with Jason Yun
Mary Poppins is “practically perfect” and that makes her a surprisingly useful guide for modern customer support leadership. We (Charlotte Ward and Jason Yun, Head of Provider Success at Prax Health) use the film’s songs and characters to trans...
302: Using AI to identify coaching opportunities; with Rob Dwyer
Most coaching goes wrong before the coaching conversation even starts. If we only review a tiny sample of calls, chats, or tickets, we end up “coaching the seventh hole” and missing the real issue that shows up earlier in the customer journey, ...
301: Using AI To Make Us Better Managers; with Reagan Helms
Your calendar says “1:1s,” but your brain hears “context switching.” Charlotte Ward sits down with Reagan Helms, VP of Customer Experience at Planning Center, to unpack a practical way AI can make us better managers: a management assistant that...
300: Reflecting on the Year So Far; with Alec Moloney
A lot has changed since the start of the year and not just job titles and cities. Charlotte Ward sits down with returning guest Alec Maloney to take stock of what is actually happening inside modern customer support teams as AI, automation, and...
299: AI Won't Fix Your Knowledge Quality Problem - It'll Expose It; with Leslie O’Flahaven
AI can generate a clean looking knowledge article in seconds, but that speed comes with a trap: it makes bad knowledge easier to publish and easier to surface. Leslie O’Flahavan joins me to unpack a simple claim with big consequences for custom...
298: Returning to the Office; with Andrew Rios
The office can be a productivity killer or a leadership advantage, and the difference usually comes down to one thing: whether we design the day or let the day design us. I’m joined by Andrew Rios to get real about returning to the office after...
297: AI Beyond The Queue; with Robert Cabral
AI in customer support gets reduced to one tired idea: ship a chatbot and cut tickets. That mindset misses where the real leverage is. We sit down with Robert Cabral, Head of Customer Experience at Runway, to talk about “AI beyond the queue” an...
296: Flipping Away From Leadership; with Jenny Dempsey
Getting laid off can scramble more than your finances. It can shake your identity, your confidence, and the story you’ve been told about what “success” in customer support leadership is supposed to look like. That’s why this conversation with J...
295: Fearless CX; with Nate Brown
Customers are talking about you where your VOC program rarely looks and it’s shaping revenue, retention, and trust. Nate Brown joins me to introduce Fearless CX, a bold and practical way to lead customer experience in a time when fear is high, ...
294: What Support Does When AI Takes The Tickets; with Ryan Klausner
AI is starting to take the queue. So what’s left for a customer support team once automation handles triage, repetitive questions, onboarding, and a big chunk of ticket volume? Ryan Klausner joins me to get specific about “life after AI” and wh...
293: Roles AI is Creating in Support; with Hilary Dudek
AI is already in your support queue, but the real question is what it’s doing to your career path. I’m joined by Hilary Dudek, Head of Customer Experience at Gamma, to get specific about how AI is reshaping customer support roles and why the “b...
292: Tailoring Your Coaching as People Grow; with Andrew Rios
Growth rarely happens on a straight line, and neither should coaching. We sat down with Andrew Rios, Head of Customer Experience at Cityside Fiber, to explore how leaders can tailor their coaching as people mature—from fresh hires forming their...
291: The Changing Identity of Support; with Lauren Eimers
What happens when AI automates the work that built your career story? We sit down with Lauren Eimers to trace a path from clinical counseling and genetics into customer support leadership and onward to clinical science liaison, then use that jo...
290: From Timelines To Fit: Making Smart Support Hires; with Matt Dale
Hiring plans look clean on a roadmap until real candidates, real timelines, and real markets show up. We unpack a practical, humane approach to building a support team that can handle peak seasons without sacrificing quality: plan backwards fro...
289: Cultivating Customer Champions; with Greg Skirving
What if a “ticket” isn’t a ticket at all, but an engagement where both sides own the outcome? We sit down with Greg Skirving to unpack how customer champions transform support from reactive break fix to a partnership that moves faster, learns f...