Customer Support Leaders
Customer Support Leaders
272: Transforming Support Teams: Leadership, Collaboration, and Building Cross-Functional Relationships; with Steve Tondé
Ever wondered how a support desk manager transforms the reputation of their team from the "black sheep" to a pivotal player in brand development and customer interaction? Join me, Charlotte Ward, as I sit down with Steve Tondé from PayShepherd, a Canadian fintech company, who shares his transformative leadership journey and the evolving role of support teams in today's tech-driven landscape. With the rise of SaaS, support teams are stepping into the spotlight, and Steve shares how engaging with critical departments like finance and product development can prioritize customer feedback and drive impactful change. Through his personal experiences, Steve offers valuable insights into the power of transparency and communication across teams, providing a treasure trove of advice for new leaders eager to understand their company and its stakeholders from the start.
Explore the intricate web of interdepartmental dynamics as Steve and I discuss the importance of understanding key performance indicators (KPIs) across different functions to foster successful collaboration. I recount a personal experience where misalignment with another department's KPIs led to a roadblock, highlighting the necessity of building honest relationships to bridge these gaps. We'll delve into the art of finding parallel goals for shared success and the value of stepping out of comfort zones to engage with colleagues across the organization. This episode is a humbling reminder that sometimes our priorities need reevaluation to align with broader organizational needs, underscoring the essential role of relationship-building in nurturing growth and improvement.
Hello and welcome to episode 272 of the Customer Support Leaders podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward Today. Welcome, steve Tonde, to talk about building relationships across the business. I'd like to welcome to the podcast today, steve Tonde. Steve, it's lovely to have you join me for the first time on the podcast. Would you like to start by introducing yourself?
Steve Tondé:Absolutely. Thank you, happy to be here. I am, first of all, mayanna's father. She's two years old, she's great and, by the day, I'm a support desk manager at a fintech company based out of Canada called PayShepherd. And what we do is we allow our clients and the heavy industry space so mining, pulp and paper, oil and gas to have honest conversation with their vendors, keeping things transparent as to how our projects are progressing, how much capital is required to develop a project, how much workforce is on the field doing said project and making sure that things move along in a transparent manner. I love that.
Charlotte Ward:I love that. It's fintech that's helping people have honest conversations. It's two things that you don't often hear put together in the same centers very glad to hear it. Very glad to hear it. I'll go and check that out. Thank you so much for the intro. What are we talking about today?
Steve Tondé:yep, this is a um, a topic that I'm very, very passionate about and, uh, the more I'm progressing in my short leadership experience, I'm noticing how much instrumental it is, and that's what I call building relationships across different teams, not just your direct team, but across different functions.
Charlotte Ward:Yeah, those cross-functional relationships, fascinating Cool, fascinating cool. I I uh um, you know, I think that when I first started in support, support just felt always, always like the uh uh, you know, the black sheep of the family, the, you know, the the run of the litter, you know.
Steve Tondé:Or you go dump stuff.
Charlotte Ward:Yeah, the dumpster, right, all of the kind of negative things that we associate with being really the stakeholder of least importance, or at least that's how it felt right. But times are changing and I'm always saying now, uh, you know, it's support is moving to the center of the business, right, and I think so. I think building these cross-functional relationships that you're talking about is is, it's critical to maintaining that momentum, isn't it?
Steve Tondé:yep, yep, especially like the. I don't say the, but that's not a rise, it's more of the prevalence of SaaS and technology realizing like. I guess companies are getting smart and realizing we don't. We might not have the capital as much as a fortune 500, but what we do have is our brand right and what's what plays a big part in our brand support team. And because we're talking with the customers, we're interacting with the platform and what's what is a big part in our brand support team. And because we're talking with the customers, we're interacting with the platform and what can we do better. And then that moves on to once we get the information from our clients, how do we make sure that it's prioritized? How do we make sure that what clients are saying is an issue is valued and brought to the forefront of the people that are able to make a valuable impact and change the trajectory of the company?
Steve Tondé:So that comes with, not just things that work. Yep, I'm noticing these trends. Okay, cool. So who are you talking to? Are you talking to, let's say, talking to finance? Well, finance might care about the trajectory and the input, but are they really in a position to do something concrete about the trajectory of the product? Maybe not. Maybe she's talking about the product.
Charlotte Ward:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, in some ways, finance might be part of the conversation if we're talking about, you know, say, rebates or goodwill gestures or any of that right, and I think that's the point that, um, what we're talking about here isn't necessarily just um a single feedback loop or a single process like I. I think that and I've covered, I've covered, like the product feedback loop and the engineering feedback loop, but like how you actually just work on the relationships in a more general manner, because there will be, when you're talking to customers, as much as you know you just reminded us that we all are there will be times where you can now potentially talk to any part of the business you know. So how do you, how do you start building those relationships? Is it all on the support leader? I think it would be the first question I would ask.
Steve Tondé:That's a beautiful question, very nuanced. Um, I will talk from experience and try to add a bit more colors to how it go about it now that I know a bit better, or I think I know better. So, um, I'm passionate about this topic because I just didn't do that at all. I inherited a role. I was super excited about getting things changed. I pushed along and implemented solutions without talking with a variety of different stakeholders. That bit me and my team in the back, starting to realize the repercussions of like hey, if I just talked to a few people and they would have been up front and told me what was happening, we won't have those pain points. Um, so, long story short, talk to your people, talk to people across company, just so you can feel what's important once you prioritize what is actually not a mediat fire. So how I would go about it, moving forward, if you're lucky to be in a corporate setting where openness and transparency and authenticity is welcomed, then that should be the first two things that you do on the first three days of inheriting the role.
Steve Tondé:Role, like you, let your team focus on the day-to-day. You focus on, like, understanding the company, understanding who does what, why things are the way they are where we're heading you talk about. You do that by talking to people, by talking to product dev finance account uh, csm's support leaders. So leadership, yeah, the more we talk, the more so I understand a bit more about what's important, why it's important, where we're heading. You get to understand how individual people process information yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Charlotte Ward:Start early and uh and keep the conversations going right. You know, I think I think from my point of view, the I think there's two or three things like start early and keep conversations going, but I would say one thing I really try to do is always be the advocate for my team. You know, advocate heavily in every conversation for your team and, and through that, I think, set an example to your team. You know, show them how advocacy is done, because that way they can advocate for themselves and their teammates, but also their customers. So show them how you can bring data, how you can open up a conversation with maybe someone you've never spoken to in the company before. You know, and bring people along for the ride.
Charlotte Ward:I think you know one tool I use most frequently in sort of developing these relationships is just adding guests to the meeting, which sounds such like it doesn't all have to single thread through me. You know, I will pull in anyone in my team who has maybe it's their ticket, or maybe it's a customer they've done something for recently, or or maybe they're responsible for a little bit of the process over here and they're the best like. It doesn't all have to be me doing all the talking or doing all the kind of knowledge transfer or, you know, fielding all the questions. Like quite often, I just bring people along, make them part of the conversation, right?
Steve Tondé:yep, and then you'll be surprised of how much people like have insight and just take part and just take ownership of that conversation yep, that's great, and that's something I'm slowly learning and like, oh, I might not have all the answers, and that's okay. Um, people like you, some certain people, have part of the ownership of this part, part of this, and then together you see the bigger picture. It's like, oh, okay, I know where I need to put myself here.
Charlotte Ward:Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think you know, when you're doing that cross-functionally, it sort of meshes that relationship between your team and the other team much more. It makes it much stronger, doesn't it? Because it's not just. I think sometimes, if things are single threaded through you, it can seem to be about you. I mean, however hard we try, like if I'm the only person ever in the room saying the same thing, but like if you build that kind of uh, you know, it's the advocacy, isn't it? It's, it's if, if more of you are saying the same things in different ways, it strengthens.
Steve Tondé:It strengthens the relationship and and the debate yeah, and you start to learn more about people. You start to realize, okay, joe, for instance, is a bit more literal, focused, and I can't just say, hey, this is a pain point. He needs to understand why it's a pain point, or this is behind X, and then you start to fine tune. So when you bring up initiatives, he understands a bit more because you've built up that relationship over the next amount of time.
Steve Tondé:You know how he speaks, you know how you process information, so you're able to speak in his language directly yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Charlotte Ward:Would you, um, would you say that, um, it's worth spending time outside of a particular problem or a particular outcome? I mean the kind of you know? I mean we all work remote now so we don't get the water cooler moments. We engineer them inside, and I think a lot of remote teams do. They make use of donut chats or similar tools. You know, spending that kind of free form time is important as well, isn't it building those relationships? Otherwise, you're only ever focused on, you know, the puzzle pieces that you describe getting the right people in the room and finding the right spot for everyone and how they work together.
Steve Tondé:But yeah, yeah yeah, no, I agree with you. I think, um, it's super important just because you're able to start understanding how people think.
Steve Tondé:Obviously, but most importantly, creativity comes from those conversations, right yeah so when you stop talking about, like the zoned in um issue you've been going at for the past two weeks, you stop talking, hey, how your kids are doing, oh, I'm doing this, this, this, and then that. That moment of break and this allows you to creativity comes from my time. I've noticed a lot of my troubleshooting and working with dev comes when I'm stopped zoning in, zone out for a bit, talk with marketing about certain initiatives, certain about other things, and then, oh, something happens and go back into it, talk with dev, hey, can we do this? Actually, that makes sense and we go about it. But just a break.
Charlotte Ward:And yeah, on a human level, that's wonders yeah, yeah, actually I think support people are really good at like piecing together quite disparate little bits of information. Sometimes I heard that the other day from such a person and that last week from somebody else and I read that in the documentation this morning and I've just realized you know, string everything together yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so, um, so spending time with people focused and unfocused is is great to build those relationships.
Charlotte Ward:Um, what, what else would you say? Is uh, what else would you say gives strength to them? I mean, I can think of data being a great example.
Steve Tondé:Obviously yes. I didn't even want to bring that up because to me it's so obvious, so obvious.
Charlotte Ward:Let's learn something new over here, come on.
Steve Tondé:Yes, data super important. I would say obviously. I'm not going to beat it down to it's been brought up by a lot of leaders. Data is super important. I would say obviously it's. I'm not gonna beat it down to like it's been brought up by a lot of leaders. They're super important. Um, I would say, something that is also important is understanding kpis of other individuals yeah, organizations right, yeah, yeah and then that comes from direct, from, like, my failure as a leader.
Steve Tondé:And the great thing about building a relationship is that I was trying to get an initiative pushed across and there's a lot of resistance and that's normal, it's part of working with and collaborating with other individuals. And then I was so tied down to this initiative. I was like, hey, this makes sense, we should do this, blah, blah, blah. He made sort of happy about it. It's going to reduce the amount of support tickets, it's going to reduce costs to the company.
Steve Tondé:And then I was lucky enough that my colleague from the other department we had built a really honest relationship comes to me and is like I like I get what trying to do, but it doesn't target my kpis yeah yeah, yeah, so that sting it hurt, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like, okay, let me go back to the drawing board and see what are things like he needs to understand what's important to him how can I go about moving forward? But yeah, that honest conversation allowed me to yeah to move forward it is, it's.
Charlotte Ward:It's a stay in the tail, isn't it?
Charlotte Ward:it's uh, realizing that you're not the most important person always there's a little bit of me that goes what, um, but yeah, but like finding ways to tie those kpis together. And you know, I think, I think if you're in, uh, um, in an organization, that it, you know I mean what, what organization doesn't have its silos, but but finding ways to work together to to not exactly common goals, even though ultimately they should all roll up at some some senior leadership level into common goals, finding parallel goals, like you can achieve the same, both your goals, you know both your dreams, as it were, by doing this one thing to literally two birds one stone absolutely yeah yeah we're able to do it together, even better law amount of effort required even better.
Charlotte Ward:So let's try to talk the same language that's not really what it's about the other thing I would say actually is like just thinking about this as almost a networking exercise as well, is um is, which I think it actually is right, and I think if we're, if we're talking about how much of the onus is on the support leader, I think you can apply everything I've ever talked about on this podcast with uh, uh, you know to this process as well, like um, getting out of your comfort zone as a support leader. So many support people are introverts. They just want to sit there with their graphs and their tickets.
Steve Tondé:Right, am I wrong? I know You're absolutely right, because we know the data, we know our inbox, we know our phone systems. We know what we know.
Charlotte Ward:Exactly, and I guess that domain kind of comfort is not unique to support.
Steve Tondé:We know our inbox, we know our phone systems, we know, we know what we know exactly.
Charlotte Ward:And I mean, I guess that yeah, and I guess that domain kind of comfort is is not unique to support, but, but, um, if we can break through that kind of fear of networking, it applies as much internally as it does at any conference you're ever going to go to, doesn't it so? So, and I think that is critical to some of those unstructured conversations and being willing to, you know, have a virtual donor or something with someone that's a god forbid an accountant or a, you know, a kind of engineer or someone who's you know, somebody who's so, or somebody from hr or whatever, someone who's quite functionally different from you, um, it's really good practice. It's really good practice because it allows you to join up things that you wouldn't necessarily join up, and and we all know what craig stoss says, of course, which is you, do you want to say it or will I? Shall I say it you go for it.
Charlotte Ward:You go for it you never leave a conversation with less information, right? I must have quoted that a hundred times since you told me that, but it's true, it's true and it's well worth investing. Um, yeah, yeah, um. So in all of this, in all of this, have you, while you're building these relationships? I'm gonna put you on the spot. What's the um, what's the, what's the biggest surprise learning from all of this kind of relationship building you've done?
Steve Tondé:okay, let me think about this, um, biggest thing I've learned. I think you hit it on the nail, like when you said like realizing you're not as important as you thought you were. Yeah, all kidding aside, I think it's realizing. Um, sometimes it's about taking a quick pause. It doesn't mean now, it just means something has come up. We need to reevaluate, and what you thought was important could be probably priority number four, number six, number seven. You said you needed, um, let's say, to support folks to join an organization. Actually, what needs to be addressed is the one bug that's been bothering people for the past four months.
Charlotte Ward:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Steve Tondé:So, so it's really that understanding, like by building relationships, you're starting to key in and make a space for yourself and your team to like be bigger, bigger, bigger picture. What is actually what's being played?
Charlotte Ward:Yeah.
Steve Tondé:Yeah.
Charlotte Ward:And I think I think that's an interesting point about you know the no as well. I wouldn't advocate for not listening to no in any other part of life, but because no means no most of the time. But I would say, sometimes in the corporate world, when you put, when you're putting your request out there for that extra headcount or that you know that prioritization of that piece of work, or for someone just to read the document that you wrote or whatever, it is right that no isn't always a hard no. No is often in those kinds of scenarios, and only those kinds of scenarios no often just means not. Now you know, and and I think you know, an observation I made even in this morning to one of my colleagues was that most things find their time as well and, like you, can actually support that maturation of your ideas through this kind of relationship building as well, can't you?
Steve Tondé:yeah, and then you start to notice like, hey, my initial assumption was very premature, it needed to be implemented first. And thank you, finance, for bringing that point of view, and thank you for HR for bringing that point of view. Oh, thank you, product for this. Wow, I had completely not thought about this because I was so focused onto my silo and didn't take time to breathe and look at the flowers
Charlotte Ward:oh, that's a lovely end note for a conversation, if ever there's one way, if ever there was one.
Charlotte Ward:Take time to breathe and look at the flowers. That's all we need to do to build those relationships. I love that lovely well I'm. I am gonna just just take a deep breath and think about the flowers as we close the conversation and the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. It's been a really enjoyable chat through uh, how we, how we get this off the ground. You know it's, it can be quite daunting whether you're on the front line in support or or leading a team and uh, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's lots of good reasons to do it. Step out of the comfort zone Absolutely. Thank you for joining me, steve. Will you please come back and have another conversation another time?
Steve Tondé:Of course, of course. I love having conversations with you. You've been very kind and let's continue to have this.
Charlotte Ward:Awesome. Thank you so much. I look forward to seeing you another time soon. That's it for today. Go to customersupportleaderscom. Forward, slash 272 for the show notes and I'll see you next time.