Ever wondered how customer support could shape your podcasting experience? This week on Buzzcast, we're joined by the head of our support team, Priscilla Brooke. We're buzzing about a new project where every team member, from co-founders to developers to designers, will be working support shifts for the next month! We believe this will bring everyone closer to our podcasting community and foster fresh improvements to our platform and services.
Our team members working support shifts is more than just a change of routine. It's a deep dive into the mind of our podcasting community, the highs and lows of their content creation journey, their challenges, and their triumphs. It's the essence of the empathy we harbor, which we believe fuels great customer support. We're also eager to share what we've learned about effective, friendly and supportive communication with our customers. Listen in as Priscilla unveils the four pillars of communication that shape our approach to customer support.
And because we believe in mixing work with a healthy dose of fun, we've woven in some inside stories on how we strive for those shiny customer ratings, and offer tips and tricks on dealing with those occasional technical hiccups. Plus, we test Alban and Kevin's knowledge with support trivia!
Contact Buzzcast
Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!
Ever wondered how customer support could shape your podcasting experience? This week on Buzzcast, we're joined by the head of our support team, Priscilla Brooke. We're buzzing about a new project where every team member, from co-founders to developers to designers, will be working support shifts for the next month! We believe this will bring everyone closer to our podcasting community and foster fresh improvements to our platform and services.
Our team members working support shifts is more than just a change of routine. It's a deep dive into the mind of our podcasting community, the highs and lows of their content creation journey, their challenges, and their triumphs. It's the essence of the empathy we harbor, which we believe fuels great customer support. We're also eager to share what we've learned about effective, friendly and supportive communication with our customers. Listen in as Priscilla unveils the four pillars of communication that shape our approach to customer support.
And because we believe in mixing work with a healthy dose of fun, we've woven in some inside stories on how we strive for those shiny customer ratings, and offer tips and tricks on dealing with those occasional technical hiccups. Plus, we test Alban and Kevin's knowledge with support trivia!
Contact Buzzcast
Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!
You've also got some former Chick-fil-A employees on your team, right.
Jordan:We do have someone who came from Chick-fil-A, yeah you make it sound like we're like poaching former Chick-fil-A employees.
Alban:Have we considered adding my pleasure? I was going to say Brian needs to end all his emails with my pleasure.
Priscilla:In the beginning, when he first started, he would say my pleasure, and we all, kind of, you know, pointed it out. When he would say it, I don't think he says it much anymore. Is that a?
Jordan:Chick-fil-A thing it is. Oh yeah, I didn't know that it's a pretty big deal, yeah, for Chick-fil-A.
Priscilla:It's always my pleasure.
Alban:Jordan, do you have Chick-fil-A's in Idaho?
Jordan:Yeah, we got them like in the last five years and it's been a big deal.
Kevin:Yeah, it's a funny thing now, whenever I take my kids to the Chick-fil-A drive-through, I try to say my pleasure before the person like taking my order says my pleasure. Oh, my goodness, and my kids. It gets hilarious.
Jordan:Welcome back to Buzzcast. We are doing a special episode today about our support shifts and it's funny because what I see all the time when people are asking, like I'm thinking about my podcast host, what host should I go with, the thing that seems to be shouted from the rooftops the most is Buzzsprout has the best support and it's interesting that that is the thing that I see the most often. It's not like Buzzsprout's platform is so easy to use or, you know, really beginner friendly. You know they have such great features. It's never things like that. It's always the support and it's so interesting that that is what is most important to people. So for the next month, we are doing a project where everybody who works for Buzzsprout is going to be doing a support shift for the next month and to help us talk about that, we brought the head of support on Priscilla Brooke. Hi, Priscilla.
Priscilla:Hey Jordan! Hey Alban and Kevin, how are you guys doing?
Kevin:Glad you're here. This is great.
Priscilla:Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Support is not something that I mean. It shows up on Buzzcast sometimes when you mention it, but we don't talk about it on Buzzcast, and so I'm excited to be here and let your hundreds and thousands of listeners know about why we do support the way we do it.
Alban:This is why we keep the support team out of the Buzzsprout login so that they can't see the actual Buzzcast.
Priscilla:Hundreds of thousands. That's accurate right.
Kevin:Yes, cool, something like that. Well, jordan is exactly right when she says that one of the most common things that we hear when people are saying nice things about Buzzsprout, they always mention support, and it's one of the goals I know for your team is to use the word remarkable a lot that you want to create a remarkable experience for customers when they write in. Oftentimes, when people deal with support teams, they are not getting Well, it might be they are getting a remarkable experience, but it's remarkably bad, and you're trying to make your team where it's remarkably good, and so we now have an opportunity for everyone on the Buzzsprout team to learn a little bit of that process, to get some insight into it, and so that's super exciting. This was a project that you pitched, and I would love to hear you tell us about where the idea came from and why we're doing it.
Priscilla:Yeah, so I've been with Buzzsprout doing support for almost seven years, which is crazy to think about and at the very beginning of my time doing support. It's something we kind of played around with a little bit was having other people join and get in the inbox and get some face to face interaction with podcasters. We were kind of inspired by Basecamp, who does an all-hand support situation over there, and so we were inspired by that. But then that kind of fell off. The team grew, you know, the support team went from one person to several people, so we just kind of stopped doing support shifts. At that point it's something I had been thinking about and so I pitched it I don't know, a month ago, and now we've gotten into it.
Priscilla:One of the big benefits about doing this kind of a support shift regularly for people who don't talk to podcasters face to face that often is really it gives you such insight into the most important part of our work, right?
Priscilla:So the podcasters have some of the best insight about what we're doing and what we're providing through Buzzsprout, and so my team gets to deal with podcasters one-on-one and hear from them all day, every day, which is fantastic, and we will relay thoughts and ideas to the entire team.
Priscilla:But there's something different about being able to work directly with a podcaster and getting their insight on something or feeling the pain points that they're running into.
Priscilla:That we may not see because we aren't actually the one producing the podcast and using Buzzsprout in that way, and so really that's where it came from was giving everyone in Buzzsprout, not just the support team, that direct access to our podcasters. There's also some benefits that come for the support team, because then we get to have someone like Alban, who's the head of marketing, come in and work with podcasters and find things that maybe don't work so great that we have been kind of working around because we didn't recognize it as an issue. And then Alban comes in with fresh eyes and is able to see oh, this thing that I change in marketing could help affect support and how they're handling that question, and so it's cool for us too, because we get to have the benefit of your expertise in support. And then the benefit for the podcaster really the biggest one the biggest one is that they get Kevin, who's going to give him all the special treatment, so that's their benefit.
Alban:I remember a long time ago, when I used to do support, I would feel like I didn't have as many levers to pull and I'd be trying to answer questions as best as I could and solve problems as best I could. And every once in a while Kevin go, the inbox is kind of full, let me jump in there and help you out, and Kevin would jump in and he has so many more levers to pull, yeah, and there's so much more ability. Kevin goes, oh, I'm going to make this right, I'm going to actually do this all for them. And I'm like, oh, we don't have time to do that. He's like I have time to go and import all these podcasts for them manually and I'll set it up.
Alban:Tom or John, on the development side, they had a whole another set of levers that they could pull because they'd see a problem and I'd say, oh yeah, that's kind of common. And then they'd say, well, we're going to solve that once and for all and they would actually go and take it on as not as a support request but as a bug, so that they could try to figure out a way to solve that problem forever. And it's always a blast to have seen it on the support side and now it was a lot of fun for me to be on the solving side and get to have fresh eyes.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:Yeah, and we do have a process in place where and this happens quite regularly, I think every work cycle that we come into, there's always a couple of pitches from the support team that are evaluated and we figure out if we can fit them into the work cycle or not. So, like, even without everyone on the like the product dev team or something doing support, there is a process in place for issues that come to support to be escalated up to product enhancements or refinements. The challenge is that they usually have to hit like a certain threshold of I don't know number of customers or size of problem or something, before it becomes, I don't know, appropriate to scale it up to the point where we're going to write it up as a pitch, we're going to run it through all the you know the process that takes place before a pitch is accepted and then a team is given time to do that and that's fit into a work cycle and yada, yada, yada. I think what Alban is talking about and what Priscilla sees every now and then is that sometimes there's somebody who's responsible for the specific area of the app. You know what I'm saying. Dave's doing support. Dave is one of our designers. Dave has the ability he writes copy for our app all the time.
Kevin:So if somebody writes in and they say I was looking at this page and I was trying to follow this instruction and it wasn't clear, dave's like oh actually, I'm reading it the way that you're reading it now and I'm saying that we could be a little bit more clear.
Kevin:Not, I'm only going to answer your question for you, but I'm also going to just take 10 minutes now and I'm going to go update that sentence and just make that a little bit more clear and deploy it to the app and then get back to doing more support. And so that is an ability that people who you know their primary job is to work on the app they can do things like that and the support team doesn't, and so that's this extra little benefit. I don't know, in the first couple of days of running support shifts, that we've actually deployed anything like that. That's fit into that category. But that is an opportunity that exists when you do things like this. That can give us an advantage on making our app better in a very timely and responsive way that we wouldn't get otherwise. So I think that's an excellent reason and benefit of having everyone on the team work support. Could I?
Alban:give you an example, kevin, it's not deployed, but it's on its way. Yeah, somebody reached out and they said, hey, I'm still waiting for my podcast to process, and it's been like a few hours. I was like, oh man, we got some kind of a bug. And so I went and I looked at his account and he wasn't waiting for a podcast to process. He was, uh, we buzz brought the app, was waiting for him to upload his episode. What he'd done was sometimes you can go and you upload your episode first and then you put in all the details, but we do allow you to skip the upload part and go right into I'm writing all the details. And so he did. Is he'd skipped it and he'd gone to write the details and I guess he'd thought he'd uploaded it and he hadn't.
Alban:But the message that we share, that we post, is waiting for file and then a link.
Alban:And what I think was happening was I always read that as hey, we're waiting for your file, we're you, it's time for you to upload. And he saw it and said I, the podcaster, am waiting for the file to process. And so we had that bit of ambiguity in there which I'd never read as ambiguous until the moment that I was talking to someone who thought I'm waiting for it, and so I went and wrote up a little to do for Dave and said, hey, let's call this draft and then give it the title episode and then a link to upload audio file. So it's completely clear we're waiting for you, you're not waiting for us. But those are the ones that, like when you have the curse of knowledge, that you know how this system works, it's very hard to put yourself in somebody else's shoes who doesn't know how it works, and imagine some of the confusion that we are causing, and so that's one of the opportunities that I was able to step into and I really enjoyed.
Priscilla:Yeah, I think that's a good example. So the way we're doing support shifts for Buzzsprout is that we are having everyone on the team spend four hours. We're called it's a four hour shift in the support team as a support specialist. So the idea is that you join our team, you go through a little orientation beforehand. We're not given like a huge training, it's just something small to get you oriented and with us as a team, and then you're up to do whatever it is that you want to do within the realm of support. And so for some people that'll look like getting in the inbox and answering questions for the four hours and helping podcasters face to face.
Priscilla:For other people it might look like answering a couple of questions in the beginning and then finding some issue or something that they can dive into more with their expertise and get into that.
Priscilla:You might be getting on the phone with a podcaster to get their insight onto a specific something that they're running into, and so it's kind of up to each person who's coming in for the day or for the half a day to manage that time themselves. And so for us it's really cool because we have someone in the inbox with us and so we're getting to kind of shepherd them along and then get their insight as well. So that's kind of how we're setting it up and the idea we're doing this for this cycle. Right now, the idea is that every cycle going forward, everyone will continue to have one of these shifts, a cycle, and so hopefully it'll get people used to jumping into support, which, of course, can always benefit us in the future if, for some reason, something happens and we need more people to help cover the inbox. But that's kind of how we're logistically setting it up and structuring it.
Jordan:Priscilla, you set it up so that we can schedule our own shifts, that work with our work schedule and stuff like that. But what has it been like trying to coordinate people from every department at BuzzFrow? I imagine it's like hurting cats.
Priscilla:It hasn't been so bad yet. I'm sure that as we continue to do this and more people sign up, it will get a little bit more like a puzzle. And, of course, going into a holiday here in the US we have Thanksgiving coming up and so PTO around that like balancing. That has been interesting. It's fun. What I've been doing is pairing each person who comes into support with a buddy on the support team. That's their go-to for questions if they run into anything, and so that's been fun to figure out how those schedules are going to match up and then kind of choosing who's going to work with who. And it's fun to put people together who maybe don't work together that often so that they're getting kind of more interaction than usual. It's been a bit of a puzzle and the structure it's a work in progress how we've been doing it. It's been fun to put together. I like puzzles so I'm okay with it.
Jordan:I haven't done my shift yet. Mine's scheduled for Monday. Yeah, so in a few days, coming up here, I'm wondering what's going to look like when I start my shift. What am I going to be doing exactly?
Priscilla:Yeah, so you and I will meet and we'll do our orientation to get you kind of like familiar with the software that we use to provide support, what resources we have available to us, what our support tone is, all of that kind of stuff, and then I will connect you with your buddy and you'll just jump in the inbox and start going through emails and answering what you can answer.
Kevin:So I just did this with Priscilla on Monday and that first half hour was fantastic. Priscilla walks you through again. She calls it an orientation, but I think it's. I guess I didn't know what to expect, but I was so impressed with the amount of thought and care that goes into not only answering questions accurately which she doesn't spend a whole lot of time doing because, since you work on the product and you are a podcaster, you have most of that knowledge but the care around how you communicate and how you empathize with somebody and how we do that responsibly and how we try to lead with something positive and empathetic to their problem before just jumping into the solution. There's a massive amount of thought and care that has gone into the support process that Priscilla has built for Buzzsprout. Can you walk us through, like, do we have time? Can you walk through a nutshell version of a bit of that orientation, priscilla? Sure, yeah.
Priscilla:It's interesting. You said at the beginning that we want to offer remarkable support. Years ago, when we were kind of trying to define our tone a little bit, we talked about exceptional support and we talked about remarkable support and which one we wanted to use kind of as our driver, our word for that. You said something, kevin, that I really liked. You said you didn't like exceptional support so much because exceptional support makes you think that it's the exception. But for Buzzsprout it's not the exception, it's the rule. Remarkable support is everyone is getting access to the same level of support. There's not making these great exceptions for people to get great support and then some people get mediocre support Everyone. Our goal is to give everyone remarkable support.
Priscilla:So this tone document that we have really directs how we do that. So what we try to keep these four big ideas at top of mind when we're writing an email, when we're communicating really with anyone in Buzzsprout, but specifically in support. So the ideas are that Buzzsprout is simple, that Buzzsprout is on your team, that Buzzsprout is always improving and that Buzzsprout cares about your voice. So those four pillars if we stick with those, if we keep those in the forefront of our minds, then that's going to help influence our tone, because if you're talking to someone that you care about their voice, you're going to be kind to them. If you are trying to make someone understand, or help them understand, that something is simple, you're going to be clear in the way that you're explaining it, and so keeping those things top of mind help influence our tone. As far as the tone itself, one thing that I learned in the high school writing there was a big emphasis in this class about every sentence you write having an intention, and so it taught me how to be succinct with my writing and how to be very intentional with my writing, and so I've stuck with that as I've gone through my life and so it's something we use in support as well is being very intentional with the way we say things and what we're saying.
Priscilla:So we're not trying to write four paragraph emails that are a bunch of fluff and two nuggets of good things. Instead, we're trying to be very specific about how we say things, to be the most clear and to provide the best support. We want to be friendly. So we're people helping people. We're not experts helping people who don't know what they're doing. I'm a person, I'm helping another person and I'm going to treat you with the respect that another person deserves and I'm going to be friendly and I'm not going to make you feel like you don't know what to do. I'm going to be like your friend that's coming alongside you and helping you out.
Kevin:Right Now. How does that bump up? Because I'm assuming that most of the customers who write in don't have their own set of guidelines around how they want to communicate with us. Some of them start off very friendly, but also some of them probably start off with oh gosh, now I have to reach out to customer support, and that typically is not a good experience when I've done that in the past, and so this is going to be rough, and so their first step into the conversation is okay, here we go. You're probably not even a real person who's going to help me, but I think something is broken or I'm not understanding it. Here it goes, and I've got very little hope that I'm going to actually get a real response from a real person back.
Priscilla:Yeah, if someone comes in with a oh my gosh, this is like calling Comcast support and now I'm going to have to go through a bunch of hoops before I get an answer. If we have someone who comes in with that kind of a feel and we can see it from the front and we respond in a friendly way, usually that kind of disarms them a little bit and they're like oh wait, no, these people are going to treat me like a human being who has a question Like this is great, now I can adjust my expectations. But there are definitely people who have very low expectations of customer support, and so we do kind of have to be aware of that and usually it ends up in a good place for us and for the podcaster. Really, another thing we try to do is we keep it casual. So this kind of goes along with the friendly side of things. But we're not speaking formally and we're leaning into easy conversation. We're using emojis and gifts and exclamation points. I know some millennials are kind of scared of exclamation points, but we lean into that kind of stuff Like I'm your friend talking to you, I'm not going to overanalyze using an emoji, so we're going to keep it casual and that keeps us approachable too, because then people are going to be excited to write into us when they know that they're not going to get some kind of like stiff response back. One of the biggest things that we focus on is empathy. Kevin, you mentioned earlier empathy is a really important part of any kind of hospitality support, anything in that realm.
Priscilla:As someone in support who's been working in Buzzsprout and with the product for seven years, I know a lot about Buzzsprout, and as someone inside of the Buzzsprout team, I know a lot about the background and the way Buzzsprout works. Someone who just signed up a month ago they don't have as much of that context as I do, and so when they write in because of something like an episode that has moved and they can't find it, they might be really stressed out that they can't find that episode. So they write in very worried and I see it and immediately know that there's nothing to worry about because I know all the context that they don't have, and so the important thing for me is to remember that what they're experiencing is their reality. That's all they know, and it's real fear that they have that their episode and their content is gone.
Priscilla:And so, as the person helping them, I have to get in their shoes and talk to them and communicate with them in a way that lets them know that I understand that this is scary, but I'm also going to explain to you why you don't need to be worried. And so it's kind of like Kevin was saying if I start at the beginning of the email and say, hey, I see what you mean, I know this is scary, don't worry, there's nothing to worry about, here's the answer, then they're going to get that and go, oh okay, this is great, I understand what's going on. If I say, hey, here's the answer, and I don't give them that empathy in the front that says I understand what you're going through, what you're seeing, then they're going to be like, yeah, you gave me the answer, but do you really care that I am worried about this? You're not taking this seriously. This is my work, and so empathy is a really, really important part of any kind of support or hospitality role, and so we talk about that a lot.
Alban:It makes me think of the principle you have people helping people that you mentioned earlier, because if you don't lead with empathy, it's very easy especially with, like, a written medium for you just to come off as condescending, absolutely, like oh, you thought you had a big problem, but I podcasting genius know exactly what the problem was and I fixed it, and that is not a good experience. Like if you go into a auto repair place and you say I'm really scared by cars not working and they roll their eyes and go, oh, just a battery. You don't feel good. Like you feel good that it's not a big repair, but you feel bad because somebody's treating you like oh, you're dumb that you didn't know this.
Priscilla:And you might be embarrassed. And the next time you have a sound in your car that you don't know what it is, you don't really want to take it back to them because they made you feel stupid the first time you came in.
Alban:Yeah, I once went to some like auto parts store and the guy he gave me new wiper blades and I went, oh, do you know which one goes, on which side he goes? Oh, the shorter one always goes on the driver's side. And I remember thinking like why would I feel bad for knowing that I've only ever put on one set of wiper blades in my life? Probably at that point I was like 17. I was like the guy was like talking down to me like I was the biggest idiot and I was like, yeah, I got the wiper blades, it was cheap, it wasn't a big deal, but my experience was me and I do not want to go back to this place.
Priscilla:Right, and so for that guy, he probably needed to work on empathy, but he probably also needed to work on his tone, right. One of the things that we talk about a lot in support is that we can control how we write an email, but I cannot control how you read an email. So when I send an email, my goal is to make it as clear as possible and as in tone as possible, but I also recognize that you might read it and not interpret it the way that I mean it Written medium is just really hard to control that kind of thing, and so we also try to have a lot of grace for people that respond and don't understand our tone, or a lot of grace for ourselves that maybe we didn't get the tone right on, and so that's why we take so much care with how we write these emails, because we can only control what we're writing.
Priscilla:I can't control how you read it.
Kevin:Yeah, and the last episode. I don't know if you listened, priscilla, but I just had to issue a formal apology to Sam Satti for some of my writing tone.
Alban:I did.
Kevin:I was writing in a very lighthearted way and it wasn't received in that same way.
Priscilla:Right and that's why grace is important when you're working through any kind of written platform, which I won't get into it, but that's probably why we see a lot of frustrated people on social media, because there's so much of that. Everyone on the support team we actually are excited to help podcasters and we want to make sure that's clear to the podcaster and we have such a great community of podcasters in Buzzsprout that it's exciting and fun and we want to make sure they know that because it's the reality and it makes our job more fun to be excited about it.
Kevin:Yeah, and this is a big part of how you hire for your team.
Priscilla:Right, absolutely.
Kevin:Like. I sat in on a lot of interviews that Priscilla has run hiring for the support team and at some point she always asked the question like, how much life does it give you to help people learn new thing or solve a problem? And I think you asked that because most people don't say oh, I get a lot of life from sitting behind a computer and writing emails to people all day. But if the result of that is helping people, there are people who come alive in that place and that's the type of people you seek out for your team.
Priscilla:Yeah, and it's funny, you know, if you look at the support team, we are not a team of people who are in love with podcasting and I know that's kind of like whoa wait, you work for a podcasting company. We like podcasts, sure, we listen to podcasts, they're exciting but are we like super, super into podcasting? Not really. Instead, what we're really into is people. We love people. So our team is made up of people that were former teachers or they were former hospitality professionals or maybe they worked at a nonprofit, like one of someone on our team used to work at a at Feeding, northeast Florida, and so she really cares about people and that's what makes her a good fit for our team, because you can train the technical stuff but you can't train empathy, and so it's really important when we're hiring people, that we're hiring people who love people. That's the most important thing.
Alban:When you're talking about remarkable support. It made me think on the marketing side, for lots of SaaS products, you know these things. You sign up online. When you're trying to pick a plan, they're often you know there's some features on one plan, there's some features on another plan and, without fail, the highest plan always says priority support.
Priscilla:Yeah.
Alban:As if, like the thing that you're paying more for is when you have an issue, we'll bump you at the front of the line and it always like got under my skin so much because I was. It always felt like wait. So if I sign up for the base plan, which is all that I need, I'm at the back of the line and if anybody else jumps up who pays you more, they go ahead of me and I'm just back there hoping that someone eventually responds and it feels like I don't know such a ripoff and it doesn't feel remarkable and I know that's something you've never done. I mean, how do you figure out who goes first and what are like response times? Look like.
Priscilla:It kind of goes back to the big idea I was talking about. That was, like, you know, best practice on your team. If we're offering like tiered support to people, then it's kind of like, hey, we're more on your team than we are on their team because you're paying us more and that doesn't feel. That just doesn't feel good. But we don't look at what plan you're on when we're answering you. We don't even check if you have an account, if you have a question. Sometimes we'll have people that we're working with and then we look them up in the system and we go like this person doesn't even on Buzz Brown and we've been working with them for, you know, two days and so, like you know, we don't so much that we don't look at that. Sometimes people get through, which is, you know, great, we're happy to help them, but yeah, so okay, moving on, we have just two more things that we keep in mind when we're working, when we're crafting emails. We're patient with everyone, right? So we don't know what your questions are, we don't know what your knowledge level is. So we're going to be patient with you and we're going to stick with you until something is finished and then we're encouraging.
Priscilla:Podcasting is very much a solo sport. Even if you have a co-host, a lot of time you're editing by yourself, and so we just want to be that team for someone who's writing into support, and so we never pass up the opportunity to celebrate a win with a podcaster. So if someone writes in and says something like I just published my first episode, now how do I get listed on directories? We're going to tell them how to get listed on the directories, but we're going to start by celebrating the fact that they just published their first episode, because that's a huge deal and we don't want that to go uncelebrated and we don't know if someone else has celebrated them already. So we're going to celebrate you and then we're going to help you with the next steps. So those are kind of our guiding tone ideas in Buzzsprout support.
Kevin:Yeah, I love that. So you're exactly right, podcasting can be a lonely game. Chunk of podcasters for sure have hosts and co-hosts. But even if you have a host and co-host, it just feels like they're on the team with you and so them celebrating themselves or some accomplishment. It just kind of feels like the team cheering for their own win, as opposed to this team has fans and it's hard to find fans sometimes for your podcast and even if you have decent download numbers, you don't necessarily get the interaction that you crave.
Kevin:But I don't know that you probably deserve, because it's hard and you're trying to provide something valuable to a group of people that hopefully get some value from what you do, and so I love that Buzzsprout can be that for our customers, for people who write in and hopefully also like when they least expect it, like I'm just writing in because I had a small issue and you picked up on something, a small accomplishment that I had, and you celebrated that. That's fantastic and that's exactly what. When you say that we are on your team, that's what people on your team, that's what your fan base, the people around you supporting you, that's what they would do, and so why wouldn't we do that it's just. It's a perfect fit.
Alban:And there's certain things we can celebrate in a way that probably their listeners can, because we can give context for having worked with hundreds of thousands of podcasters that, yeah, you're getting 100 downloads on that episode and you seemed like you were bummed out about that. We can tell you that's actually above average and you're doing really well. Or we see someone just publish their 10th episode. We know that's actually a moment for celebration because that's a big deal to get to 10, where the listeners are probably writing reviews, going man, I wish you published more often, and so they may be feeling more pressured from the listeners, but from our side we can say, holy cow, 10 episodes. That's really exciting, good job and can validate because we do get all that context.
Jordan:All right. So, Kevin and Alban, I'm going to shift it to you guys a little bit here. You both have worked your support shift, I think. Kevin, I want to start with you. How was it? You're the co-founder of Buzzsprout and now you're going to be going into the trenches of the support inbox.
Kevin:I mean it's not something that I wouldn't do, I wouldn't say normally, but probably I don't know every week or two there's some email that pops into support that somehow I randomly stumble upon it or somebody in the support team tags me and asks me a question or something, and I'll write back to people. I love that opportunity. The difference here is carving out an entire half day to be able to focus on that is really. It's a different mindset, it's a different experience, and so I'm not just jumping in and saying, oh, that was fun because I got to take five minutes and interact with the customer. It's like I got to clear an entire half day to be able to focus on not only helping customers but also like learning where the support team is learning the voice and tone documents. I mean totally better as myself to be able to now like jump in on a regular basis and have a better framework or understanding for not only the expertise that I bring to the situation, but also doing it in a way that aligns with how Buzzsprout does support overall, and so I love that there are also. We have these.
Kevin:You know everyone has their own little email signature, so, like nobody, I don't think most people know who I am. I don't think I interacted with anybody in my sports shift that listens to Buzzcast, except for I did take a little bit of my sport shift and sent out all. The last time we did a giveaway the holiday giveaway thing and so I ordered that roadcaster that we gave away as a prize and I did some you know, $25 bus ride credit. So those people probably know who I am because they listen to the show, but most people do not, and I didn't add to my email signature like Kevin Finn, co-founder of Bus Bride or anything I just put. You know, kevin Finn currently listening to whatever podcast I was listening to while I was working my sports shift.
Jordan:Yeah, that's kind of like. The funny thing that has happened is people are really being conscientious of, like, what their signature footer is, like people are really thinking about it. I've been thinking about it for days and I still don't know what I'm going to put in mind, but it's got to be something good.
Alban:Yeah, this all started with Lindsay, right, priscilla. Yeah.
Priscilla:So you guys, I was listening to an episode of Buzzcast and you guys were talking about the pickleball champions from back in September, and you guys were talking about Lindsay being the pickleball champion for the women. And so I reached out to Lindsay and I said, hey, I'm going to add this to your signature because I think it's fun, and then anyone who heard the Buzzcast episode but then writes in his port and talks to you they'll be able to connect who you are, and so it's been really fun. A lot of people have been seeing it and congratulating her, which is really just fun.
Jordan:Yeah, it's people who are writing into support and that was such a surprising thing because we didn't think people actually really looked at those and it's kind of turned into a really funny thing to screenshot the comments that people are having.
Priscilla:Outwarded one when he had his shift. What did you add, Almond?
Alban:I used to do support, like in 2014. So I worded myself uh Buzzsprout, support MVP 2014, because I was the only person in there.
Jordan:I thought that was great. I love that one. Something else that's kind of like turned into I don't know a bit of a thing in the company chat is the screenshots of great ratings for the people who are stepping into the support box, and it's sort of turned into a little bit of a competition.
Priscilla:No, not, no, not within Buzzsprout. We don't have competition, we're not a competitive bunch.
Alban:I think Kevin and I being the first two people to do a support shift, definitely set the tone for the competition. Yeah. For sure Kevin and I are. I think we're in the lead. We both have a couple of good ratings or great ratings and no bad ratings, so it's going well.
Jordan:Yeah, it's really funny because Alban, you got caught with some techniques to get these good readings Should we talk a little bit about that, that sounds.
Priscilla:Can you guys talk about the strategies that you took to get the great ratings? Thank you, I'd love to hear that.
Alban:Remarkable customer support.
Kevin:I didn't do it. I asked Priscilla ahead of time is it appropriate ever? Do you ever ask for ratings? And she's like no, we don't really pander for ratings. Oh, give me a break, there's no way you did this.
Priscilla:He did.
Kevin:And so I said, okay, that's fine, I won't do it, because I wanted to honor the guidelines that Priscilla's put in place. But then I did notice that Alban put something in an email that said if you feel like I've given you a satisfactory answer or something, it would really help me to get a review.
Alban:No, I have to defend myself because you've dismissed me in my good ratings. Go for it. I provided remarkable customer support. The person wrote back and said you're the best. This was amazing. But she didn't click the button that said great rating. So I was like I'm not going to get the great rating credit. And so I wrote back and said so happy to help. And then just parentheses. By the way, if you'd like to rate this email, it goes on my review, which is that accurate? Does it go on your?
Priscilla:review.
Alban:I mean it might go on my review now for, like dishonesty, yeah, she left me and she left Cara both a great rating. I did also get a great rating from a personal friend. I put out on Twitter like, hey, we're doing these. Because it was so. We didn't have many people writing in when I started, so I put on Twitter and said, hey, we're all doing these support shifts Mine's right now it's kind of quiet, so right in. And so Ariel Nissenblatt from squad cast and Descript wrote in and I don't think I helped her very much because she knows as much, if not more, about podcasting than I do. But she also gave me a great rating, so it helps to have friends.
Priscilla:The funny one about the first great rating you got, which was the one that you kind of asked for, was that specific situation. Cara on our support team had been going back and forth with the podcaster for a long time on that question and then when the great rating came through, it got assigned to Alban and Cara was a little bit annoyed.
Kevin:Oh gosh, it was a pickle jar. Whoa, whoa, whoa. That's a pickle jar man, that doesn't count. That's when your wife, you know, is trying to struggle to get the pickle jar open and she's actually got it 90% of the way there and then just hands it off to you and you pop it. Yeah, that's not your open, that's her open.
Priscilla:No, I just want to say Alban did provide remarkable support to the podcaster, but it was on the heels also of Cara's remarkable support, which then and Cara gets the win and a little bit of better I get to save.
Jordan:I don't what's wrong with that. You're like a vulture circling that inbox.
Kevin:That's fun. We're going to open a committee to investigate the whole support show.
Alban:I think that it's interesting. Kevin's directed this whole thing towards what I did wrong, but there's been no mention of what Kevin was doing in support.
Priscilla:Yeah, let's talk about Kevin's strategies.
Alban:Yeah, what did I do? 45 minute phone call? It wasn't a phone call, it was a screen share. I was in the office and Kevin was on the phone for like 45 minutes.
Priscilla:So tell us about, about your screen. Share Kevin.
Kevin:Oh well, this was, this was good. A customer wrote in and she was having some trouble with a WordPress install and I wrote her back and then she said I think she asked something like I really wish there'd be an opportunity to like hop on a screen share or something I could just show you what I'm looking at. And so I said, sure, why not? And so I dropped her a link to my whereby room and a few minutes later we were just video chatting. And then, yeah, it was like 30 or 45 minutes. It was longer than you would probably normal Like.
Kevin:Again, I don't know there was nothing in your, in your voice and tone document about whether we should do that or not, but I figured that's an opportunity to give somebody remarkable customer support, and so I helped her with her WordPress install and I'm not a WordPress expert, so I could only troubleshoot the Buzzsprout side of it and we got to the point where Buzzsprout was set up correctly and it was working correctly and I could see that the file was streaming on our website correctly. And so there was, I think, a lingering issue with her WordPress theme itself that she's continuing to figure out with her developer. But it was a nice conversation and I got to have a face to face with a Buzzsprout customer and she was very happy. Did you get a great rating for this?
Alban:I don't know what I did. Yeah, you did.
Priscilla:But again, you know you did.
Kevin:Oh, I did Okay.
Alban:Yeah, Did you. Did you ask for it in any way?
Priscilla:I think both of your great ratings are earned, but I also think that those are strategies to get them. So you know both are correct.
Kevin:Well, maybe the way to figure out who's better at answering support questions between Alban and I. Priscilla, why don't you pepper us with a few support questions right now?
Priscilla:All right, so a Buzzsprout support quiz show Love this idea. Yes. Yeah, give us your toughest, your toughest questions we used to do these years, years ago. Oh, I don't know. Okay, we'll see.
Alban:We'll see what questions we did One of these with Travis, I think a long time ago.
Priscilla:I think so.
Jordan:It was fun. Let's see here how are they going to buzz in. Do we just like raise a hand?
Kevin:Oh, I know how to buzz.
Priscilla:Oh, my gosh Is that okay, all right. Alban, Alban, you can just do, you have a sound effect.
Alban:I don't know. I could press other ones to see if I have other sound effects. Hold on.
Priscilla:Oh, that's a good one oh sparkles.
Jordan:Oh, it's spooky, all right.
Alban:Kevin and I both have sound effects loaded up on our Roadcaster Pro All right Round one, here we go.
Priscilla:All right. So here's your first question. The podcast writes in and they say hey, I've been growing my show consistently for the last year and I've had a lot of growth and now I want to start monetizing my podcast. Where do I start?
Jordan:I feel like that was Kevin first All right.
Kevin:So I'm going to start out by congratulating you that your show has seen some growth and that win might not be something that's been celebrated a whole lot in your life, so I'm going to take some time to celebrate that right now.
Kevin:Congratulations I have nothing to do and keep podcasting. Now, if you're ready to monetize, one of the easiest ways to do that is through either subscriptions or Buzzsprout ads, so I'm going to tell you a little bit about both. So we'll start with subscriptions, and that is a way to give anybody in your listening audience the ability to give you a recurring donation on a monthly basis, and you can set that up just by clicking on the monetization tab and then Buzzsprout subscriptions. You'll see all the options there. It's super easy and we think that will work for most people here at More Interested in the Ads. We also have Buzzsprout ads, which are like programmatic placements that automatically get dropped in your podcast episodes. So if you're doing a thousand downloads a month or more, that might be a good option for you, and you can find that as well under the monetization tab in your Buzzsprout account. We hope one of these two options works great for you. Thanks for using Buzzsprout and keep podcasting.
Alban:You should have ended it with my pleasure, the only way you could have made it better, Alban is there anything you would add to Kevin's?
Alban:response. I would have left out the congratulations and I would have missed the tone at the beginning because I was so focused on answering the question. I might have added dynamic content, that if you want to source your own ads, then you can add dynamic content to drop them in. Or, if you're more comfortable with just trying it out a little bit, you could also look at affiliate marketing, and so those would be the other things that I would have mentioned.
Priscilla:So I think Kevin right on. I think Alban's additions were also really great, and subtractions because he took the tone away from the beginning. Yeah and subtractions. Yeah, maybe the congratulation was the key there, and so Kevin did a great job with that.
Alban:Yeah, I blew it. I already knew as soon as someone Kevin said that I don't deserve this.
Priscilla:We're really lucky in Buzzsprout that we have a lot of great content online, and so I would just say, in addition to sharing those different sources, I would link to some of our videos that go through other options, so that if the podcaster wants to go even deeper into monetizing, they can do that through one of our blogs or videos or maybe even a non-Buzzsprout related resource.
Jordan:So that's the only thing I would have added. That's a good one.
Alban:Yeah, the top one of those being Jordan's guide to how to monetize a podcast. She wrote a few months ago. I think that's probably the best thing we have on it All right.
Priscilla:next question Urgent. My podcast is published, but it's not on Apple. Help me please.
Alban:Oh, I'd be happy to help you with that. This is really common to happen, so Apple will take a little while to update and pull that episode in to its listing. The great news is that all your listeners can actually get that episode right now. Typically, it takes Apple between a few hours and 24 to show up in Apple podcasts Now you want to hear my answer.
Priscilla:Yeah, what would you add to that?
Kevin:Okay, I think I'd start out by saying I can understand how frustrating and scary it can be when you publish an episode but you don't think Apple is working correctly and your audience is not receiving your latest episode. But let me reassure you that this is very normal for Apple to be a little bit behind when it comes to updating their directory. The good news is that anyone who subscribes to your show or follows you on Apple podcasts is probably has probably already downloaded that episode and can listen to it, and Apple will update shortly. It used to take up to 24 hours for Apple to update, but now we're seeing that happen much more frequently, and so I would say, within the next hour or two that's going to appear. So I'm with you. If you don't see it in the next hour or two, you can write me back, but I think you're going to be.
Alban:I'm sorry, I'm with you. You laid it on a little too thick there, kevin, I got it.
Priscilla:I actually don't think you laid it on thick at all. Sorry, Alban, but that is.
Alban:What about? I'll be here if there's any issues, but like that's great.
Priscilla:Yeah, yours forever. But remember, we're leaning into easy conversations. We're leaning into easy conversations, so saying I'm with you is totally fine. One of the things that we talked about is, when you send an email, you only have control over what you write, not how someone receives it. So you want to be really, really clear that you know that they're stressed out, and so Kevin, taking the extra couple sentences to make that really clear in the beginning, is going to set the tone for the whole email and then at the end saying, hey, we're here. If this doesn't show up in the next two hours, come back to us and we'll keep looking into it. It also reminds someone that we're on their team and this one email is not just us, putting them in the bucket and moving on.
Kevin:That's a good point, Priscilla. Thanks, and I just want Alban to know that you know, even though your ratings and reviews from your support shift won't really show up in your review, the results of this game show might.
Jordan:Man, I'm so glad my sports shift hasn't happened yet. I'm dodging this bullet.
Alban:Priscilla, throw me a softball, I need it All right there we go.
Priscilla:I just released my first episode and my stats are broken. I had 30 people tell me that they listened to the episode and my stats are only showing 10 downloads. I'm missing 20 downloads, help.
Alban:I'll take it. I mean, I can empathize with this, but I'm also looking for these 20 downloads. Where are they?
Jordan:I can't even help them.
Alban:I feel like I'm going to have to pull in some support.
Priscilla:This is a little trick question. This is a bit of a trick question.
Kevin:Yeah, stats are tricky, and so, again, I think I would lead with empathy that it's fantastic that you published an episode and they've had 30 people already tell you that they've downloaded it. That's fantastic. And then I would explain how BuzzProlet stats work, and I'm not sure if we have any help articles that go into more depth about this, but I would write a few sentences about how we count stats and how we filter certain things out, and so if any of those people were from the same household that might have had the same IP address within a 24-hour period, that we can only count that one time, and that's the IABv2 certification that us and almost every other podcast host follows, and so that could be part of it. Another part of it could be that our stats only update about once an hour or so. I'm not sure how recently they've listened, but you should see some more numbers trickle in over the next hour or two, and I think that would be it, besides linking to the help article.
Priscilla:Anything you would add, Alban?
Alban:No, I knew the stats update one. It didn't seem like the likely thing. I guess it could be that they're being filtered out because they're in the same household. Yeah, I don't have anything else.
Priscilla:Yeah, I think you hit it right on. I think with a situation like that, it's possible that 30 people told you that they listened to an episode and they didn't actually listen to it.
Priscilla:And so, without saying hey, just so you know, those 20 people actually didn't listen and that's why you don't have those downloads, you can't say that that's not going to be empathetic, that's not sitting with them, and so what you said, kevin, was good. Explaining why the numbers might not align perfectly or explaining why they might not show up yet is great, but also it's good to reinforce that 10 downloads is still a great number. So even if 30 people told you they listened and you got 10 downloads, you should see those increase over the next couple of hours. But also, 10 downloads is a lot and you should celebrate 10 downloads on your first episode.
Priscilla:That's really good, All right, one more. Hey Bats Brought Support. In your professional opinion, what is the best way to go viral on TikTok?
Kevin:Oh, that's an Alban question. Alban's a TikTok viral master.
Alban:One of my favorite emails I ever got in support was just how to go viral. That was it. No punctuation, nothing else, just how to go viral. I'd say, hey, thank you so much for writing in. I'd love to help with you with that. Bats Brought is we really focused on podcasting, so we aren't the most well-informed about TikTok, but what I've seen work really well is people who have an exceptionally strong hook at the beginning of the video and they create compelling content for their audience. It also seems like things like comments, likes, are really important, so anything you can do to engage your audience and start a conversation is really really helpful. If you'd like to send me a link to your TikTok, I'd love to check it out. Thanks again for using Bats Brought. Keep podcasting.
Priscilla:It sounded like you were closing out Bats Cast right there.
Alban:I think that's where my brain went.
Priscilla:I think that's great. I think this is a good example of someone asking us for our expertise about something that's not Buzzsprout exactly. And so it comes back to the people helping people. I'm not a TikTok expert, but I have some insight that I can share with you and I will share with you, even though it might not be exactly perfect, but because I'm a person helping you and I care about you, I'm going to share that information. But I'm also going to give you the caveat that I'm not an expert on TikTok, so I'm not going to give you a secret sauce situation. So I think that was a great response, Alban.
Jordan:Well, Priscilla, do we have a clear winner?
Kevin:Oh, it's not a competition, it's fine.
Alban:Kevin always with the grace when he's up three to one. I was keeping track. I know where he was.
Priscilla:I think the answer to your question, Jordan, is that both Alban and Kevin are very good at empathizing with our podcasters and helping them, and so they're also fun to go against each other head to head in these kind of quiz games, but the reality is they're also really good at working with our podcasters, so that's what we should take away from this.
Alban:Well, thank you. When you use empathy, everyone's the real winner.
Jordan:We're all winners. I was going to say.
Kevin:that is high praise, Priscilla, coming from you. You do a great job leading our support team and taking care of our customers, so thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for sharing this process. Thank you for setting this process up and letting all of us participate in supporting our Bats Brought customers and community. We really appreciate it. It's been a blast.
Jordan:Yeah, I'm excited for my shift. All right, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.
Priscilla:Okay, Jordan. So Kevin said before we recorded that you and I were going to do the post show together, but I don't really know what's the post show. I don't think I listened to Buzzcast long enough to get to the post show usually.
Jordan:That's understandable. The post show is where we're finished with our talking points for the actual podcast and then we just shoot the breeze and so we can talk about whatever we want. Yeah, you can talk about anything.
Priscilla:What would Kevin and Alban talk about in a post show?
Jordan:I could see Kevin being like I was swimming with Joyce and Gladys this weekend and I'm getting a little bit better at swimming and I have the ice tub and I've been doing that a lot and my Whoop strap and oh yeah, kevin, I have my Whoop too.
Priscilla:I've been tracking my cholesterol. When was the last time you did your ice bath?
Jordan:I did it this morning before we got on the call. You're not eating late at night again, are you?
Priscilla:No, definitely not. I don't eat at all now and I'm in my ice bath right now. I think we do spot on impressions of Alban and Kevin. I think we do.
Jordan:They're going to love this.