Maxime Manseau: (00:44) Yeah, I know so I think like Serban have been like we've been re scheduling this maybe like four or five times I feel always my my fault. So sorry about that Here we are

Serban Goanta: (00:53) but I'm glad to be here.

Maxime Manseau: (00:56) So just before, like a few minutes ago, I was on LinkedIn. I was looking at your profile, and I had forgotten. you guys called. I mean, you're leading the support team. You're not leading the support team. You're leading the customer love. Right? So is it just like a fun name, or does that just mean more than that?

Serban Goanta: (01:12) Yes, that's right.

It's a bit more than that. It happened. So we did a rebrand. I think it was one and a half years ago. We decided to switch from support to customer love. In the beginning, it was just the idea of, this definitely sounds better. And there were some companies that did it before. But then when we actually started looking at the reasons, there were real reasons why we should rebrand to customer love. And it was because we were no longer just supporting customers. Like it wasn't just about you get a ticket and you just try to solve it. It was really showing love to customers. Like in a way we're close to them. We're helping them out with other stuff. We were jumping on calls, setting up some other problems that they may have, because this is kind of how it happens in this world. Like customers may have problems that are not related to the product they're using. So we realized, well, this is actually a great name, customer love.

And we did a full rebranding. changed a lot of stuff internally. So it wasn't just like the naming. It was also like the processes themselves and how do we position ourselves as customer love. And it was really, really great. It's very nice to be customer love now.

Maxime Manseau: (02:23) I love it. Might use that too. So I have a bunch of questions for you, but I feel maybe we should start by just getting a better idea of basically what I call your setup.

Can you tell me how many are you in the support team? Maybe you can start there.

Serban Goanta: (02:55) Yes, so there's 10 people in the support team with me included. Yeah, that's basically it. We've started with one and then now we're like 10 in two and a half years.

Maxime Manseau: (03:09) That's great. And do you guys have a specific support model at all? So I know it's still a support team, but I mean a small support team, but do you have some tiering like level one, level two, not at all?

Serban Goanta: (03:25) Yes, it's pretty interesting because we don't have that at all. And I don't know if it's by design. We didn't quite think about it too much. We just did things more efficiently. So there's no tears whatsoever. Everyone in the support team can handle any sort of issue. And that's kind of it. There's no specialization as well. So once you are in the support team, you can just handle any sort of issue.

If you're not able to, then that's a different issue. Like it's about training and so on. But this kind of allows us to be more simplistic and more scalable, I would say. So we can adapt much easier to the support issues and the customers, I would say. But it's definitely not typical for sure.

Maxime Manseau: (04:04) Mm -hmm.

Yeah. Maybe, I don't know, but from what I've seen, I feel like the challenges about picking the right model supports comes when you arrive to a critical size of, I don't know, 25, 30 reps.>where sometimes you really need to think, like, fuck, you know, I need to organize that one way or another. And can you tell me, do you guys provide support, like, 24 -7? If so, do you follow, like, maybe a specific model? Or do you close support, like, because 10 is not much. So how do you handle that?

Serban Goanta: (04:55) Yeah, so it's 24 .5. We actually did want to do 24 .7, but it just didn't warrant the investment. Like the volume during weekends was very low, but it's 24 .5, which means we have one person that is based in Asia. We have one person in Europe, which is actually more Africa, but like the Europe time zone. And then everyone else is based in the, you know, North American or South American time zone, so to speak.

Maxime Manseau: (05:02) Yeah.

Serban Goanta: (05:22) And that's enough, like even with 10 people, can handle 24 -5.

Maxime Manseau: (05:25) You can manage that. I really like what you mentioned on the weekends. I I totally feel you because I've met so many people that were just trying to set up basically weekend supports. Obviously, it depends on the type of product you're having. If you're having a product which is related to somehow infrastructure,

you probably need to provide support during the weekend. But I feel many support teams were trying to set up weekend support, but they had totally underestimated the organization, the cost, what it meant. And so they start all this just to...

have someone during the weekend saying like, Hey, we'll get back to you on Monday, basically, because they couldn't even solve, you know, like the issue like, on spot, because maybe they had to ask a teammate, ask an engineer. So.

Serban Goanta: (06:24) Yeah.

Maxime Manseau: (06:31) I've seen so many people who just studied it and just reverted it. totally aligned with what you're saying. What's the main channel you're using? Do you guys support? Because at the beginning, you mentioned you were even doing live calls with your customer. But usually, is it through email, through live chat, through both, just to have an idea of?

Serban Goanta: (06:54) Yes, everything's through email. So again, we're trying to keep it simplistic and we've tried doing live chat, but again, we hit the same issue that you mentioned. Like you would just reply very fast and then you're like, wait, I actually now have to investigate. I'll get back to you once I investigate. So yeah, it's like bragging rights to say you have live chat, but you're not actually solving anything. So we don't do that at all. Like we just do email, we reply very fast. And we also have calls, but those are not live calls. Like you schedule it based on the

person's availability. And again, those are also 15 minutes. You also follow up on a ticket. So I wouldn't say that is even the most efficient way, but we offer it because sometimes people want to get on a call and talk about the issue.

Maxime Manseau: (07:35) Yeah, Here again, I totally feel you. Because I don't know why sometimes people feel they just need to have, you know, to offer live chat support. But every time it's just like, hey, we don't have live chat, it's in our plane for next year, this kind of thing. And then when you start chatting, just, why do you want live chat?

Many times they didn't even think about the why of having live chat. And when you start chatting with the people, you realize that it's probably not a good idea. And there is several reasons for that. maybe the biggest is the one you mentioned. If you need to troubleshoot or resolve the type of issues that you can't do right now,

It's probably doesn't worth it, you

Serban Goanta: (08:33) Yeah. And I guess it depends. Like there are certain cases where maybe live chat would be warranted. Like, don't know, we just got a charge you didn't want to, and you're incredibly annoyed as a customer. You want to literally get on live chats to talk to someone to get a refund or something like that. And yeah, I think it kind of helps when someone replies immediately. They say they're going to process the refund. Like the experience is good. It happens all in that moment. But like when it's about technical troubleshooting and like complex issues and investigations.

It doesn't usually work. I used to do live chat with four chats at once. We also had like targets where we're like replying 10 seconds or replying 20 seconds and it never worked. Like everyone that did live chat was incredibly stressed and annoyed and so on. Like it did a really big, it was a big issue for the team morale. So no, I won't think it works for everything, but yeah, if you can make it work for sure.

Maxime Manseau: (09:07) Yeah.

Yeah, it depends. And also what you mentioned, maybe you could imagine setting a chat for a specific segment, like VIP customer only, or for specific flow, for example, reform, mean, whatever. So yeah, anyway, I really feel like it's not for everyone. And what you mentioned about team health's morale is not something I had in mind.

But obviously, it's super stressful to just be live with people all the time, several shots at the same time. That's tough for the team.

Serban Goanta: (10:04) Yeah.

Yeah. And it's hard to talk about it because again, I know so many companies, they have live chat, they run support teams. It's really not good for focus. Like you destroy a person's focus when you put them to handle four chats at once for two hours. But again, like it's such a common channel of support that people just accept it and we choose not to look at it. Now I would definitely say just...

Maxime Manseau: (10:23) Yeah.

Serban Goanta: (10:35) If you are starting a support team and if you're like trying to figure the ops out and so on, try to handle email efficiently and try to handle it fast. And that may be a better avenue, at least from technical troubleshooting. That's what I

Maxime Manseau: (10:51) Yeah, the thing with the live chat is just do it if you can really do it perfectly. And this is tough.

Serban Goanta: (10:56) Yeah.

Maxime Manseau: (10:59) So you...

I think the first time I reached out was after you wrote an article back in 2022. And I'm sure you know which one I'm talking about. If I'm not mistaken, you guys had reached this year 100 % CSAT, which is pretty extraordinary because everyone is like, know,

95 % 97, 98 .5, but the real 100, like congrats. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Serban Goanta: (11:34) Yep.

Sure. Yeah. And it's actually, we're very proud and we do post this publicly. So I think it's chilipiper .com slash support dash metrics. And those are our support metrics that are synced from our data warehouse. So they're 100 % real. They don't need updating and so on. But yeah, the CSAT story is very interesting because we are actually like at a hundred percent and is the fourth quarter in a row. So it's like one entire year of basically

perfect customer satisfaction, which is incredible. It's insane to me that we got there. But yes, think the main, of course, like there's a lot of initiatives that got to this. So if you want to talk about this, like we can talk about like, what did we do before that? Like, how did we work towards that?

Maxime Manseau: (12:28) Yeah, maybe that would be great. So first, I'm going to stop and we're going jump into this after, but you mentioned you are publishing live your support metrics. It's definitely something I love and I feel like a few support teams are slowly doing it, but I don't understand why not everyone is doing it.

It's so great for the customers, but it was also so great for the team. I'll write you the URL of ChiliPiper support metrics so you can take a look on what it looks like. But it's really, really a great practice. Everyone should...

Should check. you, I don't have the page like right here, but do you know like, like the two or three metrics that you publish? Like which one are there?

Serban Goanta: (13:32) Yes, so we do have the customer satisfaction and again, that's the Zendesk version of it. You get either bad or good and you just like calculate at the end. So of course that's big. Then we have the second one, which is the first initial response time. Very important to us because it's how fast do we reply to a ticket. Right now we're at eight minutes. So on average, once we get the ticket and the customer waits eight minutes for a reply, that's why I was like...

Maxime Manseau: (13:41) -huh.

Serban Goanta: (13:59) life chat, it's irrelevant to us, like eight minutes is good enough. And the last one, the main one is a full resolution time. So how long does it take from getting the tickets to actually resolving it completely? And we are at like five hours now, of course, like excluding bugs and so on. Like how long does it actually take to solve the issue? And those are the three we care about. We have some optional ones, but for me, like as a support leader, this is really all I care about.

Maxime Manseau: (14:29) Okay, yeah, to have your like two, three nurse star symmetric and just then do everything you can to improve them. Yeah, sure, so sorry for this little break but now we can jump back to what you were mentioning. So I would love to know more about how was it before and why and how you decided to move forward.

Serban Goanta: (14:35) Yeah, exactly.

Yes, yeah, the story is like very, very short story. So I was the first person to be hired in support. So I was handling everything. So all of the tickets and that was an interesting experience because I was the 24 five support, so to speak. And when I started that, like, of course I got to get also frustrated and I also saw the joy in solving tickets, but mostly

Maxime Manseau: (15:10) You

Serban Goanta: (15:19) It was very easy for me to observe the process, right? Like since I also had experience before, it was easy for me to understand what is working, what is not. And I had kind of full autonomy to change things. So then we started hiring more people. And once that happened, it was easy to see where efficiency was lost. For me, it was all about efficiency. Like why does it take so long to solve a ticket? Like where does the information get lost? So.

I kind of in my mind created this framework, which again, it's not something official or academic or anything like that. But I call it like the PPP framework, which was about products, people and processes. So how do you make all of these three elements work together? And it was very important because if something is not right, then everything kind of...

Maxime Manseau: (16:03) Okay.

Serban Goanta: (16:13) falls away, right? Like if you don't have the process, it doesn't matter that you use the best tools and you have the best people because they're never going to meet, right? Or if you don't have the right tools, then it doesn't matter. Like the people cannot do their job. don't have them. So what I did was actually work on some internal tools because that was the main goal that would make this support process faster. So I was literally looking into very minute specific things like

Maxime Manseau: (16:34) Okay.

Serban Goanta: (16:41) What do I need to do now to find the customer information? Well, I need to write an SQL query and I'm losing five minutes and it's very, very time consuming. Okay, let's shortcut the whole process. Let's do it in three seconds. Let's create a Chrome extension. So when I open the ticket in Zendesk, I can just select the email address and it's going to get me straight to the database. Right? So it was this type of small things. And of course, like the processes as well. for example, we had absolutely no structure.

we implemented a shift system, right? So this is a process for the people to actually handle tickets in a specific timeframe so we can offer 24, five support. So it was all of it that got us kind of on the map with this very record breaking first initial response time, because then it was very easy to reply. It was very easy to troubleshoot. You had all the information you needed there.

And I can honestly say the 100 % satisfaction rate, it's really due to this speed and quality of support. people, like when I look at the customer satisfaction ratings, the customers always say, this is incredible fast support. Like you're replying so fast. You're solving the issue so fast. So they're interlinked. And I would say, yeah, that's kind of what happened. Of course there are 40 initiatives, but those are the main ones.

Maxime Manseau: (18:03) And I'm curious to know, because you said 40 initiatives, so how did it work? Did you basically grab a piece of paper and because you were the one experiencing everything, you just started to write every single thing that would need to be streamlined? My idea is how would you recommend another support leader who would want to...

you know, like to raise all these, you know, operation level, like support operation level, like what's the process would you recommend like to improve everything?

Serban Goanta: (18:43) Yeah, I think it's definitely about a list, like making a list of where like efficiency is lost. But more than that is understanding the gears in the company. So for me, it was also important to understand how things work together, especially with engineering and what I can use from engineering to help me build a Chrome extension, right? And how does this database work? Like even technical stuff that was outside the support purview.

And once, again, support leaders, especially technical support leaders, they're very good at this. They want to like, they like tech, they understand how things work. So once they understand how, you know, the gears fall into place, yeah, actually make a list of how would the ideal support flow look like, like as dreamy as possible. Like you can just dream as far as you can. Just imagine everything's perfect.

And you work from that. It's a priority and you work from that to understand what you can do and what you can't do. Sometimes there's stuff that you think you won't be able to do because of resources or whatever. But again, in my case, it wasn't even complicated stuff. There were automations that we did with Zapier, which is practically inexpensive and you have all the access in the world. You just need admin access and a couple of tools.

Maxime Manseau: (19:52) -huh.

Serban Goanta: (19:58) There's stuff that we did in Jira communicating with Zendesk. Again, you have access to both tools. There's really not much stopping you other than the imagination, I would say, but it does start with making this list, analyzing the process and hoping that it can change.

Maxime Manseau: (20:16) Yeah, and I guess you can already always start with the low -hanging fruit, because once you get this list, you're have a few items that's going to be super easy, obviously a few harder. But I really like this approach, because sometimes, especially...

A team of your size many times don't have someone who is fully dedicated to support operation. every day you arrive, you have so many tickets and you just start crashing the tickets and sometimes you just forget to just stop everything, look at what you have, at your processes and how you can improve everything.

I forgot which team...

It might be, I don't know if it's Monday or ClickUp, I remember like the former, like he's not here anymore, like the former VP of support was saying like, the best initiative I took was hiring like a...

support operation person when my team was just five people. So I think support operation is especially something you want to take time on, especially now with AI. I don't want to jump into AI right now or anything, but...

I feel you need to have this basically, like this overview of really how support works to be able to improve things. So, yeah, so great. So congratulations.

Hopefully you can keep the 100 % like as long as possible. I don't want to disappoint you, but I feel you might have a 99 .9 % coming.

Serban Goanta: (22:12) Yeah, I mean, at some point, right? Like, no, for sure. But yeah, we accepted, like our targets are not even based on that. Like we were also joking in the team, like, Hey, I just hope you won't get a bad because it's going to decrease. no, we are expecting it to happen. It's impossible to always keep it like that.

Maxime Manseau: (22:32) When you're saying target, I'm pretty interested in that. What does your CEO ask you in terms of support? What's your goal to use Serban? What did he ask you? How does he know if you're doing a good job or a bad job? Is there any...

I feel that sometimes, and it's not bad thing, sometimes C -Level just asks the head of support to make it work and you kind of stop here. So I'm curious to know...

Serban Goanta: (23:09) Yes. So the main one was always first initial response time. So Nikola is like, even when I was hired a long time ago, a very long time ago, we had, I had this target of replying fast. At that time it was more along the lines of two hours, right? So it was very, very, very far away from what we do now. But generally these three are the targets, right? So these are the targets from the executives and these are the targets for our team. So we're very, very aligned.

Maxime Manseau: (23:32) Okay.

Alain, yeah.

Serban Goanta: (23:38) In terms of that, there's nothing outside the norm. We have some nice to haves as well. So those are targets for the team that are just nice to haves. But again, they're not critical, right? Like how many replies do you have on a ticket? We strive for one, right? Like in one reply, you'll be able to solve it. Or how many of the customers rate a ticket? Like the industry is at 10%. We want to strive for 17, let's say.

But I would still say the main ones for everyone in the company and what actually moves the needle are like CSAT, first response time and full response time.

Maxime Manseau: (24:14) Yeah, okay. Okay, gotcha. No, I love to...

to dig a bit about like, so you beat the team from scratch. So from one to 10 basically.

If I'm starting a support team, let's say I'm the first one or let's say two, three people, what would be your biggest advice trying to build the team? And if you have seen any pitfalls, any mistake you've done building the team? I don't know if some stuff comes to mind, but really, really, I don't know.

Serban Goanta: (24:57) Yeah, for me specifically, I think the biggest win in terms of building the team was the hiring process. So it all started from the hiring. I think at least in the last couple of years, we got very, very good at spotting good candidates, like who would make a good support person. And it's really not location. It's really not age. Like there is really no specific identifier. You can just spot these people through the way they talk and

how passionate they are. So it does start with hiring. After the hiring process, I think the one thing you need to do as a support leader is proper onboarding where you explain incredibly well what the company is doing, how the product is working, how the processes in support work. And that's what we've also invested actually very recently, maybe like one year ago, we started.

aggregating documentation. So now we, in one month, we can fully onboard the person. And then thirdly, would be, yeah, jump on the tickets, you know, like there's no time like today to understand what's going on. Doesn't matter if you make mistakes, it doesn't matter if the customer gets upset afterwards, like it's perfectly okay, you know, like just jump in the tickets, understand how it's working. So yeah, I guess also the coaching process that follows

this jumping in the fray, so to speak. That's also important. And after that, I mean, that's it. Like it should be very straightforward. Anyone can be independent. Anyone can do the work autonomously, right? So that is the dream for sure.

Maxime Manseau: (26:40) Yeah, and do you have basically, how does that work after? Do you provide any, do you have quarterly review or monthly review with your team? How do you, I don't like the work track, but how do you ensure basically they are great at their job? Do you have any?

Serban Goanta: (27:00) Yeah. Yes, we have, of course, we do quarterly reviews. So that's definitely, we have a very good schema for that. That is also very, very objective, which has to do with the metrics or also more subjective based on the skills of this particular person and so on. But mostly everyone kind of knows how they're doing and everyone in the team knows how they're doing because we publish it, right? So all of the metrics that are important to us, they are...

open to the entire team. They can see how they're doing. They can see how they can improve as well. We also have systems to check quality of replies. So it's very open in a way. It's very easy for people to understand, you know, like what they need to improve on. But of course, like every, every three months we get on calls, we review the activity and not just for the metrics. Cause as I said, like the metrics are straightforward. It's not like someone will debate 10 minutes or something like that.

But it's more about like the, like what do they want to do? Like what the future is? Like, like for me, that's more important in a review. Like, you know, rather than.

Maxime Manseau: (28:04) Yeah, man, this is so important what you're saying because like...

Recently I've been chatting with like, yeah, a few support leaders like on this specific topic. mean, you know, basically that is career projection tracks and like you still have many support teams where basically...

like the head of support never have conversation about like what the future might look like, which means like support reps just come to work, deal with the ticket and it stopped here, you know? And I feel this is like such a mistake, you know, because it's so easy to, you know, to give at least an idea of the path that might happen for each of your teams. So...

Really like you mentioned that.

Serban Goanta: (28:55) No, I fully agree. we actually, like, we run the support team sometimes more like a company in a company. Like, we do have a vision and it's usually a vision for the year, right? For example, the vision for support this year was revenue and AI. And that was how we started it. Like, this is what we were focusing on, which I said, okay, we need to look into revenue generation, even as a support team, which seems kind of counter to the ethos, but that's what we're doing.

And we do, you know, like we have also outside projects that have nothing to do with support. They are either AI related projects or projects that people want to do to improve something in the company. So no, I do agree. Like it would be, yeah, not, not be, not be as interesting to just focus on metrics and just like, of course we pride ourselves with them, but it's more about like the vision of support. It's more about what you can do to improve in the company and so on. So fully agree.

Maxime Manseau: (29:49) I'd like to stop you on revenue and AI. Not so much on the AI part because that would be almost for another episode and feel everyone is talking about AI in support. Anyway, it's obvious. revenue. This is, to me, super interesting because as you mentioned, support...

Serban Goanta: (29:53) Yeah.

Maxime Manseau: (30:16) is rarely seen as a profit center. Most of the time it's seen or it has been seen as a cost center and I feel like the best support team, I mean the best support team will strive it's because their C -level managements have a profit center approach to support.

So I'm curious to know when you say revenue for this year vision, what does it mean? Does it mean that you try to calculate a support initiative as an impact on revenue? Does it mean you see that support brings more revenue? What does it mean?

Serban Goanta: (31:03) Yes, so in a nutshell, it means that we do not see support as a cost center. Even though we don't directly create the revenue, I think we can create the opportunities for revenue. So this is kind what it means. Because what we've observed is that you have these customers that reach out with some very specific issues. You solve their issues, and then they are incredibly happy about the support. And it's...

basically the ROI is in the happiness of the customer. It's something quantifiable. So what we want to do with this revenue initiative is actually figure out when can we maybe upsell or cross -sell or suggest, even if we don't do it ourselves, suggest. And we have a specific process for it, which is a qualified opportunity where you can log it in the system.

Maxime Manseau: (31:46) Absel Okrotha. Gotcha.

Serban Goanta: (31:59) find these opportunities where the customer would need an upsell or a cross -sell and just utilize that good customer satisfaction and that good connection with the customer to do it. And this started a variety of avenues because you understand, whoa, you can actually increase a lot of stuff. You can increase retention. You can increase utilization, which indirectly impact revenue. Those are metrics that indirectly do it.

Maxime Manseau: (32:23) Brilliant.

Serban Goanta: (32:26) So all of the initiatives are kind of in that direction. How do we increase the utilization? How do we increase the retention and indirectly the cross -sells, upsells and so on. So that's kind of how we see things.

Maxime Manseau: (32:38) OK. And I have a question regarding this, because basically it's about spotting specific behavior from your customer, I would say.

You know, like for example, let's say like a customer who's asking questions or having issue with, let's say, security matter might means, you know, they need to get upscale to an enterprise pricing. I'm just, you know, but did you build like, you know, a list of potential behavior or is it just like based on the feeling out of the rep?

Is that like well -structured or for now it's just, you know, like.

Serban Goanta: (33:27) It's not so well structured, but what we do have that is incredibly valuable is we have this visibility into the metrics, right? So when one of our agents, they get on a ticket, they can already see at a glance all of the metrics they care about, like utilization. So let me give you an example. A customer just reaches out. They need to solve an issue with this particular product. And we check the account and we see that, hey, wait.

They have active this particular product, but they're not using it as much, right? That's really easy to see at a glance. That's like not even something that needs to be investigated. So we can ask at least inquire about it. Like, Hey, why don't you use this? Like, is there a reason why you would, you know, like, so easy things like that, where you can just, it's very easy for the agent to just suggest, like understand at least why they're not using it.

or even more specific in terms of, someone comes in with a specific issue and we just realize, wait, this product will just solve your issue completely, right? Like something like this throw will just solve it. And we'll just suggest it on the spot. So while there are not so specific, there's not a manual for it, everyone in our team is kind of like used to thinking in those terms.

Maxime Manseau: (34:43) Yeah.

But this is great because for me, I feel it's not obvious in the sense it's extra work, because basically you might have solved their issue, but what you're asking your team is really to look at the health symmetric. This is almost like success, no? I'll say like...

Serban Goanta: (35:10) We also have the success team and they do an incredible job. They do it way more than we do. We do it more in the sense of we're reactive on the ticket itself because the success, they will not handle technical issues. We are the only people that have the visibility. Strictly on that channel, we can do this. But of course, we have also success team. They can also check the metrics. They do a great work at that. For us, it's just...

Maxime Manseau: (35:20) Yeah.

Serban Goanta: (35:38) Again, it's not our main way of thinking. Like for us, it's not like, we have to do this. This is like a stringent target or something like that. But it's such an obvious use case and it's such an obvious and good way to help the company that kind of everyone does it.

Maxime Manseau: (35:55) Yeah, yeah. And that made me think. I didn't even ask you your stack, basically, of the tools you guys are using. So I know you mentioned Zendesk. Do you use any external tool or just to provide support?

Serban Goanta: (36:17) No, so it's just Zendesk and in Zendesk we have integrated a couple of other tools, but mostly they are internal. So we will also mention it in like that blog, it's ChilliVision, which allows us to view customers. And we have a couple others like session monitoring as well, so we can see what customers, how they're using the product. But yeah, I would say mostly it's just Zendesk and these internal tools.

Maxime Manseau: (36:44) Yeah, okay, great. That's a proof that you don't need to have 12 different tools to get 100 % CSAT. Okay, cool.

Serban Goanta: (36:54) Yeah, no.

Maxime Manseau: (36:59) I'll go just but very quickly about AI. So you guys, do you use AI in support right now? Or not yet? What's the plan?

Serban Goanta: (37:12) We do use it, we actually use it company -wide. We just use a tool that aggregates documentation and you can ask questions from the documentation and answers instantly. And it also aggregates Zendesk, which is very important because you could ask a question in your natural language and it would look at other replies from Zendesk and kind of create a reply for you. It's very, very useful for our...

account executives because again, they may have questions about the product and so on. But yeah, I would say it's not such a complex use of AI, but it does a great job.

Maxime Manseau: (37:54) Yeah. OK, cool. Anyway, guess we'll see a lot of new stuff in the next month. And probably you'll find new use cases, or new way to use AI to improve support efficiency.

Serban Goanta: (38:15) Yes, and we have an initiative where we're trying to, like we use open air credits and we're trying to build apps. We just need the ideas for it. And yes, we've started like, how can you analyze sentiment in tickets or how can you maybe reply in a specific tone? But again, we're just at the beginning. It's not definitely not there yet.

Maxime Manseau: (38:34) Okay, yeah, gotcha. I know you mentioned like Jira, engineers, like in term of escalation, like how does that work at ChiliPiper? let's say like I'm an agent, there is an issue I can't solve, what do I do?

Serban Goanta: (38:55) So you mean in terms of a bug, like a critical issue in the product? Yeah, we have a framework for that. So obviously we try to move as fast as possible and we have SLAs for depending on the severity of the bug, like how far they're supposed to be resolved. From an ops perspective, it's for us, it's not a big deal. We just create the bug. We replicate the behavior in our staging account. We assign it to a developer and then we just link that bug.

Maxime Manseau: (38:58) Yeah.

Serban Goanta: (39:22) from Jira back to Zendesk, which triggers the automations. But yeah, most importantly is that the bug gets resolved in a timely matter. And we also see like if there's a critical bug, there's a channel and everyone can see that is happening and we can comment there, but yeah, it's been before it's been quite an interesting challenge now, not so much, but yes, the bug piece and I think everyone in support can attest is

it can be the bane of any companies, right? Like if you just release a new feature and you get like a couple of bugs, it can get a bit crazy. For me, from my point of view, it's like how you manage it, right? Like you can manage it better. You can find the root causes. You can solve them fast. But sometimes it's not so easy. Yeah, it can be challenging.

Maxime Manseau: (40:02) Yeah.

No, no. If all bugs were too easy, it wouldn't be so fun to work in support. I guess most of the time, the biggest challenge... Because after solving the bug, basically, it's not a support team job. What is the most painful is more like the issue diagnosis, which is basically...

Serban Goanta: (40:22) Yeah, no for sure.

Maxime Manseau: (40:39) just really understanding what's happening and, as you were mentioning, being able to replicate it to the staging ad cons or whatever. Because once you're able to replicate it, the bug is solved, basically. But when it's not, I feel this is the tough part for support reps.

Serban Goanta: (40:54) Yes, yes.

Yes. And I think it's very important and that's something that we should have known way before, but you need a framework for how to replicate bugs because sometimes it would just be okay. I'm just recording a video showcasing where the bug happens and that's not enough. It's never enough, right? So you have to be able to replicate it in the environment that the devs are using where they can fix the bug and so on.

I think once we deploy that framework, everything kind of got better because people would just replicate them properly. They would take the time to understand what's happening. wasn't just recording a video in production and sending it to a developer. But sometimes again, it's much harder than that because sometimes the bug can happen in a specific environment and not happen at all in another and it's harder. And there's been some more interesting...

The more interesting challenges I would say in my career were with bug replication and literally trying to solve something for a month with the customer themselves. And yeah, I'm happy this is no longer the case now, but yeah, it can be challenging.

Maxime Manseau: (42:06) I know, I've been there too. I'm seeing the time, it's been like almost 45 minutes. I have so many questions for you, but I feel it's time to close this conversation. Because anyway, I can't hold you here much more. One or two questions just to finish this.

What is one thing you wish more people understood about the role of support at ChiliPipers? The question is like you know is there something maybe other departments, other teammates who are not in support don't get about like you know the role of support?

Serban Goanta: (42:50) The one thing would be that support is not just support or at least successful support, which I believe we have, but Chili Piper is not just support or customer love. It's so intrinsic to how the entire company runs and it's so important for support itself to be enmeshed in other departments.

And I think that's what makes it truly successful. And that's why sometimes it feels like magic, which some people like, it's hard for them to understand like a hundred percent or, or goods, you know, like these good metrics, like how does it happen? But it's because you don't just do support. It's more than that. It's not just reactive, it's proactive. And I truly believe that support the chili Piper is successful because of this variety of initiatives that spread like in the entire company.

Maxime Manseau: (43:25) Yeah.

Serban Goanta: (43:43) We just didn't get limited in the supports here. So I think that would be one thing.

Maxime Manseau: (43:49) Okay, I'll get that. I really like it. Second question. Looking back, what would you change about ChiliPiper approach to customer support if you could? Is there something you would have done differently since you joined support at ChiliPiper?

Serban Goanta: (44:17) Well, I mean, the real answer is no. It's hard for me to think in terms of, because it's either absolutely nothing or a thousand things. So frankly, no, I think everything that I've done kind of brought support to this level. I don't think it would have worked any other way. Like if right now, like present me would give past me a recipe of how things should be done.

Maxime Manseau: (44:20) Hahaha

Serban Goanta: (44:44) I would really not get it and I would just say no, this is impossible, you're wrong. So yeah, it's no, I mean, it's no.

Maxime Manseau: (44:52) Okay, fair enough, fair enough. And to finish, is there anything else you'd like to add that maybe we haven't covered or that maybe you think people should know, like something that's just worth being mentioned?

Serban Goanta: (45:12) No, just, I mean, if you're interested or if you want to know more, just send an email to support thechillipiper .com. You know, we can have a conversation there. But no, no, that is it. Very, very happy to have this conversation. Very happy to share this as well. And yes, please, please go to chillipiper .com slash support dash metrics. And you will, you will see there and yeah, happy to jump on more conversations anytime.

Maxime Manseau: (45:19) Hahaha!

Nice. Thank you so much, Servan. Thank you so much for your time. It was a pleasure having you and talk to you soon. Bye -bye.

Serban Goanta: (45:48) Talk to you soon, bye.