MBA1830 Q&A Wednesday: I hate customer support. Should I hire a support manager?

Ready to save on new tech. It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium support, and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster. And with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals ClickUp just solved AI's.

Biggest problem and it's saving 4 million teams from productivity loss every day. Unlike ChatGPT and other AI tools, ClickUp converges all your work into one platform so your AI super agents have full context to prioritize tasks, execute workflows and draft documents instantly. Teams using ClickUp Finish work 30% faster and cut meetings in half. Try ClickUp for free today and get 15% off AI upgrades at ClickUp.com podcast that's C-L-C-Kashup.com podcast.

Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Insightful business lessons delivered on the daily every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014 and today's episode is Q and A Wednesday. On Q and A we answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you got a question you want to ask, just email me over@omar mba.net Today's question is from Brad and Brad asks, hey Omar, I love the podcast. Would love your help with this question on Q and A Wednesday. I hate customer support. Should I consider hiring a customer support manager to take care of support and start growing a support team? Would love your insights. Thanks Brad. Thanks Brad for the question. Hate is a very strong word and it sounds like you really do not enjoy dealing with customer support. Tickets, emails, chat, whatever it may be. In today's lesson, we're going to go a little deep. Let's explore why. Why do you hate it? And if your reasons are valid, how to start outsourcing this job to somebody else. If you absolutely hate something in your business, you need to take a look at it closely to make sure you're not missing something, you're not doing something wrong in the process. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

Looking for a Valentine's gift she'll truly love 1-800-flowers.com knows what she wants. For 50 years, 1-800-flowers has helped guys like you get it right. Delivering millions of fresh Valentine's roses nationwide, 1-800-flowers offers premium fresh cut flowers backed by their seven day freshness guarantee plus same day delivery when you need them on time. Valentine's is coming up and bouquets are selling fast so don't wait on this order today at 1-800-FLowers.com sxm. That's 1-800flowers.com sxm.

It's important as a business owner to know what you like and dislike to do inside your business. Some things are just gonna light you up. Some things you're gonna enjoy doing. For me, I love teaching, I love doing webinars, I love doing this podcast. I love product work. And there are some areas in my day to day that I don't love as much but hate. If I come across something I hate. I really have my radar up. You got to take a close look at why you hate it. What's wrong with this situation, especially when it comes to customer support. If you absolutely do not like speaking to your customers, we have a serious problem here. This means you're serving an audience that you just simply don't enjoy, don't like, and it's going to be really hard for you to serve this audience for the long term. I know this firsthand. I had a business where I just was not passionate about solving my customers problems. I saw a business opportunity and went for it. I'm referring to my clothing line back in the day, over a decade old. Now, taking a close look at something that you hate is important because you want to find out where is the friction here. Listen, I have answered customer support tickets for years. I still do on occasion, but the vast majority of my support tickets are pretty pleasant. I like talking to my customers and figuring out how I can help them. But it wasn't always like this. When we first started Webinar Ninja back in 2014, you know, we had a lot of teething problems. We were trying to solve a few issues. This is natural for any software company. So maybe this is a warning for you to improve your product. Maybe your customers are just upset because they're not getting what they're expecting. I experienced this in the first few months of Webinar Ninjas journey back in 2014 and it was all hands on deck. Let's get this product where it needs to be so that when customers write in, they're happy and they're just asking questions on how they can get the most out of it. If after you explored why you hate something, you just simply rather do something else and you just use the word hate because you would prefer to do something else, then it's totally okay for you to find somebody to do that job. I do want to tell you though that a customer support agent, somebody that answers tickets, is not necessarily the best manager. Management is a skill in itself and somebody who's great at customer support could be wonderful with your customers, but not so good with managing other support agents. So my advice to you is actually just hire your first agent. Hire somebody to take care of the things that you don't want to do and if there's a decision that needs to be made, you can make it. Those things are one offs and it's not that common and you're not in the weeds within support conversations. So hiring an agent is a good idea. Now when you hire a first agent, my recommendation is have them document their job, the tasks they do, how they do it, because they can train the next hire and the next Having a standard operating procedure for all your jobs, all your positions, is really important because this is going to allow your new team members to follow a playbook and can easily start their job with success. Once you have a few agents under your belt and you've been managing them for a while, you might want to then look for a manager to manage them. Now you might find somebody within your team, those agents that you hire that have management skills and will really suit the job and you can promote them and then hire another agent to replace them, or you can make an outside hire. Either way, it's better for you to have some momentum, build some culture in your customer support team. You'll be doing the managing for the moment and then from there you can hire a manager. Obviously a lot of this is contingent on your cash flow, your salary cap within your business, more about salary cap later in a future episode. But the point here is that you want to make sure you're not over hiring. You want to make sure that you're hiring just enough to cover your needs.

At Capella University, learning the right skills could make a difference. That's why our business programs teach you relevant skills you can take from the course room to the workplace. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella.

Edu to prep up today's lesson. Customer support is one of those hidden ways where you can grow and excel and beat out the competition in your market. Customers will come for your product or service, but they'll stay for the care they get from customer support. Customer support is a retention tool is a way to get your customers to stay customers and be happy and continue to buy from you. This is why it's critical to make sure whoever's in that job takes it with pride and sees the significance of that job for what it is. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe so you don't miss a beat. Thanks Brad for asking today's Q and A Wednesday's Question. If you have a question you want to ask, email me over@omar00mba.net and I'll make sure to answer right here on Q and A Wednesday. Before I go, I want to leave you with this When I started many of my businesses, I didn't have much money in the beginning. I had to do every job. I had to do things I liked, didn't like, even hated, because I just simply couldn't afford to find somebody to do it. But in the process, I learned how to do the job. I learned what's important, what's not. I documented those processes. So when I was ready to hire, it was easy for me to put up a job description because I know exactly what the job entailed and what we needed. So there are some advantages to not being able able to hire at the start. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

Is it time to reimagine your future? The right business skills may make a difference in your career. At Capella University, we offer a relevant education that's designed to focus on what you need to know in the business world. We'll teach professional skills to help you pursue your goals like business management, strategic planning, and effective communication. And you can apply these skills right away. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo.