[00:00:33] Maxime Manseau: Welcome everyone to the Support Labs today. Episode is a very special one, not just because it's the first time I'm recording with two guests. Usually it's a one-on-one, but because it's all about learning from each other, so my guests today are Thibo Witz support at Miro and Ole Witz support at.

[00:00:49] Maxime Manseau: ManyChat, how are you guys? Very good. Thanks. How are you? Good. Thank you so much for accepting the invitation. So to give a bit of context to the people who are listening us. So I [00:01:00] spotted a conversation somehow between the two of you, right? And in this conversation like appears the word mentorship.

[00:01:06] Maxime Manseau: And at the same moment I was having some chat with some VP supports that were studying me, like they were feeling very lonely. In their leadership journey. And I was just, I want to know more about your story guys, and this is when I ask you if maybe we should record this because it probably gonna interest more people than just me.

[00:01:24] Maxime Manseau: So thank you so much again, really appreciate. So to jump straight on, on, on the subject, I think what we should do is I know Oleg on the last occasion, you. Told me the story. I was gonna say quickly, but it wasn't so quickly. But if you don't mind to just tell again the story, maybe we should start with that.

[00:01:43] Maxime Manseau: And probably after gonna ask Tibo if he has anything to share or his own version of the story, so yeah. Please go ahead.

[00:01:50] Oleg Krasnov: Yeah, so I think I just need to step back a bit and outline like the overall context of the whole journey because it's both like personal and just business wise [00:02:00] would make sense.

[00:02:00] Oleg Krasnov: So basically I joined MI back in October, 2018 as their third first head of support at the team was around seven people back then, if I'm not, if I'm recalling correctly. And we had about 120 employees overall. Most of them based in Russia, a few people in Amsterdam, and a few people in the us.

[00:02:20] Oleg Krasnov: And I would say that thinking about my attitude back then, I came with very high ego. I felt like, okay, like I'm, and actually I relocated in the middle of nowhere. Like I, it was close to rural mountains. I moved them from Moscow, and the guys were telling me that they're going to be the next Google.

[00:02:38] Oleg Krasnov: I said okay, yeah. Tell me about that. But eventually, like it turned out to be like a very interesting journey. And so I came very ignorant with the mindset like, Hey, I I've been in support for over 10 years, like I've seen a lot, so I'm not going to be surprised. And I was hyperfocused on just building the dream team, so I didn't really pay now enough attention.

[00:02:58] Oleg Krasnov: Is now IC [00:03:00] to operations, to analytics, to processes and so forth. And and then Covid came and we we've seen this search in in demand for tools like, and in practical realms. We had 2000 tickets a month before the covid happened. And then in a matter of. One month in the matter of March, we now have 2000 tickets a week.

[00:03:20] Oleg Krasnov: And this was the moment of like really hard realization that how I underestimated the importance of all this operation stuff. And basically I was working my ass off for, I dunno, the next half of the year. Imagine all kinds of bet problems with I dunno, couple thousand tickets in the backlog BET CSAT scores, people messaging your CEO saying what the hell?

[00:03:42] Oleg Krasnov: Like, why they're not responding in four weeks or something like that. And eventually, I handled this situation, okay. I would say. But what was clear for sure is that, first of all, I was squeezed out. Secondly, I wasn't prepared for the next stage of growth. Before Covid Miro had about [00:04:00] 250 employees, I think seven months later.

[00:04:03] Oleg Krasnov: When we started hiring a new leader for support, we had about 700 800 employees. So the growth was tremendous over 2020. And I. There was a moment during my performance review where, and I can say it was very painful when my ex manager said Hey, you did a good job, but I think we need to hire a an ex-head of support.

[00:04:24] Maxime Manseau: Or who was your boss at this moment? Not the net, was it like VP of experience? He

[00:04:29] Oleg Krasnov: was a VP of customer experience, he was reporting to Chief Revenue officer and CRO was reporting to the CEO. So that was the structure. Okay. And yeah, he was like, Hey, we just need to find a successor for you.

[00:04:41] Oleg Krasnov: And at this point in time, I remember I was completely I think I like my first reaction after that, after this call, I did. I I wasn't speaking for I know, like an hour with anybody. I was like, just absorbing this, the whole situation processing this. And my first initial reaction screw it I will quit.

[00:04:58] Oleg Krasnov: But my wife actually told me like, [00:05:00] Hey, just. Give it a try. You always can quit. Like just see how it goes. And this was the moment.

[00:05:06] Maxime Manseau: There is always a wife in the story. Yes. Sorry. It is.

[00:05:09] Oleg Krasnov: Yeah. So as we say, happy wife, happy life. I.

[00:05:13] Maxime Manseau: Yeah,

[00:05:13] Oleg Krasnov: So basically and this was the moment when Tiba appeared on the radar because he was on the pipeline.

[00:05:20] Oleg Krasnov: Initially, I was a bit skeptical about his profile specifically because my way of thinking was like, we need to have a person, like if we are hiring my successor, then I would expect somebody who led let's say a hundred people team.

[00:05:34] Maxime Manseau: Thibo. Just to make clear, you were already working for Miro, correct?

[00:05:37] Maxime Manseau: No.

[00:05:38] Oleg Krasnov: No. And you're muted.

[00:05:39] Maxime Manseau: Yeah. I think we can't hear you, Thibo.

[00:05:41] Tibo Leclercq: Yeah, so sorry. I was outside. I was not a Miro at the time. Yeah. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, okay. So I yeah, it was, it's funny to hear from your perspective because for mine at the time, I was in a career break right after Covid and I I was I was traveling, I was in Greece, and an ex colleague of mine [00:06:00] who was the VP of CX at Miro reached out and basically sent me, told me the similar story that, that Alexis said.

[00:06:07] Tibo Leclercq: We have a head of support. He's been doing a great job so far, but now with Covid we need somebody that has a bit more experience. He's been struggling a little bit with the volume and operationalizing and scaling the team. I'd love to have somebody that has a bit more experience in this kind of things.

[00:06:22] Tibo Leclercq: So we started talking and the funny thing is that I actually had several conversations with him. It's somebody I knew and it was the next coworker in my previous company. Couple of years before that conversation, we, I remember sitting down with him in a cafe and he was like, yeah, give me your tips and tricks about support, like how support works.

[00:06:40] Tibo Leclercq: What should I do? This first time I managed a support team. So he reached out to me asking me some tips about how set up support at Miro, which was at the time called realtime board. So I gave him some tips and tricks, and later on when I joined Miro, I realized that, hey, yeah, implemented them all.

[00:06:57] Tibo Leclercq: This very, he looks exactly the same as [00:07:00] what I did at my first company. And actually he experiment, he implemented that and on and so on that on the transition, to go back from the transition, one of the first question is, was, so what's happening with that current head of support that you're having?

[00:07:12] Tibo Leclercq: And he told me, yeah, it's gonna be up to you. And we have no plan to. To let him go Right now, he is still seems to be still on board at mi. He's gonna interview you and then figure it out in the first few weeks, few months what you want to do with him and how best to utilize him if you want to.

[00:07:29] Tibo Leclercq: If not, then whatever you think is the best for your organization. Yeah, it was a bit weird. I found that I would be interviewed by the person that I would be. Replacing. But yeah, straight from the interview. I remember having an interview with you and with somebody else, and it went really well, and we had a really good connection.

[00:07:44] Tibo Leclercq: So I thought, oh, yeah, actually he, this guy seems to be not the typical head of support that says f you Ali. And. Deal with it. So yeah, we had a good connection from the beginning end.

[00:07:54] Oleg Krasnov: Yeah. So basically getting back to my part of the story, so I was basically hiring my own [00:08:00] successor and then eventually, like we had some transition phase and then we worked together for about a year.

[00:08:06] Oleg Krasnov: I changed the role to be the head of support excellence. So basically to bit wider term for the operations. And again, I think we can dive deeper into lots of these, like learning path and my initial perception versus what I've learned throughout this year. But then eventually closer to the end of 2021, I was like, completely drained.

[00:08:26] Oleg Krasnov: I still was like in this city, like in the middle of rural mountains with minus 40 degrees during the winter, which wasn't very pleasant. And I remember we had this conversation with Tebow. He said Hey. You are very close to meet the expectations, but the problem is that the company is growing so fast that the next performance review, I will have even higher expectations.

[00:08:48] Oleg Krasnov: And this was the moment for me Hey, looks like I just need to have some break. I need to recharge. Yeah. This was the story hours. And since then, since I just decided to quit still had, continue our [00:09:00] conversation, our connection. Just recently I also visited Amsterdam to see him in person.

[00:09:05] Oleg Krasnov: TBO also came to Portugal where I'm based right now. So we we continue our, our relationship. And I still consider TBO is my mentor, although like he's not managing me. And I wouldn't say that we have like. These kind of like consultant relationship where like I engage with him like every week or something like that.

[00:09:23] Oleg Krasnov: It's more I don't know, sporadical a conversation. And so yeah that's the like my side of the coin the context. I'm happy to answer any follow-up questions if you have some

[00:09:33] Maxime Manseau: tibo. Anything to add?

[00:09:34] Tibo Leclercq: No. Yeah, it was that's pretty much it. There was a interesting experience when I joined.

[00:09:38] Tibo Leclercq: How do I work with the person that was, that used to manage the team? How is the. How is the team taking it as well? They're seeing, they were not involved in that discussion. Probably they didn't have the same perspective then EG. Or what was happening. So there was a big question mark, how would I be welcomed with that other guy still around?

[00:09:57] Tibo Leclercq: So I thought is gonna be a landmine. [00:10:00] But in the end it went really well. We, because we had that good connection straight away. We had a discussion together with Oleg and saying, Hey, what do you want to do? What are you interested in? And he mentioned about operations and enablement. So we, we crafted together this new support excellence role.

[00:10:15] Tibo Leclercq: Something that we thought could be great for EG to continue applying some of the skills, but also learning some of the skills in the areas where he felt he had a gap. And we worked together, especially on all things operations and systems. We worked very closely. That's one of my strong suits. And I thought, Hey, yeah, that's a great opportunity to use my skills to have your support and build something.

[00:10:36] Tibo Leclercq: And yeah. The rest that you explained at one point, yeah, we had that discussion that the, at the time we're growing exponentially at mural, right? Was during Covid and we are a distributed collaboration platform. So obviously Covid was a big time for us, the company was developing very fast, and yeah, it, you needed to also develop yourself very fast and increase your skills very quickly.

[00:10:57] Tibo Leclercq: But that's this decision and the [00:11:00] conclusion that we both came towards a year after. Yeah. Yeah. And, sorry go ahead. Yeah, I just

[00:11:04] Oleg Krasnov: wanted to give a bit color of what Tiba said in terms of the exponential growth. Just to put it into perspective, I've mentioned that I joined the company when it was 100 20 employees.

[00:11:15] Oleg Krasnov: And I quit three years and a few months later when it was 1,200 employees and I joined two months before we raised Series A. So back then it was still c level company. And I quit right about the moment when the company raised series C of 400 million. And like you can imagine the as I usually explain this, is that all these three years at Mira, it feels like I've worked there, I know, seven or eight years because of the amount of stuff that you get through.

[00:11:43] Oleg Krasnov: But this is, this was just a fantastic experience, both in terms of the being in this moment in the company and also learning from the best like Tibo and other leaders in the company. This just this is like a very. Tough university, but you came with two degrees after that.

[00:11:59] Maxime Manseau: Yeah, I [00:12:00] can imagine.

[00:12:01] Maxime Manseau: I have thousand, thousand of questions I like to get back to. Okay. Tibo John's the company you are in, like what does the first days, weeks looks like? So you don't know each other's. And here, I don't know. It's, is it about creating like a personal connection? Is it, do you have like a. I don't know daily or weekly meetings.

[00:12:22] Maxime Manseau: How does everything start? Because we're talking about, so I'm using the word mentoring actually, I'm not sure if it's a appropriate word or I'm sometime not a big fan of, but it's how do you help each others cross? Help each others, but how do you start all these basically,

[00:12:38] Tibo Leclercq: what do you think?

[00:12:38] Tibo Leclercq: What's the key? I think what at the beginning I was learning from Ole, he was learning me everything that happened at Miro, the history of what was needed. So I was still onboarding. So my first month obviously was more listening mode and hearing from him. I remember one of the first tasks we had to do was probably like on my week two, was to do the headcount plan for the next [00:13:00] year.

[00:13:00] Tibo Leclercq: And I was like, I have no idea. Like just. But there was no process in place. It was very much okay, let's pull in number together and we come in. I remember we came in like a huge amount and we're like, okay, it sounds correct. I don't know. So it was really about like ping ponging between the two of us exchanging ideas, me bringing my experience of being 20 years in support and support related jobs and all bringing his experience of being several years at Miro, which counts as like almost 20 years of experience.

[00:13:31] Tibo Leclercq: To be honest. So it was really like combining the two and trying to make do with the tsunami that we were into during covid. So at first it was really interesting exchange of discussions, almost philosophical discussions sometimes about how we want to approach things all. Like seeing it very much from the.

[00:13:51] Tibo Leclercq: We want to deliver the best quality support. I don't want to bulge on the quality. The, our users deserve the quality and me bringing the perspective [00:14:00] of, Hey, have you seen the increase of tickets we need to scale, we need to be efficient, and how can we combine both quantity versus quality? So there was a lot of almost philosophical discussions between us and ping ponging of points of views, and that was super interesting.

[00:14:15] Tibo Leclercq: I have to say. It. I love debating and it was a great time that we had together for, at least for the first couple of months when we were, when you were helping me on board. Yeah.

[00:14:24] Oleg Krasnov: I can add here that I think what was helping me is actually the mindset because I wasn't thinking about my career.

[00:14:33] Oleg Krasnov: Back then I was thinking about hey, how I've been building this team and co-creating the company for quite a long time. It was like about two years, and I sincerely wanted the company and the team to succeed. So that's why I was like, okay, how can I. Make Tibo successful. So we're all successful and I am as like the consequence of this.

[00:14:56] Oleg Krasnov: But actually I can say that on top of this, it took some [00:15:00] time to adjust to the leadership style from Tibo. And this is something that I've learned like the hard way because my previous manager, we had mostly high level discussions and he was happy. As long as the CSAT is good and like the the backlog is under control and so forth.

[00:15:16] Oleg Krasnov: But with Tebow, he was like really nerding out, like how the things are going, how the things are working and my initial reaction was like why you are paying so much attention? What do you want from me? And it took some time to actually figure out like what was the reasoning behind this?

[00:15:31] Oleg Krasnov: And the fun thing is that sometimes from my current team, I hear. Similar feedback and I try to teach them like, Hey, like I've learned it hard way, but I just need to be able to zoom in and zoom out and really make sure that I understand all the small particles to be able to, like answer on the most, tough questions when talking to the exec team.

[00:15:52] Oleg Krasnov: And do you think,

[00:15:53] Maxime Manseau: so two things here. First I remember. When we had a quick check, like the three together like a few weeks ago. You, [00:16:00] I mentioned, I remember it. Make me laugh, but you mentioned that timbo challenged you like a lot in the early days. Yeah. Even to the point of irritation, like it was like almost fuck this man.

[00:16:09] Maxime Manseau: Right?

[00:16:09] Oleg Krasnov: Yeah. At some point I was really irritated. That's for sure. And that, that's exactly, I think the learning curve here, because I started to get in it. Once I've seen the results of this work, because like in the beginning, imagine like your first month going together and some guy is trying to like figure out what you're doing day to day.

[00:16:28] Oleg Krasnov: While like the previous two years nobody cared and everything was based mostly on trust. Yeah. So I was like my initial thought hey, is this guy micromanaging me? But then eventually, once I've seen that, he can say, for instance, can argue. With the support analyst in terms of how do we calculate a specific de metric and then transform it over, like this new way of making the headcount models or calculating the impact of working with the product in terms of deflecting some specific use cases or the [00:17:00] root causes of the tickets themselves.

[00:17:01] Oleg Krasnov: I think it took me, I dunno. One or two quarters to, to just figure out what is the, like consequence of all of these, tedious questions and like nerding out about the details. And this was probably one of the biggest learnings that I've figured out because my initial thought again when I joined, this was the first time when I became a manager of managers.

[00:17:23] Oleg Krasnov: And I was like, my mindset, I dunno why, but. Probably because I didn't have any role models back then, but my mindset was like, like I will give my reports, all the operational stuff, all the day-to-day stuff, and I'm in charge of the strategy. And like I was quite good in terms of figuring out like where we need to go, how we need to support our users, creating this vision and so forth, and blah, blah, blah.

[00:17:43] Oleg Krasnov: But I didn't have this connection between. How these supplies on, let's say on the replies per tickets or average handling time or something else. So I didn't have this like connecting of the dots between, this grand vision and the strategy and actually [00:18:00] figuring out what's going on the fields every day.

[00:18:02] Oleg Krasnov: Yeah, that, that was probably like very pivotal moment for me in terms of being more, like balanced leader instead of just, thinking about this, let's help all our users the best we can and hire the best people all we can. But thinking about okay, what are these like.

[00:18:17] Oleg Krasnov: What we're going to do about the budget, how we're going to convince the exec team and so forth. And Timbo question for you, because do you few things

[00:18:24] Maxime Manseau: here too. Do you consider VP support needs to really understand what's under who to, I mean to details I mean over zooming, or can you be really good without needing.

[00:18:37] Maxime Manseau: Without do doing this, because it's always difficult when you're a small team I guess, but once you really manage like high teams, you were mentioning like being a manager is such like a different scope than just, being like. Good in support. And what do you think is a good balance here?

[00:18:54] Tibo Leclercq: Yeah, so for me, the number one, you need to have very strong analytics and very clear, well-defined [00:19:00] analytics. And without it, for me, I run in the blind because I have no idea how is the team doing? Like how efficient are they? They seem to be efficient. They seem to be working well. They seem to be, but we don't have like hard proof with numbers.

[00:19:14] Tibo Leclercq: So I, every time I've joined a team or joined a company, the first thing I looked at is do we have the right analytics and right metrics, the right operation or rigor to calculate that? And I think that's super important. I tend to like sometimes geek out on getting into the nitty gritty details.

[00:19:28] Tibo Leclercq: I've got like a list of. Filters and editing, slicing and dicing the data to understand where it's coming from. I want to understand what the root cause of what I'm seeing on a macro level is on a micro level. Okay. And I think a strong support leader is somebody that can go from what you talked about, the strategic, the, Hey, this is the big picture, to why is.

[00:19:49] Tibo Leclercq: Why is the handle time for the account management tickets in Japan longer than the same tickets in another region? Then you can understand [00:20:00] a little bit more, and then you feel maybe you pull a thread and then you pull and realize that there's something bigger out of it. So I think if I see something odd in the data, I'm gonna jump in until I understand what is what it is, and I think it's very important that.

[00:20:13] Tibo Leclercq: A good support leader has that curiosity and that interest to dig deeper and I don't get it. Why is it like this? Why is it different? Let me figure it out. And then maybe sometimes okay that's just by chance, or that's like a small data set, but often you, you uncover discover things that.

[00:20:30] Tibo Leclercq: We have to force the strategy in a better way.

[00:20:33] Maxime Manseau: Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. And that make me think, when we chatted, you mentioned, I'm gonna rephrase this. So there you see a lot of VP support that BM VP support. I don't want to say just because, they arrive in the first ones being like a super rep and they climb the ladder probably because like they were good, but they lend to a panorama where they become VP of support as a company is growing and over time they realize, that they're not very good at [00:21:00] it could be because like it's not their stuff and they just happier and prefer to just to be in the trench.

[00:21:06] Maxime Manseau: Many times it's because they haven't experienced it before. It's the first time they arrive to this level of management. Any, how would you, any advice, how would you do, how would you suggest those people would just, like m VP support, like from one one day to another to learn how to become like really good VP supports in the sense that learning how to manage and all these kind of things.

[00:21:28] Tibo Leclercq: From my perspective in support, that's very common, right? Somebody that grows, that shows they're really successful, they know how to speak to customers, they know how to speak to exec, and then. There there's a big rotation of people and leader that grow, and then there's a vacuum and then that you can grow from within.

[00:21:44] Tibo Leclercq: So when you're not in a case of Miro where that grew exponentially in a matter of months, you have more time to actually learn on the job and start experiencing problems and you have a bit more flexibility and. The situation gives you more slack on that. But I think it's [00:22:00] important to, to accept the fact that maybe you can have impostor syndrome at the beginning.

[00:22:05] Tibo Leclercq: And that, that everybody that grew from IC to manager had asked themselves, Hey, am I in the right place? What is my manager thinking of me? And am I doing a good job? So in those cases, it's actually, looking at operations and looking at metrics. That's a blanket. You think, okay, I have good operation, I have good metrics.

[00:22:23] Tibo Leclercq: And I see that the numbers not lying. I see the numbers are correct so that a confirmation that actually, no, I'm not an imposter. I'm doing a good job. And if the numbers are not correct, then it's important to often that's true, that you are the leader, you are the manager of the team, especially in smaller companies, and there's nobody else that you can talk to.

[00:22:42] Tibo Leclercq: And and in that case it's important to build your network and reach out outside. I regularly speak to other leaders and we exchange ideas. I look at LinkedIn, my team, I look at your posts. So there's a lot of information out there. And it's true. When you're in support, you feel like, yeah, I'm on my own then I'm the [00:23:00] support guide.

[00:23:00] Tibo Leclercq: Nobody cares about support, but me in the company, like I don't have any, and nobody knows much about support. As long as it works. And if it doesn't work, they tell you, figure it out. So it's sometimes you can feel a little bit alone in support, but actually there's a lot of other people out.

[00:23:17] Tibo Leclercq: There are some forums, there are some Slack groups. There are some discussions in LinkedIn that help you actually go there. But you know what, I,

[00:23:25] Maxime Manseau: I I dunno if it's disagree here, but if you look at other department or functions, if you look like you can find, pe, if. If you look at success, like you have so much things like about sales, if you look on products, so much things and so much stuff.

[00:23:40] Maxime Manseau: But I feel like in support we're lacking compared to the other department, which is even wrong because support is a very operational role. So basically there is, it's a win-win situation, right? To just learn from each other and share stuff. So we took the bit up. Because you and Oex started like within the same comp.

[00:23:58] Maxime Manseau: The story between [00:24:00] the BROMAN started within the same company. But what would you suggest if I'm a VP support, I'm by myself. I don't have like midlevel management, my CEO, just, which is always the case, tell me like, Hey, so you need to manage a support function and I don't really want to know more.

[00:24:15] Maxime Manseau: How do I find help? Because, I don't know, I feel like, yeah, you can read some stuff here and there, but it's never deep enough to really get value from it. I feel like you really get the value by, building connection, adding like two or three times because this lets you the time to get like deep enough to really like, so I don't like how did you build maybe your, I don't know if you have a small network of VP supports, how did it happen and how I.

[00:24:44] Maxime Manseau: Someone could replicate that? What's your advice?

[00:24:46] Tibo Leclercq: Or do you want to answer before I do? Yeah.

[00:24:48] Oleg Krasnov: I think first of all, like before getting into the meat of the topic, I would actually align in terms of I. What does this VP title mean? I don't hold the VP title. Yeah. Some [00:25:00] people will manage like the team of 14 and they're like half the VP title.

[00:25:05] Oleg Krasnov: So I think the important moment is to choose wisely with who will be the part of this network. Because I've seen people who like director of something in Google and they're managing 3000 people. I would rather learn from this person, but the rule of thumb that I usually use is to actually think about the companies that are a couple of stage ahead of you and just build the connection from their leaders.

[00:25:29] Oleg Krasnov: And if I, let's say, ask the same exact question to 10 people from this network. And some seven people will tell me relatively the same stuff. There is a high chance that it would work for me as well, or at least this would be the starting point to implement something. And then there are also can occasions where you can leverage some professional help.

[00:25:49] Oleg Krasnov: And for instance, at this point in many chat, I have two advisors. One I think Tibu should know his name is Adrian. And he's exactly VP of customer experience in French [00:26:00] company, Eric. And he's fantastic. Folk. Another one is his name is Kevin and he's ex of head of support operations at Atlassian, and he was leading the team of about 100 employees.

[00:26:13] Oleg Krasnov: To enable the team of 900 agents. And you can imagine that the two perspectives of these people would be completely different and they give you completely different type of answers on, the same exact questions. And somewhere in the middle I will maybe I dunno have a chitchat with Tibo and ask his perspective as certain things.

[00:26:32] Oleg Krasnov: But basically, yeah. And my experience is that. Usually the support is not sexy a hundred percent. Like it's not as fancy as like customer success or product or I know growth or anything that you can find on LinkedIn. But at the same time, people in support usually so alone, as you said, as that they're really up to building the connection.

[00:26:53] Oleg Krasnov: So they're really up to Hey, let's just handout, let's, I agree. Yeah. Exchange the experience and so forth. So [00:27:00] my, my rule of thumb is just. Find people who you adore in terms of like at least the cv in terms of building the assumption that they might be helpful for you. Then just start to chat and maybe, you will have some connection and your own advisor board and maybe you will help somebody else on the go as well.

[00:27:17] Oleg Krasnov: Yeah.

[00:27:19] Maxime Manseau: Sorry Thibo I'm coming back to you in one second. Just for example, Ole like those two advisor, like how do you end up connecting? Was it like someone who introduced 'em to you? Did you reach out? Like how did you end up connecting with them?

[00:27:29] Oleg Krasnov: The one was introduced by exactly my previous manager at Miro back in my mirror days.

[00:27:35] Oleg Krasnov: And we just had the connection on over LinkedIn and I remember that he started the advisor practice. I was like, okay, let's go for it. I'm really eager to learn from you with, this like with 10 years experience in Atlassian. As for Adrian, this was a funny moment because I was working with the agency that was intended to helping me and while they were trying to figure out what is the profile of the people [00:28:00] who I think would work, I just found RINs profile.

[00:28:04] Oleg Krasnov: I don't re recall correct exactly how, but I just referred at him as Hey, I need to have this person, or these kind of profiles. Because his LinkedIn profile was quite detailed in terms of Hey, I'm managing a team of 80 plus employees with different various sub-teams within the function.

[00:28:23] Oleg Krasnov: And he had quite an interesting career progression from being in consultancy. Then joining as voice of the customer program manager and then growing up in just a couple of years to the VP of CX role. And I was like, wow, this is quite an interesting track. And then another thing that I will mention here is when I was looking at advisors, I actually interviewed them for these roles.

[00:28:46] Oleg Krasnov: So basically I try to figure out not only what are their strengths, but also why do they want to help me. This was quite an interesting perspective just to see if we have this kind of like connection and usually what [00:29:00] I found is that okay, I had this experience where I like the same geeking out as Tiba mentioned about the operations.

[00:29:07] Oleg Krasnov: I have the same geeking out about the people. I'm really good in terms of selecting the right people for the team. And I was like, okay. People management all makes sense for me. It's no brainer. I need to find people who are way better than me in operations, analytics and so forth. So I can compliment this strengths and apply some skills.

[00:29:25] Oleg Krasnov: So that would be my way of thinking about this.

[00:29:27] Tibo Leclercq: Gotcha. The way I approach it, if I think about the different people I speak to, some of them they're used to be support. With me or under me or whatever. In a previous company, Andy grew when they moved to another one and then we stayed in touch. So they became head of support somewhere else and they reached out.

[00:29:44] Tibo Leclercq: Say, Hey, I remember we're working together that, do you have tips and tricks? There's some people that were at the same level as me and they moved somewhere else and we both moved up later on. There are some people that, interviewed me for rules. It didn't work out, but I still stayed in touch with them.[00:30:00]

[00:30:00] Tibo Leclercq: I've got somebody that, it was a, I was interested in a vendor and the vendor proposed a reference call with one of the other customers we had chats with. I had chat with the, with that person about the vendor. And then in the end we started sharing experience with each other. So there can be a lot of different, or a common knowledge.

[00:30:17] Tibo Leclercq: Say, Hey, a common person, we know both. Said, Hey, my friend is looking for somebody to talk to. So yeah, it's very important to be curious about like other people. Again, look at LinkedIn, look at the forums. There's there, if you look for them, there are some very good communities that you can talk to, some events and that way you can make connections and start.

[00:30:38] Tibo Leclercq: As Alex said, if you're in support, usually you want to help others, otherwise you're in the wrong place. And if you want to help others, helping peers. And that's what I see a lot in successful support leaders is they want to help each other. I was gonna

[00:30:52] Maxime Manseau: ask you like, what do you think what the internal motivation of the people, but I think it's really helping, like helping out.

[00:30:59] Tibo Leclercq: Yeah. That's [00:31:00] part of this. There's also because. I think this, it like we had a discussion back in in Kaska. Oleg I love that you're saying that you could see me as your mentor, but I remember discussion about AI and for some part of ai you were quite advanced compared to me, and I was asking you, Hey, how did you approach it?

[00:31:18] Tibo Leclercq: And. Launch it. We wanna make sure that we have the experience. There's always one area where somebody else might be in a smaller company, less experienced, but they are trying a new tool, they're trying a new method. And that can be, and it can be very insightful even if you are like a season leader. So I wouldn't say it like none of my conversation was.

[00:31:39] Tibo Leclercq: Where me like coaching somebody, mentoring somebody, it was really like, Hey, how did you do this? Ping-ponging in ideas and having the same as I had with Oleg, with sometimes having philosophical discussions except there's no manager and direct reports. So it's much easier to actually debate with each other.

[00:31:55] Tibo Leclercq: So yeah, I think that's what motiva you, you learn from each other. And if [00:32:00] that was not the case, obviously that would be different. That would be more like a sort of advisory role. And I. Imagine at the end you want to get paid or something like this but here it's not the case at all. It's really about exchanging ideas and wanting to help each other.

[00:32:11] Tibo Leclercq: Yeah,

[00:32:12] Maxime Manseau: makes sense. Yeah. I was gonna I was gonna ask, like if we take for example, like the two of you do you reach out like only when you need advice or question or did. Did it already happen to you to just say, let's have a, like a Zoom coffee break and just chat, like

[00:32:27] Tibo Leclercq: Yeah, we had less of those lately at, I think at the beginning we had regular calls with some other people I have like monthly or bimonthly or like regular calls as well.

[00:32:38] Tibo Leclercq: And often it's just like, how's things are going? Sometimes it's just oh. Or escalation or this incident That was horrible. It was, oh my God. Yes. And then it lead to a topic like, oh yeah, I didn't, it was so difficult to handle that escalation. Oh yeah. We do this and this. Oh, I didn't think about this method.

[00:32:55] Tibo Leclercq: So sometimes just like having a, like a random chat without any agenda with [00:33:00] Ole. We used to have that at the beginning. Then it's like slowly died out and then it revived when I came to Sky Ski. But it's okay that if it's like. Goes in waves. It should in my eyes, should only be when you have an issue because you can always learn.

[00:33:13] Tibo Leclercq: And worst case, you're gonna have a nice chitchat with somebody and it's still pleasant. Yeah. Networking, especially in support, I think that's important. The way I see support is every single, the support in every single company is completely different. The products are very different. But at the same time, support operations is exactly the same everywhere.

[00:33:31] Tibo Leclercq: So that's it's weird mix of everything is different, but at the same time, everything is exactly the same. It's gonna be handle time, it's gonna be like one touch resolution, it's gonna be like csat. It's gonna be always the same things. So there's always things that you can. Information that you can pull things that can, you can learn.

[00:33:48] Tibo Leclercq: But also it's fascinating. It's oh my God, I didn't realize the challenges you face in your industry. I don't have that issue at all, but maybe I can learn from it. So that's this mix of. Same but different. [00:34:00] That is super interesting when you're exchanging with other people. Yeah, I agree.

[00:34:02] Oleg Krasnov: Here I just want to add here that on the last point from Tiba I recently had a consulting inquiry from the company that is having almost 2000 employees in support.

[00:34:14] Oleg Krasnov: They were looking for somebody else just to look at their operations to have another point of view. And I like my initial reaction like, Hey guys, I didn't even work in this kind of size of the companies. Not even managing the size of the employees, but I was like let's just give it a try.

[00:34:28] Oleg Krasnov: I. It didn't work out in, so in terms of the consultancy opportunity, they found out some, somebody like could be cheaper, but this is another story. But the interesting moment was that when we had, I dunno, a couple of hours of deep dive in terms of what exactly they're facing and so forth. I found out exactly the same.

[00:34:45] Oleg Krasnov: I've never seen the operations of 1000 employees or 2000 employees. And I was so surprised that. The challenges are exactly the same, but the scale is is a bit different. So definitely I agree here, but if we get back to the the [00:35:00] initial question in terms of like just building this network and so forth, my case is probably, is a bit different because I.

[00:35:06] Oleg Krasnov: I do have this consultant going as a side hustle quite frequently. And this is exactly to me the opportunity to learn from others because like they're coming to me with their problems. But in order to help them, you also need to figure out like what is the environment you need to ask questions.

[00:35:23] Oleg Krasnov: And through that you, you also can. See that you can definitely learn how people do the same things differently throughout these conversations. And another thing that I will mention here is that I am quite curious in terms of how other functions work and usually the way how I think about this, I can I've had a lot of occasions where, let's say I am reading the article regarding, I dunno, growth marketing or something else.

[00:35:47] Oleg Krasnov: And I was like this is quite an interesting idea. I think the same principle can be applied in support.

[00:35:52] Maxime Manseau: Yeah, connecting the dots between some stuff were totally different. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, definitely. I see the time is like running, [00:36:00] so just a few. Maybe a few question to finish.

[00:36:02] Maxime Manseau: I end up talking to a lot of, let's say, like support leads who want to be a support carrier, which is great because I see like really like people I feel like people want to build like a career in support, which wasn't always the case. What advice would you give to, support leads aiming to become, directors, VPs?

[00:36:22] Maxime Manseau: So I know it's really about the scope, not the titles, people really want to make the jump. What would it be like, advice that you think could be a game changer for them? What do you think?

[00:36:31] Tibo Leclercq: Yeah the first advice I would give is we said earlier, often you feel alone in support.

[00:36:36] Tibo Leclercq: Your leader is saying, okay, you deal with it as long as. The tickets are answered, the customer is happy. That's all I need. So it is easy to fall in a trap where you work in a vacuum. You focus on your business, your support operations. You make sure your customer is happy, and that's it. I think the way to grow is to really understand what your company is trying to achieve.

[00:36:58] Tibo Leclercq: Look at the [00:37:00] objectives, yearly objectives, the OKRs, whatever you have, like the strategy of the company, the three year plan. And I don't understand how can support impact that? How you, how can support, help the company grow and not only thinking, okay, that's what they're doing. So all I need to know is I'll need enablement about this product and I need to, it's more than that.

[00:37:19] Tibo Leclercq: It's saying okay, having the curiosity to talk to others. What is the experience with support? If you had a magic wand, what would you like support to do that we're not doing together and not thinking that's not support's problem? That's consulting support. Really thinking. At a wider level how you can impact the company.

[00:37:37] Tibo Leclercq: I think that's the key. And understanding your customers really well. Really focusing on, again, digging deep in the metrics and the, and the data. Because in support you touch a different type of customers. Often the go to market team, the sales or success teams, they will know the decision makers.

[00:37:54] Tibo Leclercq: They will know the managers. And then in support, we know the end users, we know [00:38:00] everyone. So we have like key information that nobody else as in the company has. So it's super important to dig deep into it, to get insights. And then when you have discussions with those people, say yeah maybe that, that ahead of whatever at our customers says that's how it works in the company.

[00:38:14] Tibo Leclercq: But what I see in support is the end users are like they hate this and that. You bring information and such people will start listening to you and realize, oh my God, I need to involve that head of support in our decision. I need to make sure that they're part of the discussion, the strategic discussions, because they bring something that nobody else brings on the table.

[00:38:33] Tibo Leclercq: So there are some ways to actually grow and gain visibility and thought leadership in the company, even by staying in support, which you might think is in its own on, but I think you really, that there's a, the possibility to grow in support.

[00:38:46] Maxime Manseau: Yeah. I just to compliment, I had a chat with her last week and I can't even remember, but the idea was like we were discussing and.

[00:38:54] Maxime Manseau: We were like, finally, like a lot of support leaders don't sell themself [00:39:00] enough or don't sell their support team enough on the company level. As you said, the belief they're like just like a function on the side, but actually as a support leader, if you really do the job to sell yourself and your team to the.

[00:39:12] Maxime Manseau: To the C level, you might get a seat to the table, right? Because the, you have so much, so many insights that other teams never gonna have. But somehow it's your job to do that. And it's like the extra steps that you need to take as like a support leader that a lot. A lot of people don't so totally connect with what you're saying.

[00:39:31] Oleg Krasnov: I would compliment this apart from everything you've said I think it's very important to get the credibility from other leaders and getting back to this discussion about how I would define the VP of the function at least based on my observations the most successful folks will not only understand the support metrics.

[00:39:51] Oleg Krasnov: They will also really good in terms of like product proficiency, marketing or any other stuff. So eventually, once you have something [00:40:00] to present, once you have all the homework done on your level, you can connect the dots between Hey, we see the connection between this specific customer issue. That probably is compounding reason for, let's say adoption challenge or for the churn reasons or, and stuff like that.

[00:40:17] Oleg Krasnov: So usually again, if you think about the exec team they obviously operate big chunks of the company, but they work together in terms of like how to make the company successful overall. So once everyone can apply. This kind of mindset and not only within support, but also understanding the overall proficiency of the business, the revenue metrics, product metrics.

[00:40:39] Oleg Krasnov: I think that will have even a bigger impact for the down the line.

[00:40:43] Maxime Manseau: Okay. Yeah. Thank you so much, ADE. I see I'm seeing the time and I think we're gonna, we're gonna stop here. I feel like I want everyone who's been listening today to remember to just go talk to the other support folks over there.

[00:40:56] Maxime Manseau: Send the email, make the LinkedIn. I. A connection request. [00:41:00] Yes. Some people are gonna tell you no, you, you probably not gonna have some answer from others, but like at the end, you're gonna create some connections. This is for sure. So yeah, that would be like my my fi final words. On this topic.

[00:41:12] Maxime Manseau: I don't know, guys, if you have anything to add. No, I

[00:41:14] Tibo Leclercq: think I get people reaching out regularly. Some people will try to sell of course. So make sure you don't Yeah, don't do

[00:41:21] Maxime Manseau: that.

[00:41:23] Tibo Leclercq: If you reach out and exposing like a challenge as something that could be interesting challenge. Of us be like, oh yeah, I want to give my point of view.

[00:41:32] Tibo Leclercq: And that's the nature of support. We want to help again and we want to express our point of view. So I agree. Shouldn't be afraid of reaching out again. There are some also of forums and communities where it's easier to reach out because you post something and you don't expect, yeah.

[00:41:46] Tibo Leclercq: Specific person to respond, but yeah, for sure. I think it's not scary. It can be scary, but you should not be scary or scared to reach out. Yeah, I completely plus one, this one Oleg, anything? Yeah.

[00:41:56] Oleg Krasnov: I would get back to a bit more philosophical [00:42:00] note as Timba mentioned, I remember the quote from Buddha, so the paper say that he was mentioning that nobody is a friend.

[00:42:09] Oleg Krasnov: Nobody is an enemy, but everybody's a teacher. And I think this goes with, I dunno everyone that you can reach out and just to, bounce the problems. And as we discussed today, my wife was really influential in terms of my decision making and she was completely right. And I wouldn't be sitting here probably with all of you if not her influence and don't underestimate somebody who is maybe holding a lower title than you, or is somebody like from completely different function. You always can learn from anyone.

[00:42:40] Maxime Manseau: Nice. So that's it. We're gonna stop this episode on this nice Buddha word. Thank you to both of you guys. Really appreciate your time and I guess if every everyone here want to reach out you can be found on LinkedIn.

[00:42:52] Maxime Manseau: Yeah,

[00:42:53] Oleg Krasnov: take care. Thank.