Why support should keep it classy

As a 19 year old in university, there were few people on Earth I understood less than the mature age students in my classes. Always engaged, interacting with the professors, asking clarifying questions to elicit answers that they seemed to genuinely care about. What was wrong with them? I was mostly concerned with whether today was the day I would break my personal hot-chip stacking record.*

The difference was that those students had some life experience, they had done real work, and our classes represented a real chance to change their lives. They knew why they were there; they understood the value of their time, and the outcome mattered to them in ways I could not comprehend.

As a (chronologically) mature man, I have more appreciation for the value of a live class and a good teacher. Having someone not just deliver facts but also share context, adapt to the students, share their passion, and connect personally can improve outcomes, save time, and make learning more enjoyable.

It’s not yet clear how much of our frontline support work will eventually be handled by AI tools and self-service systems, but leaning into the human-to-human customer education elements of our work is a smart choice with a lot of potential upside.

Live classes can serve multiple customers at once and have strengths that even the best documentation can’t easily match. They can:

• Adapt to changing circumstances - such as a new product release or a recent change in product behavior.
• Be flexible enough to adapt to the audience on the day - going deeper in some areas or skipping over something less relevant to the current attendees.
• Help instill a conceptual model - giving customers a grounding in how your whole service fits together, how it is intended to be used, and why.
• Correct misunderstandings - a class teacher may spot confusions and address them in the moment, saving a lot of long term frustration for customers and the support team.
• Encourage product usage - by exploring why and how certain features can be helpful in a non-salesy, educational context, support teams can drive feature adoption.

Not every support person is well-suited to live customer education. Doing it well requires a degree of performance skill and quick thinking that may not appeal to everyone.

There are plenty of former teachers in the support ranks, and lots of others who have the skill and interest to do it well. On Help Scout’s own support team, we have several folks running regular classes, including a new one specifically about our AI features. They are building our customers’ knowledge while also improving their own skills and learning about our customers’ needs.

People who are coming to SaaS product classes are the internet’s own mature age students. They have a job to do, they need the information quickly and in a format they can put to use. Their questions are (usually 😉) focused on getting value from their investment in the product.

If your organization is not already investing in customer education, now might be the time to get started. You probably already have people on your team who would be great educators who’d love to be involved.

*The cafe charged for chips by the plate, not by weight, which encouraged the development of some truly precarious stacking techniques. Structural engineering lectures would have been of more immediate use than my IT degree.

Mat Patterson, Help Scout

After a decade building and growing a SaaS support team, Mat joined Help Scout to help support pros and customer-centric leaders deliver better online service. Subscribe to The Supportive for regular tips, advice, and great content.

Further Reading

Education for All: Building Branching Minds

Learn how a former classroom teacher built an EdTech company which uses technology to improve communities and have a meaningful impact on the world. Read the story.

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