Masha
Jaclyn, thank you so much for taking the time. Could you give us a little bit of an intro on yourself and how you got into CS?
Jaclyn
Yeah, totally. So, I'm Jaclyn. I currently live in Whitefish, Montana. So it is 28 degrees out right now, nice and freezing.
Masha
Right there with you. I live in Montreal, so yep!
Jaclyn
Where I live in Montana, I am 60 miles south of the Canadian border. And what we love to say is like anytime shits going down in the US that we don't stand for we just like lean North. Like, yep, we're Canadians today, we're not really here. We're just leaning North. I originally graduated from Georgia Southern University, which I'm happening to rep right now. And I got my major in Marketing and Sales management. So I really wanted to go into Sales, because I knew I liked customer relationships and because I had worked in restaurants for years and years and years, and I figured I knew how to make angry people happy and keep happy people happy. So I was ah, I can do this. So I went into Sales. And from there, I worked for an ABC affiliate, I sold a commercial space. Then from there became a loan officer, because I didn't like traveling, I didn't like being my car, like going from business to business constantly. So I wanted like a desk job. Went to be a loan officer. With my loan officer job, it was all outbound sales. So I had a call list that was shared with my entire company. And it was kind of lvery aggressive, you would have like your auto-refresher on. You were manually calling people. Average amount of dials a day would be like 500 dials a day trying to get someone phone. So my highest dial was in the 700s. But the better you are at your job, the quicker you can really convince whoever was on the phone, and you're the 67th person who has called them in a row, most of them from my company, and you just try and convince them to not hang up. And then once they don't hang up, you can begin your process. But, after three years, as you can imagine, I got really burnt on that. And I loved it, I loved helping people. I loved changing their lives by like re mortgaging their house. I loved the hand holding that I got to do through that process of customer education. And really using my expertise to enable them to do what they wanted to do. But I just couldn't do Sales anymore. And that is how I ended up in CS. I basically was like, how do I take all of the things that I love about Sales, and remove all of the things that I truly cannot do anymore? So I was looking for Support roles, some type of job that I could work with the customer all day long, but not have to sell them anything. And I kind of ended up in tech support by—it was the company that hired me, and they were a tech company. So I worked at a company called OutboundEngine that was a marketing solution out of Austin, Texas. I worked there for just shy of three years as well, worked my way from like brand new, never worked support before it was phone and email support. So we were on the phone like seven hours a day, which was just like mortgage company, I was down for it. And worked my way into a team lead role. Because I really enjoyed using that same passion for teaching and enabling people to like do the things they wanted to do. That transfers from like customers to teammates as well. Went to team lead, and then from there, I had a previous colleague who I really respected, basically sniped me out and say like, “You have to come work for Loom.” And this was two and a half years ago. It was like a 15 person company. No one heard of Loom. What the heck is this? And through quite a pursuit from him, I finally agreed. And so I started working for Loom August of 2019 and have really never looked back. We're now a 200 person company. When I started working there we had about 2 million users. We surpassed 10 million in the two years that I've been here.
Masha
Wow.
Jaclyn
From a Support side too, to grow 5x, at that scale, with goals to continue on that same trajectory in this next year. It's been a real ride. So my current role is I am again, a team lead here, I manage our Internal Support team, which our Customer Experience Advocates. And yeah, at Loom, we've set it up in a way, I mean, when I first started here, I was one of three support reps, and we had a manager. And we all worked tickets, and that was the team. We now have an outsourced BPO partner, which handles all of our tier one tickets. I have a team of six internal reps, my Customer Experience Advocates who work directly under me. And then we also have a team for TSEs, our Technical Support Engineers. We have Support ops now, it's wild, we're growing. But it's been such a unique experience at Loom to go from this like scrappy handful of people all just kind of like working tickets, no structure, no flow, to a really scaled operation where we have people working on all over the world to support 10 million plus users.
Masha
Yeah, wow, that is an incredible journey. Thank you for sharing that, Jaclyn. So talk to us a little bit about how you folks are organized, because we've heard a lot of different configurations from, you know, Customer Success, Customer Support, Customer Experience. What does the team look like, broadly? And where do you folks report into? Maybe my first controversial question.
Jaclyn
Totally. We roll up to Sales, it's an org that we fall into. In there we have like actual Sales reps. So we have Account Managers, and AEs, and they're all split into multiple different funnels that I don't even really know. And then we have Customer Success as well. Customer success is more like Account Managers, they handled the sales lead customers. And like manage the contracts and, you know, kind of like, really focus on those teams growth and expansion. And then we have Customer Support. So in Support, we roll up, Success and Support role into the Customer Experience team, right. So Sales is kind of broken down into Sales and Experience. And then in Experience is Success and Support. And that is there for our Support team where we have that broken org as far as our external and internal employees, because we use for BPO. We kind of look at our BPO is like actual Support. They handle incoming tickets, they handle our free users, because Loom has a excellent free packaging and offering for people who want to use us.
Masha
We know. [Laughs]
Jaclyn
Good, good. That's what I want to hear. And some of our business trials are some of the quick and easier tickets because they can respond really quickly. They work globally. And then our Customer Experience Advocates who are internal, they're going to handle the support of our enterprise customers, our sales lead, our more strategic accounts along with our paid users. So they'll kind of get that higher hands-on white glove approach.
Masha
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. So tell us a little bit about, I guess, these words. Customer Success, Customer Experience, tend to get a little bit confused for us folks. Add Support in there, and people are really starting to reel. So talk to us a little bit about how you define maybe Customer Success, Customer Experience, and what does it mean, to you to say that it's working?
Jaclyn
Yeah. So let me think. I think the difference for me, is what level of intention we have from the company of goals for that customer. I think with Customer Support, we are simply supporting the customer and their goal. That's really the only expectation that they have from us and all that we're trying to provide. And that is an excellent thing to provide not to say down, but in Support, we are helping the customer with whatever their goal may be. Customer Success is involves a internal intention as well. Because while we are looking to help them with the goal that they want, we also have a goal for that customer as well. Our goal is for them to grow, to stay, to love, to become a cheerleader, whatever it may be. And so our goal with Success is like how do we make them successful in their goals and in ours. So there's more factors and more intentions going into that relationship where support is pretty one sided, they come to us. Where as success can be more of a collaboration. And then I think where the Customer Experience, all of that is tied into the Customer Experience. But for me, the Customer Experience team is like incredibly intentional on whether we're giving or getting from the customer, how does that make them feel? Like, what are your feelings about the process?
Masha
Yeah, I love that. That's a really great way to put it. You mentioned the way that you folks are organized at Loom, have you seen, I mean, across different organizations, maybe you've tried it to folks. Organizationally, what in your mind is the best way to set up the Customer Experience organization or the Customer Success Support organization, in terms of where kind of you report into and what is the worst?
Jaclyn
Great question. As a blanket, I don't think there is a right and wrong because I depends so much on one, what is the product? And then also, how are those other teams set up as well? For me, it makes sense to have Support in one of two places. One is in Sales, so directly tied, which, for me, is where I prefer it. Because sometimes it can be hard to tie Support value back to the company. Like what company value are we providing? tying it back to the customer, easy. But when you have to, like do it at a board meeting, where do you put Support and show it's value? If you're tied to the Sales funnel, it makes more long term sense because you can really show in the customer lifecycle where you belong, and where you cause change. We get people who want to cancel and by explaining to them what was failing and how we can fix it, we were able to retain them. Or we found this customer who loved Loom and they didn't realize that our paid plan had X, Y and Z that would solve all these problems for him, we got him to upgrade. So it's really easy to tie us in there. The other place where it makes a lot of sense for support to be is in Product. Rolling up to Product helps because we are the voice of the customer. I've never worked at a company where Support doesn't know the product better than anyone else. And we may not know the deep ins-and-outs, but as far as the usage, we understand what the customer wants, what the customer is using it for and so to be that voice, especially for a product that is constantly changing or improving if that's like a desire of the company. putting Support really close with Product can be really beneficial. I don't see it making the most sense would be, really like anywhere else. Don't put them in Engineering. We are people people, we don't know code, unless you're code support, I guess. Also Operations, I think that's one—like I've never seen Support in Engineering because it makes no sense. I have seen it in places like Operations before, because it's an operational function of the business. Why I don't think it makes sense to put you there is because it's really hard when Operations, their whole goal is to scale and slim down and make things efficient. It's hard to look at Support, a customer function, with a purely efficiency lens, because that's where the Customer Experience will be lost if you are efficient. Because sometimes building a relationship isn't efficient. But the purpose is to build a relationship. That's where I have I don't think it makes the most sense but that it is sometimes put.
Anwar
What is your take on having Customer Experience, like your Customer Experience team live on its own outside of Sales and let's say directly report into the CEO, have a Chief Customer Experience Officer.
Jaclyn
How do I say this correctly? I fucking love that... [Laughs]
Masha
I think that's yep, yep.
Jaclyn
I think that is great. That is the ideal. I think why it is hard is because Support costs a lot of money and you have to have a already profitable or like for sure going to be like major profits. The companies who can like have full teams focused on customer love are the ones who are IPO'd and grounded and loaded and so they get the opportunity to nourish relationships. I think a lot of startups, which is where my experiences, we just don't have that capability yet. But that's part of the challenge! That's where the fun part of Support is, is like, okay, how do we provide all the things that we want to provide to our customers with these resources? [Laughs] And then most that you can and figure out the rest. I'm a huge fan of having Experience be at the table all the time. But there's true monetary reasons why that doesn't happen. And, you know, business is business at the end of the day.
Masha
Right. I love that. Thanks, Jaclyn. I guess, if you look back a couple years, and you've been in startups this all this time too, how has the role of Customer Experience as maybe the job role, but also the function, how has it evolved over the last couple of years?
Jaclyn
Hmm. You know, I'm not sure I have a great answer for that. I think, in general, I do believe there has been a big shift towards realizing the importance behind your customers as competition. And there's a new startup on the block every frickin week. And so the need to retain customers now is way more important than it was in like the 90s or 2000s, where customers were a dime a dozen. And if you lose them, you lose them. Where as now, if we lose them, they're not just gone. They've like taken their money to another competitor, they didn't just leave us, they joined to someone else. And I think the customer function is getting some good, well deserved credit and focus on how do we make our users want to stay with us no matter what that product is?
Masha
Yeah, that's really great. And I think you've started kind of going down this path. But if I were to hand you a crystal ball, what would be sort of the way that you see—and maybe what are some of the early signals that you see it continuing to change over the next five years, let's say?
Jaclyn
I think, I mean, subscription services changed everything in a lot of ways. Because the ability for customers to come and go got a lot easier. And I think it'll only get easier. Like, think of all of the products that we even have today that just allow us to cancel or start a subscription with the click of our phone. I don't have to put in my credit card, I could sign up for a subscription today on an app and cancel it tomorrow. And it'd take me under five clicks for the whole thing. And so I think because the ability to gain and lose, that is going to just get easier and easier for the customers. I think the focus on retention, even like not the focus on the sale, but the focus on retention is going to be scaled up and heightened. Whereas before it was like all you have to do is get them and then once you get them, you got them. And I think it's going to be like oh, people will try us out. But once they try us out, how do we make sure they stay? And that's what I think the shift will go towards and speaking specifically towards subscription services in that.
Masha
Yeah, absolutely. We're definitely hearing that echoed through and through. What would you say is the most controversial opinion that you hold about Customer Experience that you just wish other folks would hurry up and catch up to? Get with it?
Jaclyn
Yeah, yeah... Loom! [Laughs]
Masha
I don't know if that's controversial, Jaclyn!
Jaclyn
To some degree, because people hate being on camera. And I think it is something that people just need to get over. I think some people had like, the Zoom resistance, the Zoom fatigue, I feel it, we feel it, we get it, you don't want to hear your face or see your voice. But it's just a part of it. And I think there's this idea that if we personalized support, that it will take longer and that you have to pour in more resources compared to like a more generic an email or a phone call or something like that. Whereas Loom helps everyone in Support. The Support rep is able to give a personalized experience and it takes less time for me to create a one minute Loom, then for me to type up all of that information, including screenshots and whatever I need them to do. And then for the user standpoint, it's so much nicer to see my stupid little face and my stupid little sweatshirt telling them what to do, than just this wall of text. Compared to like, oh, wow, there was someone who cared about me and wanted me to do this. And I think, maybe not controversial, but there's resistance because it is complicated sometimes and it is scary. But it's the way of the future people need to make Looms more. Because video communication and asynchronous communication, not expecting someone to get on the phone with you every time you need to talk to them is just what we're gonna have to go towards.
Masha
Yeah, it's not going away. Maybe if I could step back and ask a cheeky question. If you had a Customer Experience or customer support related superpower, what would yours be?
Jaclyn
Mine would be to know what the customer means instead of just knowing what they're saying. Because there's always a disconnect. And I wouldn't want that to just stop with Loom—or with support. I'd want to know that for like every conversation I'm ever in. When someone says, “Hi, I'm doing fine.” I want to hear that they said, “Hi. I'm having a really hard morning, and I'm overwhelmed. And I'm stressed. And I wish someone would give me a hug.” [Laughs] Or whatever it may be. But I think so often customers say what they think they need to say or what they kind of want, but they don't fully know how to express what they really mean. Or maybe they are like trying to intentionally not say what they mean to like gamify it. If I had a superpower, I would be able to read a support ticket or listen to the support message and know, I know what this person really means by what they are saying.
Masha
It's like a mix of truth serum and mind reading, it sounds like. [Laughs]
Jaclyn
Literally. Yeah, a little touch of both.
Masha
Exactly. And what's one story about Customer Experience life or Support life that you wanted to tell that we didn't ask you about?
Jaclyn
I think like my passion, and what I hope comes across and a lot of these answers that I just want to make sure does, is my belief that like the answer to Support is humanizing, not dehumanizing the field. I think, for a while, when Support, like, look at huge support scale operations, it was really focused on, if we can take out the human element, then it's like a plug-and-play for a Support agent, apply this response, if they say this, you say that, if you say that, they say this. It's very scripted and very—it works like a giant machine. And I do not believe the machine is built for the customer. It's built for Operations. And Support is not a function of Operations. Support is a function for the customer in a way that retains customers to do good for the business. And I think that the way to do that is by humanizing our Support in any way that we can. And yeah, one day when I hang up my hat, and I'm out of the Support world, I hope that that can be something that I'm known for, as someone who helped humanize Support wherever I was.
Masha
Oh, I love that. Jaclyn, that's such a beautiful message. Anwar, do you have any questions for Jaclyn? You've been so, so helpful. And this has been super fun. These are great answers. And yeah, maybe we can also open it up to you if you have any questions for us that we can answer in the last couple of minutes before we let you go.
Anwar
Yeah, I guess my question is, do you have any questions for us? I don't have any more questions. It's been really good.
Jaclyn
Yeah, so what has been like one of the learnings y'all have gotten out of these calls?
Masha
Oh my gosh. Okay. Anwar, you can pick one and I'll think and pick one. Okay, I think I've got one. Can I share? I think one of the biggest things that's a takeaway for me is that Customer Experience is an extremely quickly evolving function, and it encompasses a lot of different types of points across the customer journey. And so we're seeing a lot of like, the CSM role seems to be a hugely in demand role right now, it's blowing up. But also things that are starting to happen, for example, the advent of like the Chief Customer Officer role or the Chief Experience Officer role. And also we're seeing things like Account Managers coming over from the Sales organization into the Success organization, right. And actually having people they're called Customer Success Advocates or Advisors, so folks taking really strategic roles with their customers. I think that's a super interesting evolution. And of course, CS Ops is a huge thing right now, right? Ops summerization or growth operationalization of that of that whole area is definitely a hot topic. But I think for me, one of the things that has definitely blown my mind is just how much this function is evolving. And finally, people seem to be kind of giving it almost the same amount of weight as the new sale area. And like you said, there's this inflection point, at which point Customer Success becomes like, oh, holy crap, a renewal book of business might be larger than a sales reps business target. So yeah, that's been just mind blowing for me.
Jaclyn
Yeah. And you're so right, we literally last month rebranded our team, the internal team, from Customer Support Representatives to Customer Experience Advocates, because it was a better reflection of what we were doing. Because we are working with customers from the moment they sign on until hopefully forever, or if they try to leave, as you said, those inflection points. It's like, every single inflection point, every email they receive, every push notification that is all involved and like how they feel about us. And that feeling is where we tie in that humanizing support. But yeah, rebranding towards experience and advocacy is where support is going for sure.
Anwar
Yeah. And on my end, well, I came from an engineering background. So it's very interesting how engineers tend to think that product managers are the closest people to the customer, and they sort of know the most about the customer at any one point in time. I think the biggest thing for me, was just learning more about Customer Success and the fact that Customer Success, it's not just support, like a lot of people. I'm ashamed to say I thought that now. It's like, whoa.
Jaclyn
Yeah I tell people I work in support and they're like, “Oh, a call centre?” And I'm like, no, no, no.
Anwar
Yeah, and the fact that it's not about making the customer happy as much as it is about making the Customer Successful with the solution.
Jaclyn
We snap a lot, we don't clap here. [Laughs]
Masha
Yes, fingers. [Laughs]
Anwar
So it's very interesting, because engineers, the one thing that we always have is this disconnect between Customer Success and Engineering, is that we fix problems when we build a solution, right? And a lot of the time, we don't necessarily know if it's actually delivered value. And yet, this whole time, there's this whole division that we're so disconnected to, that has all these answers. But none of us know them. So it was just so interesting to to learn about Customer Success. It's like, oh, you guys know it all! Like, you guys know, everything. Like this is where everything, like the heart of the company actually lives.
Jaclyn
Like, why aren't we talking?
Masha
Right! And why is it not known?
Anwar
Why is it not known? Yeah, that's one of the biggest learning on my end.
Jaclyn
Cool, I love that.
Masha
It's been great. Jaclyn, I want to be respectful of your time, this has been fantastic for us. Thank you so much for taking the time. And as I mentioned, I'll come back to you probably in a couple of weeks, we've got a little bit of a backlog, which we feel so lucky to be able to say that, but we'll come back to you with a cleanup transcript and in a little bit of an editorial from me, and then as soon as we get your okay, we'll publish at the right kind of time and also the only thing I'll leave you with is like, think of an ask, if you have an ask. I feel so corporate when I say that. But if you have something that you want to share with folks, or there's a question that you got, or you're hiring, or you want people to do something, let me know we'll share it out with your interviewer as well because we just want to amplify and elevate.
Jaclyn
Use Loom! It's free! That's it. [Laughs]
