🗞️ The Matts are BACK! Plus Practical Tips on Team Structure and Culture

Rolling up the CS podcasts of the week for you - in 5 minutes or more.

Author

Jen Weaver
August 22, 2025

Rolling up the CS podcasts of the week for you - in 5 minutes or more. I watch on 2x, search transcripts, and listen while walking my dog to curate clips for support leaders.

Containing:

  • TL;DR: three quick wins

  • The Podcasts: summaries + links from this week's podcasts

  • ICYMI on LI: I missed LI this week so maybe you can tell me!

  • And Now: meme of the week

TL;DR

If you only have a few minutes, check these out:

🦸 This newsletter is brought to you by Supportman.io, which connects Intercom to Slack with AI to give agents feedback and surface problems in real time.

The Podcasts

Live Chat with Jen (that's me!)

Amanda Drws brings her QA expertise to this episode in our mini-series on quality assurance in support. Obviously I think the whole thing is worth a listen, but here are some highlights:

  • Keep training alive post-onboarding with listening sessions, agent-shared “wonky calls,” and whole-company reviews. (Minute 13:12)

  • QA isn’t about catching mistakes, it’s about building systems that stop them from happening in the first place. (Minute 20:18)

  • Weighted rubrics keep QA fair. A stray typo isn’t the same as a billing error, and scorecards should reflect that. (Minute 22:17)

Experience Matters with Niraj Ranjan Rout

Miles Goldstein (ex-Okta, Amobee, Marketo) shares two decades of lessons from running high-stakes, enterprise-level support teams.

  • Miles shares his fast-track hiring playbook: “would you put them on the phone with a top 50 account?” as the baseline bar (Minute 8:45).

  • On tooling: don’t break workflows that work (even if it’s a spreadsheet) and always involve agents in CRM rollouts. (Minute 16:00).

Building Support Teams That Scale with Empathy | Conversation with Matt Mangold đź’»

  • Use a holistic approach to team data, including what kind of tickets specialists are dealing with, and single metrics can be manipulated. (Minute 12:44)

  • How to structure a team for success as you scale: have SMEs and experts in triage. (Minute 30:07)

  • Training frameworks: the 80/20 rule, shadowing, and “try to break stuff” exercises. (Minute 38:00)

Ticket Volume with Matt Beran

Season 2 launches with a roundtable discussion! This podcast focuses on IT, not SaaS support, but I curated these clips for you support leaders:

  • Linda Lenox, PMP, ITIL Master on "shadow IT." If support leaders don’t address gaps, business teams will buy or jury-rig their own tools, creating bigger headaches later. (Minute 4:45)

  • What data is the most valuable? Sandi Conrad, EMBA urges us to go beyond just the number of tickets to root cause analysis and trends to take action. (Minute 19:45)

Modern Customer Podcast with Blake Morgan

Most of this episode is focused on voice AI and IVR replacements — not super relevant for SaaS support leaders. But a few gems from Carson Hostetter at Ring Central do apply if you’re thinking about how to manage up to execs and make the most of customer data.

  • Scattered systems make support harder. A strong KM layer or tool integrations can make customer context visible across the team. (Minute 16:48)

  • The Jobs-to-be-Done framework is a great way to frame budget asks to execs — position support work as helping customers achieve their core “job to be done,” not just resolving tickets. (Minute 21:10)

Unf*cking Your CX with Zack Hamilton

Annette Franz, CCXP talks employee experience, specifically how it drives customer outcomes. These are my favorite of the "player tips" she offers:

  • Employees leave companies because of culture, but what is culture? I love her answer here: values plus behaviors. (Minute 10:07)

  • Redefine onboarding as months-long integration, not just a one-day orientation — a proven way to boost retention. (Minute 15:20)

And yet more...

If you're looking for more podcasts, these episodes launched this week but the topics aren't super relevant for support leaders. They still might pique your interest:

🦸 This newsletter is brought to you by Supportman.io, which connects Intercom to Slack with AI to give agents feedback and surface problems in real time.

And now..

See you next time,

Jen