Prove CS ROI, Train Faster, and Listen Like You Mean It

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

Author

Jen Weaver
July 11, 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

  • Little Bits: curated text posts from the week

  • And Now: meme of the week

TL;DR

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

❝

"Fierce attention... If you ask a question and don't ask two or three follow-up questions, odds are, you weren't listening or didn't care. You need to have a 4-to-1 ratio of questions asked vs answered."

- John DiJulius

🦸 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.

if you listen to just one podcast this week:

Live Chat — Jen Weaver

I don't often put my own podcast in this position, but Alex Plasket is such an absolute gem. My picks:

  • Minute 6:25: How an expert manager handles hands-on everything during the first days of onboarding.

  • Minute 9:23: "Alex's new hire guide: week one is highly scheduled and week two is, what do you need?"

❝

There are questions I never want anyone to ever have to answer again. And I think though that's where Al can step in. But yeah, as soon as something is complex, it doesn't help the situation.

- Alex Plasket

Happy to Help — Priscilla Brooke

The Role of AI in Customer Support with Conor Pendergrast

  • Minute 13:25: The destructive effects of AI on CS teams, and how that's turning around.

  • Minute 21:30: Brand loyalty is a parasocial relationship. Because people have this capacity, you can use AI to build good relationships with your customers.

  • Minute 27:00: Zapier's use of AI troubleshooting in the app is great.

❝

"In 10 years, most jobs will probably still exist ... I think customer support will be more fun to engage with as customers … it is going to get a bit weird for a while now, but hopefully less weird in the future."

- Conor Pendergrast

Voices of Support — Thibaut Martin 🦊

This is the podcast that highlights and uplifts the voices of frontline specialists and George Kaduru brings a Nigerian perspective.

  • Minute 7:15: Learn by doing: new specialist onboarding from the specialist's perspective. (Very similar to what Alex said on Live Chat about the importance of one-on-one training.)

Modern Customer Podcast — Blake Morgan

Inside UBS’s Customer Experience Strategy with Allison Paine Landers, CXO of Banking and Lending at UBS

  • Minute 24:55: The rapid-fire questions section of this podcast are always fun!

  • Minute 1:30: If you ever got AOL CDs in the mail, Allison is responsible! I wish she'd talked a bit more about this as it's iconic.

The Contact Center Show — Amas Tenumah and Bob Furniss

BPO Success vs Failure

  • Minute 8:15: How BPOs do it cheaper, for better or worse

  • Minute 14:13: "Hire competent consultants who have deep contact center experience and then be the smartest person in the room when you sit down with the customer."

Experience Matters — Niraj Ranjan Rout

Using VoC to Align Product, Finance, and Support with Karen Lam

  • Minute 3:57: What it means to be a context-driven leader: doing storytelling, offering meaning behind what you're doing.

  • Minute 25:00: The power of kaizen: continuous iterative changes.

Customer Service Revolution — John R. DiJulius III

The Art of Listening with Denise Thompson

This whole episode is great, with some genuinely new ideas about listening. If you're in a hurry, skip to minute 6 and listen on 1.5x.

  • Minute 6:59: "Fierce attention... If you ask a question and don't ask two or three follow-up questions, odds are, you weren't listening or didn't care. You need to have a 4-to-1 ratio of questions asked vs answered."

  • Minute 7:30: "Listen like you're wrong. Don't be so ready to defend ... listen like they're telling you the truth and you're wrong."

  • Minute 12:45: How to deal with a line of people waiting to talk to you, and still help them feel heard. This is a gem.

Little bits:

Some posts from the support creators this week that are worth stopping your scroll.

Upcoming CX Events:

🦸 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