Epochal Growth | Empowering Leaders to Create Transformative Change
Welcome to Epochal Growth, the podcast dedicated to transforming the way we lead by embodying the change we seek. Embracing the belief that we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for, our mission is to empower leaders to create impactful and lasting transformations in their organizations.
Hosted by industry expert Sarah Caminiti, each episode brings together visionary leaders and change-makers to explore the profound impact of inclusive and intentional leadership. Through engaging conversations and insightful discussions, we reveal how these approaches can revolutionize businesses and drive innovation.
At Epochal Growth, we are passionate about showcasing the transformative power of intentional actions and inclusive practices. Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur, an aspiring leader, or someone passionate about business transformation, our podcast provides valuable insights and practical advice to help you lead differently and inspire growth.
Join us on this journey to unlock the potential for transformative business success. Tune in to Epochal Growth and start being the change you seek in leadership.
Epochal Growth | Empowering Leaders to Create Transformative Change
Epochal Growth x The Supportive Crossover: Self-Service is the Future
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In this special crossover episode, Sarah Caminiti teams up with Mat Patterson, host of Help Scout's The Supportive, to dive into one of the hottest topics in customer service: the future of self-service and AI. As businesses evolve, so does the way we support customers, and self-service is quickly becoming the go-to solution. But what does that mean for support teams, leadership, and customer experience?
Bring a notebook and listen as Mat breaks down the critical role self-service plays in streamlining operations, enhancing customer satisfaction, and freeing up your team for more complex, impactful work. From ancient vending machines to modern AI tools, Mat explores how tech is reshaping customer interactions and why human empathy remains irreplaceable.
Sarah also jumps in throughout the episode to offer her leadership insights on how to navigate the transition to AI-powered self-service without losing the personal touch that defines great support. If you’re a leader, CX professional, or just curious about the future of work, this episode is packed with actionable takeaways on using AI and self-service to empower your team and elevate your customer experience.
Tune in for a forward-thinking conversation that will change the way you approach customer service, strategy, and leadership in the age of AI!
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
- Barack Obama
Welcome back to Epochal Growth. I'm Sarah Caminiti and I am so happy that you're here. This is a very special episode of Epochal Growth. Today, we're doing something a little different. You're going to hear a very familiar voice, along with mine, but in a different way. I'm excited to be swapping episodes with a supportive podcast by Help Scout, where we deep dive into the future of customer service and, specifically, the role that self-service and AI are playing in shaping how we support our customers. This is a topic that most of the listeners, most of the guests of this podcast, think about all the time, building and leading support teams who are constantly thinking about ways that you can use technology to positively impact the customer experience. Self-service is a great way to provide the customer with the tools that they need to be successful and, on the flip side, it becomes a great way for your team to have the tools that they need to be successful. I'm thrilled to share this conversation because Mat Patterson, the host of The Supportive, really explores what this transition means for support teams, leaders and businesses. Oh yeah, remember when I said that you would recognize the voice in this special episode. That's Mat. If this is your first time listening to Epochal Growth. Welcome. I am so excited that you're here. I'm so excited that your love of The Supportive brought you to Epochal Growth. But if you've been with me for a while, then Mat Patterson will sound very familiar, because he was a very recent guest on this podcast and we had a blast talking about all things AI and community and leadership and your journey. I definitely recommend it if you haven't heard it yet.
Sarah Caminiti:But back to this episode. We're going to be uncovering insights on how AI is shifting the landscape. But here's the thing While self-service is growing, the need for human connection and strategic leadership is stronger than ever. We all know this. So I'm going to be popping into the episode every now and then to share some thoughts on how we can navigate this change from a leadership perspective and how you can leverage it in your own career and organization. So whether you're a support leader, someone exploring the future of work or just curious about how AI may affect your role, you'll get a ton of value from this episode. Let's dive into this special Epochal growth and The Supportive crossover.
Mat Patterson:Here we go. Psst, I've got a question for you. When do you think the first vending machine was invented? Got a decade in mind? Good, I will tell you the answer, but not yet. What a tease. Self-service technology, ancient and modern. A German monk and Shawna explains gross margin. I'm Mat Patterson. This is The Supportive.
Mat Patterson:If you knew for sure that, starting tomorrow, most of your customers would use self-service instead of contacting your support team, how would you feel? Relieved, confused, excited. A sudden, overwhelming urge to rush about fixing up your help docs, like you've just organised for a cleaner to come, and now you desperately need to impress them with how clean everything already is. I'm asking because that's what's about to happen. I mean not the cleaner, the self-service first thing. Probably not tomorrow, maybe not next year, but soon. And if that's true, if most of our customers will use self-service first, well then we've all got some work to do and we'll get into what that work is.
Mat Patterson:But first let's talk about whether or not it's going to happen at all. Why would I say that most of our customers will use self-service most of the time? Well, firstly, because it's already happening for larger companies. Take Google, for example, at their scale with their 1.8 billion people just using Gmail. Human-first support just isn't practical. There's not a warehouse on Earth big enough to hold a call centre at that scale. And Elon's Martian sweatshops? They won't be open for decades yet. For really big companies, self-service first it's the only practical option. But Help Scout's not at that scale. You're probably not either At our size. It's always been profitable to have skilled human support answering emails and chats and calls, because there's enough margin there at a small enough customer base to make those numbers work. But what if those numbers change? What if AI comes along that can take on, say, 30% of the support work, but for 10% of the cost? Well, now your finance department's going to want to take a real hard look at your support headcount, aren't they?
Sarah Caminiti:Hi, it's me. Yes, I warned you, I'm going to be jumping in a bit here. Mat brings up a great point about AI taking over 30% of support work for a fraction of the cost, and while it sounds like a win for efficiency and, believe me, I love efficiency it's important to recognize that this shift can create anxiety within teams. We see it all the time. We see it on LinkedIn, we see it within our communities, we see it within our teams. We cannot forget this. As leaders, our role isn't just to implement new technology. It's to guide our people through these changes. We need to be strategic about how we communicate the benefits of AI while also addressing the potential concerns of our teams. Remember, adopting AI isn't replacing human roles. It's about evolving them. A leader's responsibility is to set clear expectations about how these tools will enhance the team's capabilities, not diminish their value. As you bring AI into your workflow, consider how you can reframe this change as an opportunity for your team members to focus on more meaningful, complex work that AI simply cannot handle.
Mat Patterson:Hang on. I think I've accidentally summoned Help Scout CFO Shawna Fisher. Hi, sorry, Shawna. I was just talking about summoned Help Scout CFO Shawna Fisher. Hi, sorry, Shawna, I was just talking about the budget implications of AI in support.
Shawna Fisher:These are sexy topics.
Mat Patterson:Yeah, anyway, do you want to come back a little bit later and teach me a new metric?
Shawna Fisher:Okay.
Mat Patterson:Great. We were talking about the reasons to think that self-service first is the future of support. Big companies like Google already do it. Ai is going to make it much cheaper for smaller companies to deliver AI-mediated self-service help if the tech is good enough. Is it good enough? Well, maybe not yet, but probably soon. There's a long history of technological innovations that were not quite as good as the thing that we already had. I don't mean before. We had an iPhone sort of long I mean 4th century BC long. Here's a man from that time talking about a new technology of his moment.
Mat Patterson:If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.
Mat Patterson:Did you get it? This was a quote from Socrates talking about writing an invention that, as you may know, did in fact catch on, so much so that, by the 1400s AD, it had huge numbers of fans, like this German monk, Trithenius, who said the sermon, once it is heard, vanishes into thin air.
Mat Patterson:Its text, if written down and read even a thousand times, does not lose its impact.
Mat Patterson:Massive fan of writing Trithemius, but he was less excited about the newfangled tech of his day Printed books will never be the equivalent of handwritten codices, especially since printed books are often deficient in spelling and appearance.
Mat Patterson:And it's worth noting, noting both of those fellows. They were right, memorizing things, writing them down by hand, it does help you learn better, but the technology was so useful and so cost-effective that it succeeded despite those limitations. And we're not immune to the same thing happening to us. We all stream our music. Even though MP3s, when they were first introduced, sounded legitimately much worse than the CDs that we already had, convenience wins and the quality tends to catch up.
Sarah Caminiti:This is what I love about Mat. This is such a perfect analogy, because this kind of resistance to technological change is timeless. As leaders, we need to understand that this resistance is often less about the technology itself and more about the fear of the unknown. It's about people questioning their relevance in the new landscape, and that's fair. That's something that we need to acknowledge and we need to validate. When I work with other leaders, when I get to connect with other leaders, I'm always trying to encourage a proactive approach to change. Don't just roll out new systems. Take the time to show your teams how they can thrive in this new environment. The key is helping your people see how the technology can complement their skills, not render them obsolete. History shows us that once people understand the benefits, they adopt change. It's our job as leaders to help them make that connection and that's what we should expect to happen with AI.
Mat Patterson:It's already good enough for some types of customer service For simple questions prioritizing, tagging, translating being a better knowledge-based search, creating a draft answer but it's not yet able to provide high-quality, reliable service directly to customers. In many cases, ai hallucinates like a princess who kissed the wrong toad. If you've got high customer support, an AI is probably not good enough right now to let it talk directly to your customers, but it probably will be, or at least it will get good enough for enough situations that it becomes normal and expected that you'll interact with AI first when you're getting customer service. And that has real implications for how we work as support professionals, what our job is, who we help, how we use our time and energy, and more on that in a second, but first let me give you one last piece of evidence for this self-service first support future. And if ancient history isn't your bag, then maybe these modern examples will help Word processors, atms, self-service, grocery store checkouts three quite different technologies, but they all followed a very similar pattern, and that pattern is taking a job that's done by a person and not replacing it completely, but automating some of the work and then having the customer do the rest, hence self-service.
Mat Patterson:So type documents used to be produced by professional typists until word processing machines came along. Now the business professionals can type their own letters, but the machine helps with the corrections and the Mat part. Bank tellers used to be required for every banking transaction until ATMs came along. Now the bank's customers can do the pressing of the buttons to get the cash out. The machine does the counting and the dispensing and the recording of the transactions. And of course we're right in the middle of automating grocery checkouts. In theory at least, the customer does scanning and bagging and the machine keeps track, takes the money at the end. One job split up between a customer and a new machine.
Sarah Caminiti:One point that I want to highlight here is that, while AI and self-service can handle many routine tasks, we all know that they will never replace the human touch and customer support. We've seen what happens when companies think that they can replace the human touch and customer support, and that is just a sad, sad, sad place to be. The emotional intelligence, the empathy and the nuanced understanding that humans bring are irreplaceable. The skills that the CX community have, those skills they're irreplaceable. As businesses adopt more AI-driven support, leaders need to ensure that empathy does not get lost in the process.
Sarah Caminiti:Your team should be focusing on more complex, sensitive cases where human connection is essential. Your team should also be using this time to focus more on the data and how they can use that data in different ways. This is where the true value of human support lies. We're able to understand the customer's needs beyond just those transactional communications, whether that's through data, whether that's through actual customer communication. But this is also where leadership comes in. As leaders, we need to be equipping our teams to handle these higher stakes situations effectively, and we need to be equipping our teams with the tools and the confidence to start asking questions cross-functionally and to see how this team can have an impact throughout the business.
Mat Patterson:Of all of these examples, though, I think it's the grocery store checkout that applies most to our work in online customer support, in that there are plenty of cases where the machine works great. It will be faster than waiting for a person to help. It scales up well. It's cheaper for businesses to fund and operate, but not in every case. As soon as you need to do something more complicated or at higher volume or something outside of the machine's capabilities, you'll still need a person at the checkout and in the support inbox.
Mat Patterson:For online support, we've always had self-service documentation and tools, but the AI tech just wasn't good enough to be useful. But it feels like that is changing. There'll be a ton of queries where everything is close enough to standard and predictable that some form of AI-generated response will be just fine. The customer won't need to wait for human help. But there'll always be masses of edge cases and more complex issues and sensitive issues, and whatever the support equivalent is of using your own bag, that's just slightly heavier than the stupid checkout machine can understand and invalid item in the bagging area. My, anyway, self-service driven by customers, delivered by AI, designed, monitored, crafted by people that's the way most customers will be helped, most of the time, not all the time, not in every case, just most of the time.
Mat Patterson:Okay. But so what? Well, there are some real implications for support teams that we should prepare for. But before we get into those, Shawna is back to talk metrics. Pair for but before we get into those, Shawna is back to talk metrics. Now, Shawna, today's metric is gross margin, which I imagine refers to the little pictures and phrases that teenage boys like to scribble on the pages of their school textbooks.
Shawna Fisher:That's close, but I have a little bit different of a definition. So, in short, gross margin tells you as a percentage how much money your business keeps from each dollar of sales you make. It's a way to measure the profitability of companies' core business. Gross margin is calculated by first taking your sales revenue less your direct cost, which they call cost of goods sold that are associated with producing that revenue that gives you your gross profit, that are associated with producing that revenue that gives you your gross profit.
Mat Patterson:Then you divide that gross profit by your total revenue, multiply it by 100, and that's your gross margin, and what does knowing the gross margin help you understand about the business?
Shawna Fisher:Gross margins are very important because they help you understand how efficiently you're producing revenue. The higher your gross margin, the more dollars are available to run the business.
Mat Patterson:And is there a good gross margin percentage that would always apply, or is there something that's specific to a particular business or to an industry?
Shawna Fisher:So it is different for every company, but there definitely are industry benchmarks. A technology company, for instance, is anywhere between 70 and 90 percent.
Mat Patterson:And you said customer support is considered a direct cost.
Shawna Fisher:That's correct.
Mat Patterson:So any reduction in spending on support or any revenue that the support organization could bring in that would improve the gross margin.
Shawna Fisher:Exactly so. By optimizing resources and minimizing waste and customer service operations, you can increase and enhance your profitability and maintain much higher margins. And if you do charge for certain support services, that revenue could improve your margin too.
Mat Patterson:How should I be thinking about gross margin if I was a support leader in my business?
Shawna Fisher:gross margin if I was a support leader in my business. A wonderful way to be a good partner as a support leader is to come to the table knowing a few things One, what are the gross margin targets? Two, what are the revenue targets the business is trying to achieve? And three, how much does your support team cost and what percentage of the direct cost do they currently represent? And lastly, how can you help control those costs to ensure the business is on track to achieve its gross margin target? Keep a close eye on whether the business is on track to hit the revenue target, remembering the balance between revenue and cost and the formula that is needed to achieve the gross margin percentage.
Sarah Caminiti:All right, all right, I got to jump in here. This is the last time, I promise, but I got to jump in because Mat touched on something critical for support leaders. It's something that we usually do not feel confident to talk about, and that is the numbers how support impacts gross margin. In today's business landscape. We can no longer continue this garbage narrative that customer support is a cost center. We know that it has never been a cost center, but people still like to say it is a cost center. But hey enough, I'll get off my soapbox for that one.
Sarah Caminiti:When aligned with the company's core values and strategic goals, it can actually contribute to profitability. But really, when the company puts a focus on aligning the customer experience with the company's core values and the company's strategic goals, incredible things can happen, and usually those are very profitable things. I've been doing a lot of work trying to understand alignment between core values and purpose and roles, and alignment is so, so important. If your customer support team's work reflects the company's mission and values, you'll not only improve margins, but you're also going to enhance customer loyalty and satisfaction. Leaders who can bring this level of strategic thinking to the table, knowing how support affects both revenue and costs. Those are the leaders that are going to create sustainable, high-performing teams. Those are the leaders that are going to change the way companies think and use the customer experience team and the skills that they have.
Mat Patterson:Thanks, joanna. I did some half-arsed Googling just now. Looks like the typical snack vending machines have gross margins around 15-25%. That's not bad. It's no wonder they've been around for so long. But how long? Well, the first Coca-Cola vending machine that was back in 1929, almost a century ago. But a century before that and an ocean away, you could buy some politically risky books from an English vending machine in 1822. And sticking in England, we can go back to 1615 when you could get tobacco from a machine in a dingy tavern.
Mat Patterson:But the very first recorded vending machine, well, it's a lot older than that, all the way back to 60 AD in ancient Egypt. It was invented by a professor with the excellent name Hero of Alexandria and it dispensed water from a spout for the low, low price of a five drachma coin dropped in a slot at the top. Now, this was room temperature water. It wasn't a chilled Evian and that might have reduced sales, except that this was also holy water used for cleaning rituals, and that's not an area in which you want to skimp. People still die every year from vending machine accidents. It's usually not because they were smoked by an Egyptian god, because they forgot to cleanse themselves before entering the temple.
Mat Patterson:All right, your support team. It does a lot more than even the wildest Japanese vending machine could offer, but even so, a self-service first future. It probably does mean some changes. Firstly, your documentation really Mat. It's meant for your customers, yes, and for your support team, but now it's also the source of truth for your AI tools. If you've got insufficient, incorrect, out-of-date docs, ai will still use that to talk to your customers. So maintaining, improving, extending, enhancing documentation Job number one for future support teams Great documentation is useless if your customers never see it.
Mat Patterson:So another area of focus will be AI-powered contextual help. Think Microsoft Clippy, but good, it was always a smart idea, the tech just wasn't there. But generative, conversational AI providing useful contextual help that could be a support game changer. But even with the best of docs and the best self-service tools, we know some customers will still need or want to talk to a person. So an important focus for support pros it will be figuring out when to transition customers from self-service to human support and how to do that as gracefully and as painlessly as possible. We may need fewer of those humans per customer than we do today, but the jobs they do will be more complex and broader than ever before. Like bank tellers before us, we'll be handling fewer customers but a wider range of the escalated, the more sensitive, the more expensive interactions, and we'll be responsible for monitoring and crafting all of those AI-first self-service interactions, measuring the quality of the human support and the AI-mediated self-service. That will be another core job for the future support team.
Mat Patterson:I don't know about your team. I haven't personally had to deal with my human staff hallucinating at work, so we're going to need a new type of support QA to deal with this new world. We'll also need to redesign our support onboarding and our training techniques, because the old way throwing the newbies into the queue, letting them handle the basic questions to build up their skills that might not be feasible if AI is now taking those questions automatically or giving the answer to the support agent. We'll have to find new ways to build up that skill and expertise and to bring it all together. The customer support experience will be wider than before. There'll be more touch points for support content, more ways to engage with support teams and the support materials they're creating.
Mat Patterson:The support pro of the future needs to think about that overall customer experience, not just the one-to-one conversations. If the future of online support is self-service. That means we need to elevate self-service from a when-you-have-spare-time afterthought or a deflection tool to stop people getting real support and make it a critical element of our products and services. And look, we don't know how AI is going to turn out. Maybe it never gets much further than where it is right now, but even if that's the case, investing time and energy into an incredible self-service experience that will always be worthwhile, it will pay off, and if AI can end up taking on more of the work, then we will be well-placed to take full advantage of it.
Sarah Caminiti:All right listeners. I hope that you enjoyed this crossover episode with The Supportive and, in a couple of days, be on the lookout, follow The Supportive podcast, because Mat Patterson is going to be dissecting an episode of Epochal Growth and it's pretty awesome. I hope you've enjoyed diving into the future of customer support alongside Mat Patterson and exploring how AI and self-service are reshaping the landscape. I know this is a little bit different than what we usually talk about, but I think it's a really important topic and I was so, so, so excited to have the opportunity to do this with The Supportive. It's clear that, while technology is transforming the way that we work, the role of leadership and guiding teams through these shifts is more important than ever. As we discussed today, embracing AI isn't about replacing the human element. This has been a common theme through many, many, many episodes of Epochal Growth. It's about amplifying what we do best. It's about using these tools strategically to empower our teams, align with our values and provide deeper, more meaningful customer experiences. The future of support may be AI driven, but the heart of great support will always be human.
Sarah Caminiti:If today's conversation resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Reach out to me on LinkedIn. Leave a review here for the podcast. You can also text me if you take a look at the show notes. Let's just keep this conversation going and if you're looking for more leadership insights or ways to align your team's goals with your company's values, don't forget to check out the other episodes of Epochal Growth. We only have a couple episodes left to close out this incredible first season. Thank you for this opportunity for this swap, Mat Patterson and Help Scout, and thank you, listeners, for being on this journey with me. I'm Sarah Caminiti. This is Epochal Growth. Have a great day.
