2017 Elevate Support Summit: Taking Our Support Team To The Next Level
In early October, our Client Operations and Support Team from Service Direct traveled to Denver, Colorado to attend the Elevate Support Summit. At this two-day conference, we listened to 19 speakers from a wide range of small to large sized companies such as Fullstory, Trello, and Google+. It was an inspiring experience being at the conference as we networked with several other support professionals and were able to brainstorm our key takeaways to apply to our business at Service Direct.
Why did we attend Elevate Support? Elevate Support has been providing real life education to support teams since 2012. When looking at the list of speakers and companies attending, we knew that it was a priority to get our team there to learn more about other support teams within the tech industry.
In our two days at the conference, we were able to attend all of the presentations because of their unique structure. Each presenter had 15 minutes to speak about their background and topic and how that would relate to the audience. Some unique and impactful talks drew us in right away like “Embracing Change: Building Your Team Of Experimenters” by Taylor Morgan at SurveyGizmo and “Creating a Thoughtful Help Center” by Lane Collins at Slack. With these short presentations, we were able to take away what types of tools and strategies work for smaller teams vs larger teams and were able to gain insight on the importance of scalability within our support team to grow. The talks and real stories given by our professional peers gave us actionable advice that not only applied to our support team, but to our entire business as well.
One of the biggest takeaways from Elevate Support was learning and reiterating about how valuable a feedback culture in a company can impact your business. At Service Direct, we value feedback externally from our clients as well as internally so we can improve and impact our clients’ businesses. We also believe it’s important to stay relevant and up to date with what is going on in your industry and also more specifically within your role in a company. Ask yourself - how do you stay up to date with new skills or technology that impacts your job? Is it through a network of people in your industry you socialize with or interact with on social media, or is it getting the newest certification in your toolbelt?
Because our setting was more intimate with about 150 people in attendance, we had a lot of time to network and pick each other’s brains throughout the day and after the presentations as well. Questions that we normally just bounce back and forth between our own team were now able to be asked to those who don’t know our product and services we were able to receive unbiased opinions from others at the conference. Our team was able to meet support professionals from all over the world that share the same values as us which helped broaden our resources in these existing communities going forward.
The most humbling part of the whole weekend in Denver was realizing we’re not the only ones going through certain support experiences. A lot of these teams are also experiencing what works well and what doesn’t work well for their customers. Above all, we strive to be a client caring company and being at this conference confirmed that we love doing what we’re best at - supporting our inspiring and hardworking clients at Service Direct.
To learn more about the Elevate Support Summit, visit their website here. To keep in touch with Service Direct and see what we’re up to day to day, follow our social media on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.