CoSupport's Sarah Hatter on customer support - The Intercom Blog

Summary

Sarah Hatter, founder of CoSupport and author of the Customer Support Handbook, discussed the evolution of customer support with Intercom. She noted that customers now prefer self-service over contacting support, so simple FAQ pages and email forms are no longer sufficient. Hatter stressed that support must prove company empathy through personalized language, and tracking feature requests, bug reports, and customer tone positions support as the front line for product improvement. When scaling, instead of simply adding hires to handle rising queries, teams should refine processes to reduce the need for support. In hiring, process can be taught but light-heartedness, self-management, and getting to the root of empathy cannot, and Hatter’s Elevate Summit achieved 60% women and 30% non-white by featuring front-line workers instead of only founders and CEOs.

Takeaways

1. 1

   Customers have baggage around support and prefer self-service, so basic FAQ pages and email forms are inadequate; companies need better self-service options.

2. 2

   Support teams that track every feature request, bug report, and customer’s tone become the front line for product improvement.

3. 3

   When hiring for support, you can teach process but you cannot teach light-heartedness, self-management, and getting to the root of empathy, so hire for those innate traits.

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