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14Jan24 Roundup: Dogs and Cats, Living Together

Author

Steph Lundberg
January 14th, 2024 • About 26 minutes

We Support ended their newsletter back in late October 2023 after almost a decade of faithfully serving the CX community, and I’ve keenly felt their absence. I don’t think I could replicate the magic of that esteemed community even if I tried, but I do want to at least attempt to meet the CX community’s need for sharing news, job resources, and just general professional signal-boosting and cheerleading.

So: enter the Support Human Roundup.1 I’ll be playing with format, content, and timing of the Roundup in the coming weeks to see what works, but this newsletter will almost certainly be much more longform than We Support NYC’s newsletter and include considerably more snark and commentary.2

News from Around Supportlandia (and Beyond)

Dogs and Cats, Living Together3

Probably the biggest news from this week was Zendesk’s announcement of their pending acquisition of Klaus, maker of much-beloved cats-tomer service quality assurance software.

The acquisition prompts some obvious questions about Klaus’s future as an independently operating product and whether it will continue to support help desk platforms other than Zendesk.

Given Zendesk’s previous habits regarding their acquisitions – such as Zopim (now Zendesk Chat), BIME (absorbed into Zendesk’s analytics offerings), Outbound.io and Smooch (both now absorbed into Zendesk Messaging) – it’s, uh, not looking great.

Regardless of what happens, best wishes to your team, Klaus! I hope you’re all able to retire in luxury to your small-batch catnip farm of choice.

Publications Flee Substack After Founders Court Nazis, Because of Course They Did, Who is Even Surprised Anymore, Not this Very Tired Jew

Hey, so Substack, what the fuck.

Tl;dr: The Atlantic’s Jonathan M. Katz found numerous openly Nazi and white supremacist newsletters with potentially thousands of paid subscribers, from which Substack takes a cut. Katz also found a pattern of the co-founders willfully ignoring racist and antisemitic content in favor of bringing in new publications and readers interested in news and politics and so-called “free speech” ideals.

When confronted with widespread criticism of Substack’s Terms of Service and moderation policies, company Co-Founder Hamish McKenzie said, among other things, that:

[A]ggressive content moderation” didn’t work. “Is there less concern about misinformation? Has polarization decreased? Has fake news gone away? Is there less bigotry? It doesn’t seem so to us.

Because why even try to responsibly moderate your platform when racist antisemites have so much disposable income, amiright?

Look, as a community professional myself, I’m willing to acknowledge that content moderation is usually not as straightforward as users think it is. There are many difficult gray areas, but hate speech in the communities we build is not one of them.

I’m not holding my breath for Substack to figure this out, and even if they do, it’s likely too late. Many publications who were already considering leaving Substack, including major tech blog Platformer, are now making themselves heard loud and clear by migrating to other platforms (such as Ghost, which powers this newsletter).

InVision to Shut Down by End of 2024

After 12 years, InVision announced last week that it will be shutting down at the end of 2024. Fair winds and following seas, friends.

You Get a Layoff, and You Get a Layoff, Everyone Gets a Layoff!4

In addition to InVision, Frontdesk laid off all 200 employees and closed its doors on January 2. Also, since the beginning of 2024:

  • TechCrunch reports that Audible, Discord, Google, Amazon, Twitch, Unity, and VideoAmp all laid off between 5% and 35% of their employees and that Rent the Runway and Pixar are planning layoffs soon (10% and as high as 20% of their workforces, respectively).

  • Layoffs.fyi is tracking additional layoffs at companies like Instagram, Chargepoint, Citrix, Sofi, Uber Freight, and Lever.

But none of these are as embarrassing or offensive as how Cloudflare conducted itself while laying off employees this past week:

You’ll note that, rather than linking to the original TikTok, I’m sending you to a LinkedIn post about this outrage by Scott Albro (who seems nice enough and as far as I know is not affiliated with Cloudflare). I’m doing this because:

  1. Brittany is a Woman on the Internet™ who dared to stand up for herself and I’m sure she’s having A Real Fun Time Right Now™ and doesn’t need more exposure, and 

  2. You’ll find more ex-Cloudflare employees in the comments of Scott’s post elaborating on their equally horrible experiences getting the news.

So I guess a lot of us are having A Real Fun Time Right Now™.

But at least we can comfort ourselves with the fact that we’re decent human beings whose critical thinking and empathy for others allow us to avoid plastering our spectacularly bad takes on the world wide web in front of all the people we may ever work with, UNLIKE SOME DUDES.5

And Now for Some Good News

Well, that was really depressing. Sorry about that.

Despite these recent layoffs, I do think there’s reason to hope that the CX job market is turning around, and to prove it, here are some CX folks who’ve been hired recently:

Obviously these are just the people who were okay with me celebrating them publicly, but I've seen more! And if this is also you, let me know. I'd love to celebrate you, too.

Read, Watch, and Listen

Read

Maxime Manseau shared The Honest Support KPIs Glossary, a somewhat tongue-in-cheek list of the most important KPIs for Support newcomers. Maxime also recently offered a free review of your Support Q1 2024 OKRs.

Alice Hunsberger has put together a fantastic, curated list of all things Trust & Safety at Alice Links.

This one’s a bit older, but important. Mercer Smith shares Heidi Craun’s talk from last year’s ElevateCX, Are you there, CX? It's me, Trauma!, along with the resources Heidi references in her talk.

In a crossover with Play: Olaf Jacobson made a GPT, Support Level Up, “an interactive training module for customer support agents, providing scenario-based feedback.”

I wouldn’t normally post corporate content here, but I’ll make an exception for TheLoops, because its free guide, Moving From Metrics To Impact: Evolve Your CX With AI in 2024:

  1. Features wisdom from a wonderful range of CX leaders and professionals, and

  2. Uses forbidden magic by not requiring any kind of contact info to access it. You can literally just read it. 

Watch

Brittany Hodak and Nate Brown break down the real meaning behind the CX movement in What Is Customer Experience, And Why Does It Matter?

Listen

Charlotte Ward announced she was rebooting the Customer Support Leaders podcast, starting with the 250th episode featuring a panel of past guests: Matt Dale, Hilary Dudek, Ashley Sachs, and Craig Stoss.

Get Hired

I play Bad Job Bingo with every job listing that appears in the Roundup and categorize them according to how well (or poorly, if I hit Bingo) they do in the game.

However, please remember that a job appearing in a positive category isn’t an endorsement of any role or company, and a job appearing in a negative category doesn't mean I think you shouldn't apply if it works for you. Bad Job Bingo is simply an effort to give you a shortcut to finding roles that may match your needs and values.

These and past contestants can be found at Support Human Jobs.

Green Means Go

No flags, or green flags only! A true unicorn.

Eh, It’s Probably Fine

A few flags popped up, but no serious ones.

Tread Carefully

Didn’t quite hit bingo, but there were several yellow flags or more than one red flag.

  • Senior VP of Support ($203k-$286k) at Meridianlink (Remote US)

    • This is an odd one. I’d expect to see both on-the-ground and macro-level responsibilities for a role like this, but it’s in such an odd mix that it comes across as if they didn’t consult the actual Support team when writing it or they’re not actually sure what they want out of the role. Also, they say that it’s “not typical for offers to be made at or near the top of the [salary] range” – so what’s the point of giving a range, then?

  • Senior Manager, BPO Strategy & Operations ($110k-$135k) at MoneyLion (Onsite in NYC)

    • Neither the title nor the compensation is aligned with the duties of this role, especially considering it’s on-site in NYC.

  • Technical Support Engineer ($80k-$90k) at Qualia (Remote or Onsite in CO)

    • This role requires at least 5 years experience, is highly technical, and is described as “designed to deliver a higher level of partnership with the customer and is not a traditional ticket-by-ticket technical support role.” So why is the pay so low?

  • Director, Technical Support (No comp given) at Duetto Research (Remote US-East)

    • Points in favor: up-front about the challenges facing the team. Points against: C-Suite is all men. No mention of benefits or comp, asks for salary expectations in application.

  • Vice President of Customer Experience (“Competitive” comp not listed) at Kustomer (Remote US-NYC)

  • Head of Growth and Customer Experience (“Competitive” comp not listed) at Vetcove (Remote US)

  • Product Support Manager (No comp given) at Shippo (Remote Mexico)

  • Product Support Specialist (No comp given) at Shippo (Remote Mexico City, Mexico)

    • Shippo isn’t nearly as transparent about this frontline role as they are about the US leadership role above, which doesn’t sit well with me.

  • Chat Support Associate (“Competitive” comp not listed) at Vetcove (Remote US)

  • Customer Advocate, Social Media (“Competitive” comp not listed) at MoneyLion (Remote US)

    • I would expect a position that mentions owning the customer experience so often, that interfaces regularly with senior leadership, and that requires at least 4-5 years experience to have a more senior title.

BINGO

Welp.

  • Enterprise Customer Success Manager ($160k-$200k) at Vero (Remote US)

  • Head of Platform and Community ($80k-$120k) at Pollen (Remote US-NYC)

    • This is an alarmingly low salary for what appears to be at least 3 roles in one. Other flags: poorly edited job description, random mentions of required skills unrelated to job title, generic offering of “Benefits and health insurance.”

  • Implementation Specialist ($70k-$85k) at Vero (Remote US)

    • Neither the title nor the compensation is aligned with the duties of this role.

  • Integration Support Engineering Specialist ($53k-$75k) at Meridianlink (Remote US)

    • $53k for a non-entry level, very technical role is laughable. The duties of the role and the title are also misaligned. And yes, again with the “not typical for offers to be made at or near the top of the [salary] range.”

  • Manager, Customer Support (“Competitive” comp not listed) at Vero (Remote US)

    • I will be forever outraged amused by companies that say their comp is competitive, don’t provide said comp, and then have the audacity to say they’re looking for someone who wants to hold a role for the long-term, especially for a leadership role! Just say “we want to exploit you as much as possible, for as long as possible, at the cheapest price possible” and be done with it.

    • Also: SO MANY RED FLAGS. “If you are a high-performing team player who enjoys working collaboratively with others and you are willing to share and support diverse opinions, come transform leasing with us!”

  • Customer Service Team Leader (“Competitive” comp not listed) at BNB Chain Labs (Remote EU, UK, North America)

    • This job is on Otta but isn’t listed on the company's website. But considering the Careers page is super bare-bones, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

  • Client Onboarding and Implementation Associate (“Competitive” comp not listed) at Vetcove (Remote US)

    • The duties and responsibilities of this role are woefully, hilariously misaligned with the job title. Yikes.

  • Multiple Positions at ID.me (On-site and Remote)

    • Even aside from the problems in individual descriptions (of which there are plenty), having “Check out our open roles and see if you can make the cut” on your Careers page is an automatic Bingo for me, sorry not sorry.

Seriously, Maybe Don’t

Don't say I didn't warn you.

  • Product Support Specialist ($95k-$105k) at Mutiny (Remote North America)

    • There are so many red flags in this one I can’t cover them all, but here are some of the big ones:

      • Huge misalignment between title/pay and responsibilities

      • The About Us page is just one giant red flag

      • “Once you’ve onboarded, we expect you to be able to answer 95% of tickets without help.”

      • Benefits section lists no actual benefits, but don’t worry! You’ll get potential! You’ll make a name for yourself! You’ll get exposure! YOU’LL HAVE SO MUCH FUN DOESN’T THIS SOUND FUN

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1  If you have ideas for a less boring title, please reach out. I hate titling things.

2  Also will probably involve considerably more profanity, fair warning.

3  I realize that dogs are not Zendesk’s mascot, but “Abstract Geometric Shapes and Cats, Living Together” just doesn’t hit the same.

4  I promise I’m not being flippant. I was laid off three times last year. This is me laughing so I don’t cry.

5  Or as I like to call it, the pit of voles but for work fandom.

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