/* putting the human in support human */
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Afshan Kinder in ICMI
Published June 29, 2026 · Read July 9, 2026
With the root cause named, let’s assume the right solution is technology. The key is to match it to the pain point in proportion, because there is no sense firing a cannon to swat a mosquito.
Love how Afshan frames her approach to adopting AI, and she offers solid advice on determining which technology best fits your needs.
The Supportive Podcast in Help Scout
Published July 9, 2026 · Listened July 9, 2026
Pavel Malyshev spent 13 years building customer support and success teams at B2B SaaS companies, most recently as Director of Support at Productboard. Over the past year, he led his team's exploration and integration of AI — and then got laid off. In this episode, Pavel and Mat talk through what's actually happening with AI in support versus what the headlines say, why leaders making the big calls can sometimes miss what support really does, and what support professionals can do right now to be well-positioned... whatever comes next.
Pavel gives voice to something a lot of us have been through, and also gives great advice for dealing with a post-AI world. (Oh dog, may it be a post-AI world soon.)
Claudia R. in LinkedIn
Published July 8, 2026 · Read July 9, 2026
As life would have it there was an escalation above the director level and the customer was threatening to drive to our location to speak with a VP or higher. My comment to the VP, “We are all eager to learn from your specialized skill set in call handling.” Outcome - VP refused to take the call.
I laughed out loud at this story, drily delivered. Perfection.
Lara Ballard in IAPP
Published July 7, 2026 · Read July 9, 2026
So why does this matter today? Because right now, malicious actors are engaging in a strategy of "Harvest now, decrypt later." Because storage is cheap, they are hoovering up encrypted data by the petabyte and waiting for the day — "Q-Day" — that a quantum computer will enable them to decrypt it.
A fascinating and extremely approachable explanation of quantum computing and its implications for privacy professionals. Great read.
Sarah Betts in LinkedIn
Published July 9, 2026 · Read July 9, 2026
Not once have I sat down to make a content calendar. I've never set a goal of "X coffee chats per week with people in Industry Y and Title of Z." Because that wouldn't be authentically me. I'm 100% Betts. I say what is true based on my experience. [...] That commitment to authenticity has slowly earned me a name in tech. Such a name that it's not unusual to talk to people about job openings where the role is described as "We need a Betts." That is not something I could ever purchase or optimize for.
Really fantastic advice here from Sarah, and I echo it. I always say the fastest way to network (which is really just getting to know people) is to just...be a person. Shoot the breeze. Talk about your favorite book/tv show/video game. Don't try to anticipate what fleeting professional thing people will be interested in at any given moment; if there's a natural opening to show your chops, take it. But otherwise just let moments breathe.
Paul Waldman in Public Notice
Published June 22, 2026 · Read June 22, 2026
The nature of Trump’s personalist presidency, in which the entire government is organized around turning his whims into reality and the barest hint of dissent is swiftly punished, makes the question of his age even more important than it was with Biden, who was surrounded by competent people who could run the government even when the president was less engaged than he ought to have been.
Paresh Dave in WIRED
Published June 12, 2026 · Read June 14, 2026
During a meeting this week open to all employees at Instagram, Meta chief product officer Chris Cox addressed the “difficult” and “brutal” environment created by the “insanity of this company” in the past few months, according to a recording heard by WIRED. Cox applauded Instagram employees for launching features and serving around 2 billion users amid what he compared to “running a marathon in the middle of a hailstorm and then, like, your teammate gets replaced and then we’re recording you. It’s like what the fuck,” he said, drawing laughs, before repeating himself. “It is like what the fuck.”
The opening anecdote to this story was wild, but this quote might be wilder. I don’t think I’ve ever heard an executive acknowledge shitty working conditions so plainly. I’m not sure it possible to right the ship as long as Zuckerberg is still in charge, but I’ll be watching with popcorn either way.
Ali Breland in The Atlantic
Published January 23, 2026 · Read June 13, 2026
Sellner positioned the memes as something that could be taken in jest. “Irony is the glue that holds this whole meme-universe together. Anyone who takes things deadly seriously or gets triggered has lost,” he wrote. This is the tone that a lot of people online have taken regarding the Agartha memes. No matter the underlying content, you’re not supposed to take the joke seriously, and if you do, the joke’s on you.
@beijingpalmer.bsky.social on Bluesky had a really interesting thread explaining Agartha, its origins, and its co-option by Nazis. I’d managed to have never heard of Agartha before this, so the thread and this article were eye-opening.
Cati Brunell-Brutman in CX After Hours Podcast
Published June 10, 2026 · Listened June 13, 2026
In this episode of CX After Hours, Cati, formerly CX Lead at Glossier, makes the case that customer experience is one of the clearest windows into what customers actually think, feel, need, love, and hate. And with AI, CX teams now have a much better way to turn all of that raw customer feedback into insight the rest of the business can actually use.
Charlsie Niemiec in LinkedIn
Published June 12, 2026 · Read June 12, 2026
It would have taken less time to type the range than to write that paragraph. At this point, the salary range is less "pay transparency" and more a word problem. But hey, who needs a salary range when Life is Good?
Again, love seeing people playing Bad Job Bingo in the wild (even if they don't know they're playing it)!
Christina in TikTok
Published May 27, 2026 · Watched June 12, 2026
Love to see people out here giving companies with bad jobs the what-for.
Erika Flowers in LinkedIn
Published June 12, 2026 · Watched June 12, 2026
I want to make sure that the LinkedIn #design, #ux, and #lgbtq community didn’t miss Felix Lee’s apology for posting an anti-LGBTQ slur, so that all of the remaining customers and sponsors of adplist.org get the opportunity to hear it. As such, I have taken 3:26 out of my day here on this lovely #pride month to read the apology on their behalf 🩷🧡💛💚💙💜
Because nothing says professional, successful CEO of a *checks notes* mentorship organization like going out of your way to generate an image using company logos to spell out a homophobic slur DURING PRIDE MONTH and then posting an apology very obviously written by AI! In Erika's words, apology not accepted.
Neil Smith in Building Legendary Leaders Podcast
Published April 22, 2026 · Watched June 12, 2026
Jim Saliba sits down with Neil Smith, VP of Technical Support at Iterable, to break down the hiring flywheel that helps leaders build high-retention, high-performance teams. Neil shares how structured hiring, competency-based interviews, values alignment, and a curiosity-driven culture create teams that stay longer, learn faster, and consistently outperform industry turnover norms.
Latesha Byrd in The Performance Review
Published June 11, 2026 · Read June 12, 2026
Watch the room in your next leadership sync. When an employee who used to challenge the status quo and pitch bold new ideas suddenly stops speaking up and begins operating with a quieter, deeply compliant energy, pay close attention. They haven't lost their ambition. They haven't forgotten how to do their job. They have simply done the internal math and realized that pouring all the extra effort into the culture yields a zero percent return on investment. They are protecting whatever energy they have left, "fixing their face" on the Zoom call, and quietly planning their exit. Catching this moment early gives leaders a chance to step in, re-engage them, and remind them how valuable they are.
Really looking forward to this series -- folks in CX roles tend to pay the performance tax at a much higher rate, and over a much longer period, than other roles in Tech do (simply by virtue of where we end up in the org chart).
Kirsten Penaloza in Big Boss Biscuits Podcast
Published June 9, 2026 · Listened June 11, 2026
What do you do when you've climbed the ladder, earned the title, and finally "made it" — only to realize the seat you fought for isn't the one that fits? In this episode, Kirsten sits down with Taylor Coleman — systems thinker, former CX leader, and the kind of guest who tells the truth even when it's uncomfortable. Taylor traces her unlikely path from a bored tier-one rep to senior manager of a seven-person, six-specialty product support team — and the quiet, gutting moment in a leadership book club when she realized she had the skill for management but not the passion for it.
Sarah Betts in The Raccoon People
Published June 10, 2026 · Read June 10, 2026
I will happily work 12 hour days to build more efficient processes, talk people through their projects, take extended calls with frustrated customers, and make pages of documentation. But if leadership doesn't know where they are going and why — with real focus, and can't articulate that to their teams, I cannot be bothered.
Sarah articulates something I've often felt myself -- that doing work for the sake of doing work for those of us who need a purpose and a direction kills our drive to succeed (and just compounds the burnout we're already feeling).
Alice Hunsberger in Safe Space Podcast
Published June 10, 2026 · Listened June 10, 2026
In this episode of Safe Space, hosts Cassie Coccaro and Pailes Halai talk with Alice Hunsberger, Head of Trust & Safety at Musubi. Alice has spent years working in trust and safety, with experience in online communities, dating apps, vendor operations, and AI safety tools.
Alice cares so much about people, and she has so much to teach us. She's one of the few people whose work I boost whenever I see it! (Also, this is a note to self to add the Safe Space podcast to the Resources site. Look at this insider content your paid subscription gets you.)
Jason Koebler in 404 Media
Published June 1, 2026 · Read June 6, 2026
The news shows the extreme risk associated with offloading support or critical functions to an AI chatbot. Users who have had their accounts stolen say that there is no way to escalate their problem to a human. In March, Meta announced that it was pushing AI support to all accounts across Facebook and Instagram, and that it would have the ability to reset passwords and perform other critical account maintenance functions: “Solutions, not just suggestions,” the feature’s product page says. “Account security and recovery.”
Just noting the irony of this, given that Meta debuted the AI support feature in a blog post called "Boosting Your Support and Safety on Meta’s Apps With AI." Maybe they meant that *other* definition of boosting?
Ambra Hubert in Permission Slips
Published June 3, 2026 · Read June 4, 2026
I mean, I knew the whole "being an adult" gig was a sham. I got to my 50's and was still looking around for who the adultier adult was in any room. But what truly surprised me was how much everything - EVERYTHING - is made up. A business is something someone decided needed to exist, so they made it up. A product is the same. That applies to pretty much everything in life.
A quick, lovely, and refreshing interview with Deb Haas of the Joy Prompt Club and AI Confidential.
Andrew Rios in Happy to Help Podcast
Published May 12, 2026 · Listened May 31, 2026
In this episode, we’re talking with Andrew “Coach” Rios, a customer experience and support operations leader with more than 25 years of experience building support teams at companies like Cisco, Fitbit, and Cityside Fiber. We dig into why support teams often feel overlooked, how support leaders can communicate their value to the rest of the company, and why customer insights need to be translated into the language other departments actually understand.
Igor Jovic in TradeCore Blog
Published May 26, 2026 · Read May 29, 2026
We had been a Zendesk customer for nine and a half years. Our first ticket on their platform is dated 27 October 2016. Our usage was not declining. Quite the opposite: as our business grew and more brokers and their users came on board, the support operation we ran on the platform grew with it, up roughly 83% over the year before. We were, by any honest measure, exactly the kind of customer a support-software vendor is supposed to want. I went into our team Slack. The sensible argument was already being made there: pay it, restore the portal, deal with the migration calmly over the next year. It is the right answer ninety-five times out of a hundred. I typed: fuck zendesk, we are going to build our solution in a day.
When you make using your product or renewing a contract so painful that even a loyal customer who was *trying* to give you more money rage quits, that's basically the end of the line. I don't know what's going on over at Zendesk that they're not clueing in to this, but...you know that gif from Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts has gone back to the shop that refused to serve her? That's what plays in my head when I think of Zendesk. Just Julia saying "big mistake, HUGE" over and over and over. (H/T to Nico Boyce for putting this on my radar.)
Bee Gagliardi in Related Thinking | CX Systems Leader
Published May 16, 2026 · Read May 19, 2026
Self-service is not the absence of service. It is service expressed through infrastructure. [...] In grocery shopping, the customer’s intent is not “use a checkout terminal.” It is “get my groceries and leave.” The Dash Cart closes the gap between these two things. The transaction disappears into the journey. You grab items, they register. You walk out, you are charged. The system works around your intent, not the other way around. This is the CX infrastructure move: making the operational machinery invisible to the customer while doing more work on their behalf.
This article is a banger -- I'd love to quote the whole thing, but I can't, so instead I'll just say how much I love that Bee pointed out that if you're not moving a solution closer to the customer's intent, you're not building self-service, but unpaid labor. Preach!
Fil Jankovic in Musubi Labs
Published April 27, 2026 · Read May 1, 2026
We're seeing this trend in every online space with user generated content - contributions became cheap, and the cost is moving downstream onto the people trying to read, review, and maintain. Many platforms have built ranking systems that reward engagement. A bot comment that says "Spot on, couldn't agree more" counts as engagement and boosts the post. The poster benefits from visibility and has little reason to report it. The platform benefits because it looks like activity. In the short term, the reader is mainly the one who loses – but as the integrity and quality of the platform starts to fail, everyone does.
Rachel Kline in Authority Magazine
Published April 23, 2026 · Read April 25, 2026
Here’s what I know to be true after twenty years in this space: customers have options. In almost every category, in almost every market, there is another product that does close to what yours does. The thing that makes them stay is not your feature set. It’s how they feel when something goes wrong and someone actually fixes it. It’s whether they feel like a person or a ticket number. It’s whether the agent on the other side of the conversation has what they need to show up fully.
Andre Linde in Marginal Support Podcast
Published April 9, 2026 · Watched April 25, 2026
On this week's episode of Marginal Support, I was honored to have Salvador Cervantes on. Building processes in Support Ops and creating a cool structure with Legos, what do they have in common? When you're creating something little by little and piece by piece, you get to see your end project take place before your eyes.
I love Andre's podcast because he highlights little-talked-about topics in CX. But I love it even more for the diverse range of guests he interviews, which means we get to learn and grow with folks we might not hear from on other podcasts. I wish it many more episodes of insightful interviews.
Nothing matches that.
