Tech Support

If you’re here for the white paper, scroll down and you should see the embed. Or, here’s a bit of intro:

I’ve been tutoring for a long time, and in sessions you’ll commonly hear me ask things like, “how does that feel?” I don’t remember anyone ever talking about how much test-taking is about emotional self-regulation. And I never saw anything in anyone else’s curriculum about it.

It eventually dawned on me that exactly the same trend exists in tech support training. It’s always solely informational: Here’s how the product works. Here’re your troubleshooting steps. It even went as far as here’s what to say when a customer gets angry.

Something was missing. Something human.

When I started training the more junior members of my team, I reflected how I was feeling as often as I could, and I asked them to do the same. The effects were immediate and astonishing. They relaxed, opened up, were friendlier and more personable with me and with the responses they were sending to customers. Consequently, customers relaxed with them, opened up, and communicated better. All of this allowed them to create better solutions in less time than before. All the agents I’ve mentored over the years have gone on to earn promotions and are still with the company, in some cases years after we stopped working together.

I never imagined tech support would be my passion. It’s just something I did for 20 years—and got really good at.

But now I recognize this truth:

Unless and until you are ok in yourself and your current experience, you can’t effectively help a customer resolve their issue—and you certainly can’t help them feel ok while doing it.

I’m committed to putting this into practice. In this new AI-driven world, genuine human connection feels rarer and more important than ever. Tech support is an obvious place to lean in.

Here’s the data-backed white paper I wrote to elaborate on these ideas. I hope it’s useful to you and your team.

If something of what I wrote here resonates with you, or if you see an opportunity for us to work together, please reach out.

-Michael, September 2024