Episode 19: (B2B) David Tirazona, Vice President Global Support Operations, Netskope The Customer Support Podcast

“When a customer files a ticket, there is a fault in your product or training”


Netskope customers are across different verticals — government, financial services, healthcare, retail, tech
All support is provided directly by the company; no channel support
Global support with 3 centers - Bangalore, Santa Clara, London
Support team has two main components — Support and Small tools/infrastructure ops team
(roughly 60 people). Customer success is a different team. 
Case volume — 1500/1600 (includes support pre-sales as well). 90%+ is over email/web. Phone is very less. 
Cases are split following way — 55% How-tos, 45% Break-fix
Tool stack - centered around Zendesk (customer portal, knowledge)
Priority for 2020 — contact center (five9 etc.), messaging/chat, mobile app. Essentially any tech that elevates customer experience
Focus on simplicity, usability and supportability
What would you do differently if you were to rewind the clock — invest more in self-service and mobile experience
Knowledge — Support team writes articles but goes for review through technical documents. Right now knowledge is text-based, some micro-videos
Metrics — Northstar metrics are First Response Time, Resolution Time, Break-fix issue containment (vs going to Engg), agent productivity
Agent Productivity — measure # of issues closed per week/month along with CSAT
Netskope has Product Experience Engineering Team — very small team that focuses on this aspect
Zendesk categories (products/class of issues) etc.  are currently selected by a drop-down menu; would be good to have that automated
Differentiating factor in SaaS is not the product but the kind of support you provide to your customers
Resources — Radical Candor, Good to Great, Leadership Pipeline, Can’t Hurt Me. Podcasts — a16z, masters of scale