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I’ve been thinking a lot about customer support lately. If you know me, you know one hill I will ALWAYS die on is that support is one of the most important functions in a business. And yet, it’s still somehow one of the most undervalued.

Support is so often treated like the bottom of the ladder or simply a cost center. Meanwhile, I started my career in customer support, learned e-commerce from the ground up, and eventually built a million-dollar agency around CX. So I’m obviously a little biased here 😂, but I really believe support can be one of the best training grounds in e-commerce.

When you work in support, you’re hearing directly from customers every single day, which means you get a pretty clear picture of what’s working and what absolutely is not.

You start seeing patterns in what customers are confused about, what they’re frustrated by, why they’re leaving, and where the experience is breaking down. And the more time you spend there, the more you understand how CX connects to everything else happening in the business.

That’s a huge part of what support taught me. You’re not just learning how to answer tickets. You’re learning the customer, the business, and how the two actually interact.

This became a big lesson for me as I grew in my career because I was absolutely the squeaky wheel in the beginning. I was constantly advocating for what customers wanted, but I eventually learned that “customers are complaining about this!!!” only gets you so far.

CX leaders have to translate those conversations into something the rest of the business can actually use. What are customers saying? How often is it happening? What is the impact? What could we change?

That’s when support becomes so much more than a team closing tickets. The people closest to your customers are sitting on information that can help leadership make better decisions — if you actually give them a way to surface it.

This is why I hate the idea that customer support is just a low-level job you take as a last resort or because you have to “start somewhere.”

Starting in support gave me an understanding of e-commerce that I still use every single day. It took me from working directly with customers to building systems for CX teams, helping brands make better decisions, and ultimately running Inevitable Agency.

So no, I don’t think customer support is the least important job in CX. I think it might be the most important. It can teach you SO much about how a business actually works and open the door to so many different career paths.

And who knows... the person answering your tickets today might be running a business someday. 😉

Did you start your career in customer support? Where did it take you?

Reply and tell me — I want to hear the career paths that started in the support queue. 👀

I’m doing a bit of traveling and recording some Let’s Laugh About It podcast episodes along the way! 🎙️

If you work for a brand, are interested in recording, and will be in any of these cities, send me a message! Or, if you know someone who’d be a great fit, send them my way.

NYC — Sept 13th–16th (Anyone going to Beanstalk? 👀)

NYC again — Sept 22nd–24th

I posted about this on LinkedIn because we recently took a brand’s affiliate program from barely anyone posting to $1M+ in affiliate-driven revenue — and the answer wasn’t just recruiting more people. 👀

I’ll let you read the rest over there, but I also teamed up with Social Snowball to turn the full framework into a FREE Affiliate Playbook.

Read the full post + grab the playbook here

New Let's Laugh About It episodes are coming 👀

We're talking to founders, operators, and CX leaders about the things that went wrong, what they learned, and the stories that are (hopefully) a lot funnier now.

Listen / Watch Here:
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Speaking of customer support being undervalued... apparently I had even MORE to say about it. 😂

I recently went on Ecomm Cowboy to talk about the difference between customer support and customer experience, why brands keep ignoring support, the CX mistakes I see brands making, and how we actually audit the customer experience.

We also got into misleading subscriptions, recovering from bad reviews, response times, and why AI in CX is definitely not a “set it and forget it” situation.

Watch my full Ecomm Cowboy episode →

If you're adding AI to your CX, getting ready for BFCM, or aren't totally sure what's actually happening inside your customer experience, we can take a look.

Our CX Audit digs into your customer journey, support operations, AI and automation, and where things might be going wrong.

Book a CX Audit →