Customer Success Playbook S3 E22 - Martin Vogel - Global Support Framework

Summary: In this episode of the Customer Success Playbook, hosts Roman Trebon and Kevin Metzger sit down with Martin Vogel, an executive leader in global customer support and complex hardware-plus-SaaS solutions. They dive deep into the challenges of establishing a scalable, efficient global support framework and ensuring immediate and long-term value for customers. Martin shares practical strategies, including understanding regional differences, creating simple yet robust processes, and prioritizing clear communication. Tune in for actionable insights on balancing SaaS and hardware support, diagnosing technical issues effectively, and implementing a continuous learning framework for your support teams.

Detailed Analysis: What does it take to build a world-class global support framework? According to Martin Vogel, it all starts with knowing where you are. Mapping out existing structures, understanding regional differences, and tailoring processes accordingly are critical first steps. With experience spanning multiple continents, Martin emphasizes the need for a structured yet flexible approach to global support.

The conversation highlights key components of a strong support framework:

• Understanding regional nuances: Markets differ in their support structures and expectations. Europe’s established systems contrast with the U.S.’s ground-up approach, necessitating a flexible global strategy.
• Defining simple, scalable processes: Complex frameworks don’t work if they aren’t easy to implement. Martin stresses the need for clarity in process creation.
• Effective communication across teams: Building a bridge between different support teams ensures alignment and consistency in customer experience.
• Balancing SaaS and hardware support: With hardware-origin companies increasingly incorporating SaaS, Martin discusses best practices for integrating both seamlessly.
• Training and knowledge management: He introduces an LMS-based approach to training, emphasizing problem diagnosis, knowledge base documentation, and incident reviews.

The result? A structured, iterative approach that minimizes misdiagnoses, accelerates troubleshooting, and enhances customer satisfaction. Join us in this episode as we unpack these strategies and more.

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Transcript

Roman Trebon: 0:10

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Customer Success Playbook podcast, where we bring you actionable insights and fresh strategies for driving customer success. I'm your host, Roman Reon, joined by uh, my co-host Kevin Metzker. Kev, we've got another great week and we have a fantastic guest lined up today. Won't you tell our audience, uh, what we have, uh, cooking?

Kevin Metzger: 0:31

Yeah. Can't believe how quick the year's going. Um, and we're excited to be joined by Martin Vogel today. He's an executive with years of experience leading global support, major customer implementations and complex hardware plus SaaS solutions. Martin, welcome to the show. We're excited to have you today. Yeah, well, glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Indeed.

Roman Trebon: 0:52

Martin, well, let's get into our, our number one tip. Okay. We're going to dive right into it. It's Monday. Our, our audience is anxious for this number one tip. So our question is. What is your number one tip for our audience when building a global support framework, right? I mean, I know that sounds like a heavy, pretty, a lot of work and heavy, but how do you build a global support framework, especially one that ensures immediate value for the customers and sets the stage for long term success?

Martin Vogel: 1:23

It's a good question. And it's a loaded question. So I'll try to keep it as brief as I can. So ultimately number one tip is to get a good. clear understanding as to where you come from, right? What is your existing structure? And based on that, build a simple, scalable process while ensuring effective communication. Where you come from has a major impact. In our case at PayComplete, for instance, the Americas support was structured from the ground up, so it was all new when we started. Whereas the European markets, France, UK, Germany, they all had existing, uh, support structures in place. They had their own systems and procedures understanding. Those different dynamics, um, is, is crucial when you get started, right? In order to make sure that it all is aligned, even though, and then that's another very important aspect to understand, even though you're likely operating based on the same product base, the type, those products are deployed in our case, at least showed remarkable differences, right? Uh, and that came from. The history, uh, it came from specific market requirements and all of those bits and pieces need to be tailored together just to summarize and break it down, understand where you start from, put a system and process in place that is a symbol. And then communicate as you roll out, when

Kevin Metzger: 2:59

you're talking about this, it's, um, just, I just want to dive in on that for a second, the structure of the process, you're seeing differences based off of the market you're in. You're seeing differences based off of how, because of the market, how the hardware and support structures get rolled out. Where do you kind of, where do you start when you, when you start with it from a, and I, we may get into this. Maybe on Wednesday a little bit more, but, um, where do you start when you're looking at the markets and, and you're, like you said, in the U S it was ground zero. Right? So you've got a structure that existed in over in Europe. Are you looking at how it might match it in certain ways and then where it deviates? How do you, or do you start strictly with process and just say, Hey, from the process statement, let's start here.

Martin Vogel: 3:45

Obviously you need to talk to a lot of people, right? So, so mapping it out is. Really trying to understand where people come from, it's not, not just about coming with a process and say, this is what we're going to be doing. One of the things that I always did in the United States, having had the luxury of a global background already, having obviously had that cultural background, uh, coming from Switzerland helped me a lot to already know that whatever I. Use in the U. S. Cannot be copy pasted the same time whenever I create a process in the United States. I already considered how that could potentially be rolled out. So having that foundation helps you then put together. That framework based on the different inputs that you receive over time. Does that answer the question?

Kevin Metzger: 4:41

Yeah, I think it does. A good segue. So you also talked about, or we talked about from your introduction that you've got kind of hardware and SAS support. So are there some best practices for combining those? Hardware

Martin Vogel: 4:55

and software together, uh, creates a. Very interesting dynamic. In our case, the history was rooted in hardware. The SAS component was added later on and added tremendous value, of course. But as we grew, particularly on the software side, the software and the hardware became more complex. The SAS component had its own kind of challenges. And one of the biggest challenges that we encountered in the process was To really understand the root of a problem that when the customer lets us know, Hey, X, Y, C is not working to get to the bottom of it. And then the way that I often say is just because the software is telling you that it's not working, maybe it's stuck or something does not mean that it's a software problem. It may be working, waiting for a. an external input from the hardware that is just never getting there, right? That, of course, then created a lot of challenges around misdiagnosis that extended the support. So in order to address that, I implemented a couple of things. Firstly, I introduced the LMS system in which we created approach based training programs. So rather than trying to tell Kevin, hey, if you have X, then do Y, we tried to really focus on what is the approach to take, how do you properly triage. So you get to the point, then secondly, we complimented that with documentation, so create a knowledge base articles to then supplement that approach so that people are properly led to where they need to be. And finally, we complimented all of that with, um, incident reviews in which we kind of did case studies were. We realized, Hey, this is really a place where Martin struggled last week. And we took those and kind of did a after action review to, to use that as a learning example. No, go ahead. Yeah. Sorry.

Roman Trebon: 7:15

No, go ahead. I was going to say this. We typically do this, Martin. We always ask our guests for one big tip and then we end up getting like four or five, right? So I wanted to make sure we're keeping, keeping us honest here. So again, as we're talking about building out a global support framework, I mean, really, I think you, the number one tip you mentioned first, and keep me honest with this is you got to kind of understand where you are, right? So diagnose current state, you had mentioned there was differences between the Americas and the European market. Then you got to kind of really lock into the process. You know, what, what is the process from, from a support framework? Then you got to get into the, you know, the training, both probably customers and your team themselves, right, how you're triaging, how you're working those cases and support tickets, then you got documentation, and then you're doing case reviews, really make that continuous practice, continuous education to make sure, uh, uh, you know, that what you're trying to build again for that long term value is really, really working and, and continuously refining it to make sure that, Clients are getting the support they need. Did I capture it right, Martin? I know you gave us a ton, so I want to make sure I'm getting all the good stuff out of it.

Martin Vogel: 8:18

Yeah, and I apologize if I'm trailing off, right? It's like I said, it's loaded, but you distilled it down, right? It's really understand where you're coming from, create process that's fairly simple, right? Train your team. Again, I'm a big proponent of approach based type of training that then is supplemented through proper documentation.

Roman Trebon: 8:39

I love it, Martin. This has been fantastic. Thank you for coming on the show and sharing your top tips for creating a global support framework that, you know, really delivers a consistent value. On Wednesday, you'll be back. I don't think our questions get any less meaty on Wednesday, right? So we're going to dig into another big question on Wednesday, and you're going to come back and talk about how you balance large scale growth with customer retention, right? So for our audience. Hope you enjoyed the show. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss an episode. You'll get a notification on your phone. You'll know when the next show is released. Make sure you like our show, give it a review, comment on it, et cetera. Looking forward to having you back on Wednesday, Martin. And until then, Kevin,

Kevin Metzger: 9:25

keep on playing.