Customer experience begins where traditional customer support ends – transforming reactive problem-solving into proactive, strategic relationship building. But realizing this, and understanding how to treat this evolution isn’t always easy.

Yet organizations can bridge this chasm, by integrating cross-functional collaboration with product and engineering teams, empowering support teams through enablement, and elevating the customer journey to create lasting impact. Shall we get into it?

Grounding customer experience in touchpoints

I want to start with a fundamental question: What is customer experience? What does it mean to you? Someone might say “perception,” and they’d be absolutely right. 

Another might connect it to word of mouth or net promoter score (NPS) – how likely someone is to recommend a product or company. These are all correct because customer experience is the perception a customer has of the brand you represent, shaped by their interactions with it.

Let’s consider an example. Think about the last time you flew somewhere. What were you actually buying from the airline? Most people would say they’re buying transportation – moving from point A to point B. If we’re being technical about it, you’re renting a seat on a plane. But before you even sit down, there are numerous touchpoints with the airline that shape your overall experience.

What are some of these touch points? Booking your ticket is one. Checking in is another. Checking your luggage is yet another. Airlines have clear rules about luggage weight limits, yet, as customers, we might push those limits, bringing 23 kilograms and hoping for a free upgrade or waiving baggage fees. Why? Because that interaction has become part of our experience with the airline.

Before you even board the plane, the product you purchased – a seat – has already been influenced by countless touchpoints. Each one shapes your perception of the brand and impacts whether you’d recommend or criticize it later.

For me, customer experience is the culmination of every interaction a customer has with your brand throughout their journey. That’s why I want to dig deeper into how customer support can evolve into customer experience. 

Specifically, I’ll focus on three key groups:

  • Product
  • Engineering
  • Enablement

These are three critical touch points where support can play a pivotal role in transforming the broader customer experience.

Align your customer support and product teams

When it comes to integrating customer support with product, my goal is crystal clear: I want my support team to: 

  • Help the product team build better products
  • Provide actionable insights from customer interactions
  • Enhance the customer experience 

To achieve this, I focus on two key areas: 

  1. Roadmap and testing
  2. Launch and feedback 

Roadmap and testing

One of my primary recommendations for any organization is to involve customer support leadership in roadmap conversations. 

I’m not suggesting that customer support should dictate the roadmap; roadmap decisions are influenced by many factors – market demands, top-tier customer requests, sales priorities, and more. 

But what I am advocating for is including customer support leadership in realistic, grounded discussions about the roadmap.

Instead of focusing on high-level six-month or yearly visions, why not have down-to-earth conversations about what’s coming in the next one to three months? These discussions allow support teams to prepare effectively and contribute valuable insights based on their frontline experience.

And while we’re at it, another underutilized resource in many companies is the customer support team’s understanding of user experience. Product teams should involve customer support in beta testing. 

Support teams bring a unique perspective because they see the challenges customers face firsthand. However, product teams need to be open to receiving critical feedback and willing to act on it, something which can be initially challenging.

Launch and feedback

So, you’re ready to launch new features for your product? Typically, product teams will track adoption metrics to gauge the success of these new features.

However, these metrics can be superficial as what they don’t include is a clear understanding of the problems users face post-launch. And this is where customer support gets to shine.

One effective practice is implementing a system for tagging support tickets related to new features. There are intelligent tools available to automate this process, but even manual tagging can provide invaluable insights. These tags help product teams understand how well a feature is performing and identify areas for improvement.

Periodic reviews between support and product teams are another critical step. But here’s the key for customer support leaders: don’t just present raw data or insights to your product teams. 

Go beyond the data to provide actionable next steps. Explain the implications of the data – what needs to happen and why. This ensures that customer experience improvements are driven by those closest to the customer.

Fostering collaboration through cross-team OKRs

One of the most impactful strategies I’ve used is creating cross-team OKRs (objectives and key results) that align product, engineering, and support teams. While this approach may not suit every organization, it’s been incredibly powerful in my experience.

For example, you can establish an OKR focused on resolving user-blocking issues within a specific timeframe for a newly released feature. This approach encourages proactive collaboration and ensures that critical issues are addressed promptly. 

Once the initial release window closes, teams often shift to a reactive bug-fixing mode, so leveraging this proactive period is essential.

Cross-departmental OKRs promote alignment and accountability, creating a unified focus on enhancing the customer experience. This alignment is a game-changer for organizations seeking to evolve from customer support to customer experience.

OKR grading scale
Track progress toward your Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) using a clear, measurable scoring system.
Customer Success CollectiveHannah Wesson

Integrating customer support with engineering and operations

When it comes to engineering and operations, my focus is on how customer support can help these teams build better products, fix bugs faster, and ultimately improve the customer experience. 

Engineering has evolved significantly over the years, with countless specializations. For simplicity, I’ll refer broadly to engineering and operations, including teams like monitoring, incident response, and network operations. 

Let’s break this down into key areas – my five “starts.”

Start addressing the black hole of bug fixing

One recurring challenge I’ve encountered in nearly every organization is the dreaded “black hole” of bug fixing. 

While most teams handle critical issues effectively, less urgent issues often disappear into obscurity. This creates frustration, especially during renewal conversations, where customers complain about unresolved bugs and blame engineering.

To address this, it’s crucial to align on internal resolution SLAs for bug fixes. Whether you take a tactical, number-driven approach or a strategic one, define clear expectations. For example, commit to resolving 95% of P0s within a specific timeframe for the quarter. 

Establishing transparency around bug resolution timelines helps both internal teams and customers.

Another practical step is ensuring that tools like Freshdesk, Zendesk, GitHub, and Jira are integrated effectively. Too often, teams operate in silos, with no visibility into each other’s systems and it can really slow things down. 

What I’d suggest is to create a centralized dashboard that highlights which bugs engineering is working on, what’s coming up, and what support can communicate to customers. While this doesn’t need to be shared externally, having this clarity internally is invaluable.

Start investing in technical support and sustainable engineering

A common pain point for engineering teams is balancing innovation with bug fixing. Many talented engineers are hired to build new products but end up spending much of their time in a fire-fighting role fixing bugs. If fixing bugs is all you spend your time doing, it can grind you down a lead to dissatisfaction. Innovation shouldn’t be a luxury of a job.

I’ve seen that when companies investing in a dedicated sustaining engineering or technical support team can alleviate this burden. By creating a team focused on bug resolution, your core engineering team can concentrate on go-to-market initiatives and product innovation.

Start celebrate engineering accomplishments

An approach I found surprisingly successful was partnering with engineering managers to establish individual OKRs for bug-free releases. 

I don’t mind admitting that, initially, I was pretty skeptical about engineering teams signing up for this, but the response was overwhelmingly positive. 

Engineering teams took pride in their work and saw these OKRs as an opportunity to collaborate with support teams to ensure successful releases. These shared goals foster a sense of ownership and pride, celebrating accomplishments when releases meet quality standards.

Start improving incident management and root cause analysis

Incident management is another area where customer support is often underutilized. In many organizations, incidents are managed through automated notifications, with minimal involvement from support. This approach misses a key opportunity to incorporate customer-centric communication.

My big takeaway from this article should be this: Involve customer support as a key stakeholder in incident management. Support teams are well-equipped to handle outage communications and root cause analyses (RCAs) in a way that resonates with customers. 

On one extreme side of things, I’ve seen overly technical RCAs that leave customers confused; on the other, vague summaries that fail to address the impact of the outage. 

But customer support teams can bridge this gap by asking the right questions: What happened? Why did it happen? How will we prevent it in the future? Their perspective ensures a customer-centric approach that builds trust.

Finally, always review trends. Incident management often reveals surprising insights about customer priorities. 

Features you might consider minor can turn out to be vital to your customers’ workflows, generating significant noise during outages. Regularly analyzing these trends with your support team ensures you identify and address the most impactful issues, enhancing both product reliability and customer satisfaction.

When you begin focusing on these areas, your customer support team can become a vital partner to engineering and operations, driving improvements that benefit both the product and the customer experience.

Enablement: Empowering teams to accelerate customer experience

Building great products and fixing bugs are essential, but they become meaningless if you don’t do one critical thing: empower your teams to accelerate customer experience. 

At its core, this means enabling and equipping your customer support team to succeed.

Training and enablement

Training your support teams is non-negotiable. Far too often, I’ve found myself in situations where a release or new feature is going live in two days, and I get a Slack message the day before saying, “Hey, this happened.” Sound familiar? It’s not an uncommon scenario, but it’s one we need to avoid.

Enablement is crucial. Depending on your organization, this might sit under marketing, enablement, or another function, but the key is to have a solid methodology. Your support teams need to understand both the functional and technical aspects of what’s being released. Discuss key dates, align on expectations, and clarify escalation processes for potential issues.

Communication and resources

Another critical piece is communication. 

Walk your support teams through your customer notification strategy. In today’s SaaS world, with mobile applications and global user bases, it’s vital that support teams are aware of how users will be informed of changes. 

Support teams should review notification timelines to ensure they align with customer behaviors and needs. If your support team pushes back, listen – they know how customers use the system and can provide valuable insights.

Ultimately, this approach shifts the focus from simply delivering updates to ensuring customers are ready to adopt and embrace them.

The power of small wins

Customer experience isn’t a single monumental achievement; it’s a journey built on a series of small, meaningful actions. Let me share three examples to illustrate this point:

  1. Obsessive problem-solving

When I became a T-Mobile customer, I experienced an issue with internet connectivity during my first week. The support agent I called went above and beyond—resetting my network settings, collaborating with engineering, and ensuring I was back online. 

He didn’t focus on flashy customer experience tactics; he simply showed care, collaboration, and an obsession with resolving my issue.

  1. Proactive adoption assistance

When I struggled to set up a smart thermostat from ecobee, the support agent not only walked me through the immediate fix but also asked, “While you’re on this screen, can I help you with some other settings that might confuse you later?” That proactive approach demonstrated a focus on adoption and training, turning a basic support interaction into a memorable experience.

  1. Escalation done right

Years ago, T-Mobile had a promotional Apple Watch deal. On the last day of the promotion, their website failed to honor the deal for me. I emailed their CEO out of frustration. To my surprise, I received a call from their executive team. 

They resolved my issue and made sure I got the promotion. This focus on escalation management and doing what’s right left a lasting impression.

Evolving traditional support roles

Traditional customer support is often viewed as a cost center, measured by metrics like resolution times and first response rates. 

But with small, deliberate changes, we can evolve from this mindset. Empowered support teams can help build better products, fix bugs faster, and enable product and engineering teams to pivot quickly.

More importantly, this cultural shift makes customer experience a shared responsibility across the organization. When done right, this synergy is palpable to customers. 

People like me, who have been helped by companies, walk away feeling valued and supported.

Customer experience isn’t just a destination – it’s an ongoing commitment to making every touchpoint matter.

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