VP, CX Insights & Community at PartnerHero | Talking about creating your customer experience from scratch. I build and scale customer-facing teams that give a shit and can help you do the same.

I transitioned from being a barista to working in customer experience 20 years ago, and life hasn't been the same since.

I've been fortunate enough to work at companies like Wistia, Atlassian, Trello and Appcues. I've worked with amazing customer-facing folks to create scalable strategies and delight customers. 

Now, I spend my time helping to elevate leaders of teams and empower them to create the best customer experience. Employee-centered teams with simple, beautiful processes are where I find my joy.

Outside of my work with Boldr, I also consult and write for businesses such as Help Scout, HubSpot, and others. Let's work together!

Mercer Smith

Yesterday I ordered Halal and they didn’t have the option to add white sauce to my order or make any modifications. They just had a box to type requests. In that box I typed “please may I have extra white sauce? Please drown my shawarma in white sauce. I am willing to pay up to one million dollars in additional white sauce fees. Please absolutely cover my food.” And most of the time no one reads those things I don’t think. But yesterday, my order arrived like this. 

“I don’t need one million dollars. Sorry.” But ALSO 5 tubs of white sauce. 

Even if they never read my requests again and I never get extra white sauce, I will order from this place forever. 

This is why humans see important.

CX Strategy & Solutions at Boldr; Author of CXOXO | Talking about creating your customer experience from scratch. I build and scale customer-facing teams that care and can help you do the same.

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Some days I get told that a talk I gave at a conference years ago changed someone's whole outlook and career, and some days (the same day in this case!) I accidentally glue my own mouth shut with nail glue in a hotel room.

So I guess just remember that no one has it all figured out or is perfect all the time. In fact, some times those people that you think are really smart use their own teeth to open a literal bottle of super glue and get it all over themselves.

You're doing great. We all make mistakes. It's what you do with the knowledge that you gain that is most important.

A few weeks ago I had a thought I couldn’t shake: SaaS might be kind of cooked, as my nine year old would say.

AI is making it wicked easy to build your own tools. Stuff that used to take a full product team, months of back and forth, prioritization, all of it, now it’s one scrappy operator, a decent prompt, and a couple hours if you’re willing to poke at it a bit. At some point it has started to feel like we’ve all been taught how to fish, so why are we still paying for fish?

I kept coming back to it and needling it, and while the thought has SOME water, I don't know that it's actually fully true. 

Not because the premise is wrong — building is absolutely getting easier — but because I was only looking at the fun part of it. Thinking of a tool, spinning something up, having it work, and getting that little hit of “oh hell yeah, I made this" is something I've done a ton of over the past few months. But, building is easy; owning it is where things get real.

After it's built, you have to keep it running, deal with the weird edge cases you didn’t think about, make sure it’s secure, make sure it integrates with everything else, and fix it when it inevitably breaks at the worst possible time. That part doesn’t go away just because AI showed up, and unless we all start using OpenClaw isn't something that is quite solved yet.

Similarly, most teams don’t actually want to own more software. They just want the problem handled so they can move on with their lives. So, while it might not be true that SaaS is dead, I do think it’s about to get a lot less comfortable for businesses in the space.

If I can rebuild 70% of what your product does over a weekend, I’m going to start asking some questions about why I’m paying for it, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. The bar is shifting from “does this work?” to “is this meaningfully better than what I could hack together myself if I really needed to?” and those are very different standards. That doesn't even dive into the actual customer experience behind using your tool.

The things that survive that shift are pretty obvious: 
1. products that take on real complexity
2. ones that absorb risk I don’t want anywhere near me
3. Ones that are so good I wouldn’t even consider rebuilding them. 
4. businesses with humans or an ethos that caresabout the clients utilizing their product

Everything else is going to feel the squeeze. SaaS might not be dead, but good enough software might be, and that feels like a huge actual shift that’s coming.

Oh my gosh, I'm not crying, you're crying? (Scott Tran, for the record, I think my join date was actually 2011? Maybe that spreadsheet that circulated a few years ago was off?)

Thank you for your trust Scott Tran and the whole Support Driven team that has been working with Boldr (and me!) on this over the past few months. I'm so excited to see this inaugural event and all of the amazing things that come after it! 🚀

Helping customer support professionals grow their careers — and helping founders build with community, not just for it

A few updates on the Support Driven Salon for Online Brands - March 3, downtown LA.

We have 3 volunteer spots open for community members who are between roles right now.

SD Salon is about CX operators and leaders at online brands helping each other and building real relationships. As a volunteer you're a full participant - in the room for every conversation and at dinner afterward.

I can't promise volunteering will lead to a job but the connections made at SD events have led to jobs for people. I'd love for that to happen again.

If that's you or someone you know, DM me.

--

I want to thank Boldr for partnering with us on the first SD Salon for Online Brands.

When we brought this idea to Boldr, there was no playbook. No past attendance numbers. Just a belief that if you put CX operators and leaders in a small room together, good things happen - real relationships, honest conversations, practical help. Boldr said yes to that.

Boldr is no stranger to creating new experiences for the community with Support Driven. We've organized sound baths, mindfulness workshops, and more together. David Sudolsky and Greg Collins have always understood that the value of working together isn't in impressions. It's in relationships.

Special thanks goes to Mercer Smith at Boldr. 

Mercer joined the SD community in 2014 when we had less than 50 people. She didn't just join - she organized and spoke at our very first conference in 2016. Our community now has over 20,000 members in Slack and Mercer is still here, still showing up, still creating with us.

Recently, Mercer is the person who helped me take this from "I think this could work" to an in person experience. We've been working with her to shape the direction, the format, and what it feels like to be in the room at SD Salon.

--

And here are photos for where we'll be having dinner together 👇

Are you in ecomm or dtc? Are you in LA? Do you love this sticker and want one for yourself? Do you love me?  Well, great news for you: the sticker and I will be in LA this week! 

Kicking off the week by hosting not ONE but TWO fire-side solutioning chats at the Support Driven Salon TOMORROW. If you're in ecomm or dtc CX, and want an invite, lmk. We (Boldr, not the royal we) will also be hosting a dinner afterwards if you want in for some food and bevs.

Then, the VERY NEXT DAY (how lucky am I?) I'll be attending Momentum and hosting a lil informal gathering after the fact. Will there be a mechanical bull? You bet. Will there be Sarah? Oh yeah. Will there be great steak? I think so? Haven't been there before but we'll see! If you want in to Momentum, it's invite only as well, but let me know and I can get ya connected. Great for marketing, sales and CX leaders in ecomm and dtc.

I have some slots in between the madness, so if you're around and want to hang 1:1 or connect over some coffee, please just let me know. I'll be in DTLA, and then WeHo.

When asked about my hopes and dreams in a game and these are the choices I am given. 😍

Cc Sarah Betts 

Ps, iykyk: I love Shelley, and Dunk, and Lyric.

Customer Experience Maven, Events & Community Enthusiast, and Believer in the Best in People.

So excited to be moderating this panel on the Rebuy stage at #shoptalk! Big thanks to my buddies Mercer Smith, David Glenister and Fran Brzyski for bringing their incredible insights and ideas to the convo. Tuesday March 24 at 11am!!

If you've ever walked out of an exec meeting thinking "I said the right things… but nothing moved," this workshop is for that moment. 

⭐Ty Givens, MBA at CX Collective will be leading a hands-on workshop at the upcoming Support Driven Salon for Online Brands in LA where you'll build an executive briefing designed to drive decisions at the exec level. She'll draw on her CX experience at Intuit, See's Candies, and working with 50+ teams as a CX Consultant. 

The workshop will walk you through 
- A clear **executive summary** — win, risk, next focus — that respects your exec's time and earns their attention
- **2–3 KPIs framed around business impact**, not just support metrics
- A **voice-of-customer slide** that creates urgency
- A sharper **strategic narrative** that connects your team's work to company outcomes
- A **confident strategic ask** to help you get budget, headcount, priority, etc. 

If you're a CX operator or leader at an online brand and want to participate in this workshop and the Salon, apply here - https://lnkd.in/gJ55ERZ2

A lot of people in Support Driven choose the consulting path, and I want Support Driven to be a place where that work is visible and trusted. 

Ty has been part of the Support Driven community since 2019 and has presented at multiple SD conferences — members have told me directly how valuable those sessions were. When we started thinking about how to make Salon a more valuable experience, she came to mind immediately. 

I’m excited for this and if you're a CX consultant that's open to partnering with us on future Salons, please let me know in the comments. 

Also, here are photos of Ty at past SD conferences

Honestly, it's stuff like this that makes the job worth doing. <3

In our world, every ticket represents a pet parent who needs help. And that’s not something we take lightly!

A backlog isn’t just an operational metric. It’s a real delay for customers who are counting on us (and it’s tough on the teams working hard behind the scenes, too). Coming out of the holiday season and into a backlog, we knew we needed to move fast and fix it without compromising the experience.

Even though we’d only just started with Boldr within the past couple weeks as part of a focus on compliance (and not specifically for the backlog), they leaned in immediately and helped us tackle it with urgency, care, and a true partnership mindset.

And we did it while continuing to show up for pet parents:
✅ CSAT held steady and improved 3% within the first two weeks, and 30% over the month even with backlog pressure
✅ Re-opened conversations dropped 49% meaning we’re resolving more inquiries the first time
✅ Got out of backlog within 8 days of starting our partnership due to the weeks of painstaking and fastidious planning

Grateful to have a partner that doesn’t just understand CX, but understands how important our customers are to us, and shows up accordingly. 🐾

Boldr 
Greg Collins
Mercer Smith

What will stand out at eTail this year? 

From new CX trends to honest conversations happening behind the scenes, Mercer Smith and Erica Clayton are breaking it all down.

Skip the FOMO and join us for a candid debrief featuring a few special guests adding their ✨perspective✨.

📅 February 26th, 2025
🕛 12:00 PM Central Time
🔗Register here: https://hubs.ly/Q043HN0F0

When I first read this blog post I was shook! Elen slayed with the knowledge sharing and takeaways in this piece. Truly a must-read for anyone who is implementing AI or thinking about how AI intersects with their human team moving forward.

Your AI isn’t just drafting replies anymore. It is executing BIG decisions and making judgment calls at scale.

Meanwhile, most CX org charts still assume humans do the work and automation “assists.”

This mismatch isn’t obvious on day one. The signs start showing up quietly: a refund that followed the prompt but not the intent. An escalation that never triggered. A retention offer sent to the wrong segment (half the time).

Our new blog unpacks the shift from AI as assistant to AI as operator and why guardrails like ✨governance and real ownership✨ have to evolve with it.

Read the full article here on LinkedIn, or dive deeper on our blog:
https://lnkd.in/gvKXVCdK

Cisco is forecasting a significant jump in agentic AI handling support interactions end-to-end. Not AI that drafts a light reply, picks its nose, and 

Open article: You hired agentic AI, but did you hire a babysitter? by Boldr • 9 min read

You hired agentic AI, but did you hire a babysitter?

If you've always wanted to go to Shoptalk (or never wanted to go, no judgement) but can't this year, Sarah, Erica and I have got you covered. We'll be doing a run down of all the hits and misses from this year's shoptalk on March 27! Come get your tea, your goss, and all of the delicious takeaways with none of the hangovers or social anxiety.

Missing Shoptalk this year? 

You might not be on the expo floor, but you don’t have to miss the insights.

Join Mercer Smith, Erica Clayton from Forethought, and Sarah Hatter from Rebuy Engine as they share the tea on the biggest trends coming out of ShopTalk and what they mean for the future of CX.

See you there! 🍵

🕑 12:00 PM CT
 📅 March 27, 2026

Vicky Windell, Aitana Rangel Garibay and 4 other attendees

View event: ShopTalk Tea: The Post-Conference Debrief

ShopTalk Tea: The Post-Conference Debrief

Odyssey

• Optimized automations and introduced AI to absorb 5x growth in ticket volume over 9 months by increasing support staff by only 10%, resulting in a streamlined and efficient support operation.
• Led a global support organization managing a team of specialists dedicated to delivering exceptional service to our partners, enhancing overall support quality and satisfaction.
• Oversaw end-to-end support operations, including SLAs, ticket routing, knowledge base, customer satisfaction, and systemic improvements, ensuring consistent and high-quality support delivery.
• Identified and implemented new strategies to enhance our support model, aligning with Odyssey's mission of expanding access to high-quality education, driving continuous improvement and innovation in support services.
• Leveraged analytics and insights to evaluate support metrics, trends, and opportunities, resulting in improved products, programs, and processes through data-driven decision-making.
• Fostered a collaborative and empowering team culture focused on excellence, empathy, integrity, and grit, enhancing team performance and morale.

Director of Support

Readyly

Advisor to the Board

SwiftCX

CXperiences

Founded and operated consulting firm dedicated to creating exceptional customer experiences that drive business growth and success.
Specializing in:
• CX Coaching for Startups, empowering them for effective customer success and experience strategies.
• Operations Management, optimizing efficiency and productivity for superior customer experiences.
• Leadership Development, instilling a customer-centric mindset and creating a culture of excellence.
• Technical Solutions, integrating the right tools and technologies for enhanced customer experiences.
• Cross-Functional Leadership, fostering collaboration and synergy across departments.
• Data and KPI Analysis, utilizing insights for continuous improvement.
• Measurable Cost Savings, achieving efficiency without compromising quality.

Founder and CCO

Zendesk

Collaborating with Founders and CX leaders in Zendesk's startup community to coach and mentor them on developing their CX strategies.  Focusing on automation, data-driven insights, and innovative CX strategies to level up companies to meet ever-changing consumer needs in an all-digital world.

Volunteer CX Coach at Zendesk for Startups

Noom

●	Lead cross-departmental implementation of ticket deflections in Webforms resulting in a 38% reduction in the number of tickets being submitted.
●	Spearheaded the reimplementation of Agent Productivity KPI resulting in a 30% reduction of the Cost Per Contact.
●	Partnered with the Learning & Development Team to implement Dynamic Content for multi-language support, leading to an 80% reduction in the number of Macros used and a 4% reduction in Average Handle Time.

Head of CX Tools & Technology

Ordway - Billing and Revenue Automation

Ordway is redefining what an interconnected sales and finance org looks for growing businesses. Built by a team that helped design much of the world’s cloud-based financial billing and ERP systems, Ordway modernizes the end-to-end billing process and eliminates the need for error-prone spreadsheets, manual accuracy checks during the monthly close process to ensure compliance to GAAP & IFRS, and time-consuming invoicing. Designed with the flexibility that today’s customers demand, and optimized to guide organizations during their growth phase, Ordway smartly manages a business’ most complex customers. Explore the platform at www.ordwaylabs.com.

Senior Director of Support

● Achieved 17% reduction in escalations while sustaining a 4x ticket increase.
● Drove customer behavior to self-help increasing article viewership by 48%, thus reducing ticket
submissions via email to 15% from 98%.
● Increased One-touch Resolution tickets by 40%.
● Reduced support costs by reducing the number of escalations to engineers by 29%.
● Created a customer-centric team with cross-functional efficiency and reduced overall MTTR for customer issues by Integrating Zendesk with Rippling, Salesforce, Jira, Slack, Litmos LMS, and Productboard.

OpenGov Inc.

Lead the Technical Support, Premium Services, Support Operations, and IT Services teams for OpenGov.

• Over my tenure we absorbed the increased number of cases created by our rapid growth, leading to 5x weekly ticket volume.  All of this has been achieved while maintaining a CSAT above 98%.
• Established 24 x 7 support coverage coupled with the rollout of omnichannel support that included, email, web, chat, phone, and messaging for the unification of the customer experience across all acquired companies.
• Continued staff training and development ensured that 90% of tickets are solved without the need to escalate to Engineering, and lead to the promotion of four agents to management positions, three to Account Management, and three to Product Management, all while completely eliminating unwanted attrition.
• Implemented Internal SLA Management between R&D and Support increasing cross-departmental efficiency and reducing overall MTTR for all customer issues, while reducing the R&D backlog by 50% within the first 3 months

• Rolled out a revamped Resource Center including the introduction of Chat support
• Developed automation of follow-ups on customer tickets reducing agent workload by 23%
• Introduced the use of forms with conditional fields to expedite initial triaging resulting in shorter resolution times
• Assumed leadership of the IT department upon the departure of the Director of IT and completed requirements for FedRAMP certification

Sr Manager, Technical Support

Reltio

Responsible for ensuring best-in-class service to customers using Reltio Data-driven applications. Establishing and running the processes and infrastructure to ensure support is always available, and build, train and manage a global team to meet the rapidly growing demands of Reltio’ expanding customer base. Provide 24x7, world-class technical support that helps customers get the most out of the applications, handles product support questions, troubleshooting, and escalating to Product Development as needed. 
• Established 24 x 7 support coverage with the use of staggered support shifts across five offices around the globe (United States, Russia, and India)
• Revamped Customer Success Plans to provide tiered levels SLA and monetize premier offerings
• Instituted KPIs for the Support Team leading to automated reports with analytics for continued improvement on efficiency and customer satisfaction
• Set up daily cross-departmental to review and address the progress on all urgent and escalated customer issues resulting on executive visibility and reduced customer effort
• Optimized Zendesk as our Incident Management center with 38 Macros, 105 triggers, and 15 timed automations to increase agent operational efficiency
• Integrated Zendesk with Jira, Gainsight, Aha!, Slack, Okta and Geckoboard for improved cross-departmental communications between Support and Engineering, Product Management, Professional Services, Partner Alliance, Sales, and Customer Success teams.
• Launched customized version of Customer Support Portal including multiple forms with conditional fields for faster routing of issues
• Authored and published policies, procedures, and workflows for reliable, relevant, resilient and repeatable performance across all shifts
• Led the creation and implementation of the SME, Queue Manager, and Critical Account Management programs to increase depth of knowledge on product, accounts and escalation management as part of staff development

​Senior Manager, Technical Support

Zuora

• Designed, implemented, and deployed trust.zuora.com. A public status page for transparent customer communication of uptime and incidents affecting our company
• Established the use of staggered support shifts to implement follow-the-sun support coverage based on ticket distribution trend analysis
• Led cross departmental initiative to integrate Salesforce, Jira, and Zendesk resulting on improved communications between engineering, product management, technical operations, professional services, sales, and customer success teams.
• Created workflows and automation methodologies to centralize all escalations into the company's incident management software 
• Produced training materials and imparted classes on new product release and features during our annual conference consequently driving adoption.

Senior Manager, Global Support

• Subject Matter Expert for Zuora SOAP based API Services.
• Maintained 95% of higher satisfaction with support service as rated by customers
• Developed and implemented Zendesk Widgets for Level 3, Technical Operatiions, and Product Development escalations using Javascript, Html and CSS.
• Managed the development and deployment of Javascript based Widget to integrate Zendesk with Rally.
• Accountable for on boarding procedures for new support agents, and for eight hours API training for all new hires.
• Seventh person to ever become Zuora Certified Solution Architect.

Senior Integration Specialist

• Effectively translated client's use cases to the development team and act as a bridge between the technical operations team, the development team, and professional services with the use of Zendesk and Rally.
• Implemented Zendesk to replace Salesforce as Zuora's support system, and serve as the Zendesk Administrator, writing several widgets, and implementing customization. Responsible for the implementation of Chat, Voice and Mindtouch integration.
• Conducted API Roundtable breakout session at Zuora Customer Day for developers and implamenting partners.
• Analyzed and reported on staff schedule to better allocate resources based on current demand trends, leading to schedule optimization for the Global Support Team and the implementation of 24/5 coverage.
• Central member of the Core Values Committee that defined and helped proliferate the company’s core values.
• Authored and published multiple technical documents, solutions, and training materials.
• Created new and improved upon existing reports to better align with executive staff’s requests with the use of GoodData.

Customer Support Analyst

Passionate Director of Technical Support | CX Coach for Startups | Zendesk Administrator Certified

Accomplished Director of Customer Support with a proven track record of delivering outstanding customer satisfaction, leading high-performing teams, and driving operational efficiencies in fast-paced, high-growth environments. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, demonstrated exceptional skills in developing teams through rapid growth, making data-driven decisions, and effectively communicating with leadership and business teams.

In the past 15 years leading Support teams I've had no one resign from their position.  My expertise lies in creating a supportive work environment, retaining top talent, and identifying areas for improvement with a focus on delivering results and improving customer experience during hyper-growth periods. I have consistently demonstrated this ability to lead cross-departmental initiatives, resulting in significant reductions in the number of tickets submitted, cost per contact, and support costs while increasing one-touch resolution tickets and customer self-help.

My extensive experience includes scaling teams from 3 to 50+ people, maintaining a CSAT score of 98%, and integrating support teams from multiple acquisitions into a unified team with common methodology. I am also proficient in Zendesk, Salesforce, Jira, Slack, Postman, and API development and have managed geographically distributed teams. As a Certified Zendesk Support Administrator Expert, I am well-equipped to deliver exceptional support and service to your organization.
Fluent in Spanish.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE 

Data Analytics & Insights • Startups • Business Development • Process Optimization • Personnel Development & Retention • Relationship Management

Fernando Duarte

Support did not shrink. Support changed.

AI removed the easy tickets.
What stayed was higher risk.
 • Exceptions.
 • Escalations.
 • Multi-system failures.
 • Trust moments.

This PDF shares the operating model I use to handle that shift.
Support as a builder function, not a ticket-taking function.

Full article:
https://lnkd.in/dYRwEgHB

Director of Support & CX | Scaling High-Growth Teams with AI & Automation | 5x Ticket Volume Growth | Zendesk Expert

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