Spotlight: Ashley Sawatsky @ Rootly

How did you get into support?  

My first job ever was at the Tim Horton’s drive-thru when I was 13 (a quintessential Canadian rite of passage)—does that count? But the job that really made me fall in love with customer support was working on Disney’s Guest Experience team. It was a masterclass in how customer support should be done.

What do most people get wrong about support?  

I think a lot of folks think of customer support as taking a lot of crap from people all day. Occasionally, you encounter someone who isn’t the most polite, but my experience over many years of working with customers has been that the vast majority of them are nice, friendly people who appreciate your help. Treating people with respect goes both ways. When your customers don’t feel like they’re being treated with humanity, they tend to respond in kind. But when you treat them with respect and empathy, most people do the same in return. It can be such a fun and rewarding job full of human connection!

How do you stay motivated during challenging support cases?  

I’ve worked in several escalations teams and went on to lead the Incident Communications function at Shopify, so I’ve definitely had my fair share of challenging cases. What I always try to remember is that the customer and I are on the same team. We are both working towards the same goal—to solve the challenge in front of us. When things get heated or difficult and I can sense the customer is getting frustrated, I try to take a step back and say, “Hey, I’m here, and we’re going to get this figured out. I know it’s frustrating/annoying/whatever it is, but we got this.”

What’s your biggest pet peeve in support?  

“Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed.” Nobody is memorizing your menu options!

Who is your role model in the support/CS space?  

It might seem like a cop-out to pick someone from our team at Rootly, but I have to go for our Head of Customer Success, Purvai Nanda. She’s the epitome of what a CS leader should be—she constantly goes above and beyond because she cares so deeply about customers finding success with our product. Her calendar looks like the world’s most intense game of Tetris, yet she treats every interaction with so much care you’d think it was her only priority. Our customers adore her, her energy is contagious, and she makes the whole team better.