My Journey With SupportYourApp: From a Support Consultant to Building a Department From Scratch

We are here today with one of the most fascinating career stories at SupportYourApp. Kseniia has grown all the way from a Customer Support Consultant to a Chief Learning and Development Officer, head of a department she created herself. How did this happen? How does she build up a department from scratch? What can and can’t we learn from Learning and Development? Find answers in Kseniia’s story.

First Steps With SupportYourApp

I had a pretty standard background in customer support — a degree in Translation from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. It not only gave me profound language skills but also provided me with tech knowledge, as the studies at KPI were technology-oriented. When I was a student, I thought my career choice would be a translator. But as I got my first job, still in my university years, I realized it wasn’t really my thing. After a semester of studying abroad, I started looking for options that would bring me satisfaction, financial independence, and an opportunity to apply my language and tech skills. That’s how I got into customer support. 

My story with SupportYourApp began about 6 years ago, with a Customer Support Consultant’s position. My project was tech-related, and my responsibilities included testing and checking every single issue reported by a customer. Daily communication with customers and an opportunity to apply my skills brought me to understanding how fulfilling this job can be, and how I want to grow and explore career options here. In about half a year, I applied for an internal opening for a Service Delivery Manager’s position. Before that, I did my best to demonstrate leadership skills in my team, and our management noticed my potential. 

Now, from my experience, I know that the best way to build a career at SupportYourApp is to be proactive. Management always notices people who not only fulfill their duties, but go the extra mile. If a person notices how to fix or improve some process and intends to take action, they will surely be noticed and appreciated. If I were choosing a candidate for a promotion, I would also pay attention to personal growth. A person who is willing to learn new things, has an active lifestyle or interesting hobbies, is usually also willing to grow professionally. 

New Experiences With Service Delivery

Back then, our company had about 300–400 people, and our Service Delivery team was much smaller. One of my best and most valuable experiences at SupportYourApp began as we launched a new big project, with more than 80 consultants on our team. At that time, I took the position of a Key Account Manager — pretty much the same responsibilities as Service Delivery Managers have, but KAM’s are usually focused on a single big project. Also, this position requires more in-depth knowledge of the client’s needs, and responsibilities include regular reporting, structuring the team from scratch, training Team Leads and QA Specialists to be leaders, and conducting analyses and researches.

This was the time when I learned a bunch of essential skills, like reporting at Zendesk or performing root cause analysis. My teammates and I gained and shared a very interesting and useful experience. Even now, at the Learning & Development department, I use this knowledge to develop new training programs for our specialists. The year I spent on that project was challenging, but it taught me a lot about management and analytics, increasing a Customer Satisfaction Score and maintaining it on a high level.

Our Service Delivery team was growing, and I took a new position of a Senior Key Account Manager, and had 5 other managers under my leadership. As a Senior, my main task was mentorship. I could say it was the first practice for my current responsibilities at Learning and Development.

Creating a Brand-New Department

My career growth at SupportYourApp was quite fast, every year I took on a new position. Sometimes I applied myself, and sometimes my skills and performance were noticed by management. By the end of 2021, I understood that being a part of Service Delivery, I was quite limited to contributing to the development of my clients and teams only. I wanted to make a difference for the whole company. In one of my conversations with Daria, our CEO, we came up with the idea of creating a new department, completely devoted to training, quality improvement, and skills development. At that time, we didn’t yet have a clear picture of how exactly it might work. I started brainstorming and suggested some ideas. I researched and studied a lot of relatable literature, took courses, and soon had a clear vision of how the Learning & Development department structure should be built. 

Our team grew and developed rapidly. My main purpose as a CLDO is to have a clear vision and strategy, bring development ideas to the table, as well as inspire my team to achieve new heights while keeping their work-life balance. We’ve decided to take responsibility for a full performance cycle, including onboarding, training, and QA. My team welcomes newcomers for the onboarding, helps them adapt to the processes, and makes the first steps at SupportYourApp. Then, we perform necessary training for our consultants, and later, while they are fulfilling their duties on a project, consultants come back to us for a quality assurance procedure. If a consultant is underperforming, they return for additional training and follow a performance improvement plan. If a consultant is promoted, we onboard them for a new position and follow the same procedure. This way, we guide our team members through all the stages of their journey with SupportYourApp.

The whole concept of the Learning and Development department started like a vague idea. As the company was growing, it became very natural and logical. The main purpose of it was to help our Service Delivery managers and customer support consultants to obtain more skills. The main focus of our company is high-quality service, and our department’s mission is to help provide and maintain it. 

If I had to explain in several words, what distinguishes our company from others, I would say, we care. Our team members are always searching for ways to improve communication with customers. There are a lot of companies that don’t really make an effort, use scripted answers, and provide insufficient CS rates. SupportYourApp’s main advantage is that we prioritize service quality while delivering high productivity. Each time we create a new training program, we ask ourselves, “Will it help meet our strategic goals?”. If the answer is positive — we do it. 

As I was forming my team, I paid big attention to personal traits. I needed to know that a person would be okay with performing multiple live sessions daily. All of our openings were filled in by people from SupportYourApp, and a Team Leader’s or Product Expert’s background was a great advantage here. We needed people who already had a certain level of responsibility, knew the peculiarities of our processes, and were familiar with our support services inside and out. Their duties include gathering knowledge, structuralizing it, and creating a comprehensible form for others to understand. It requires some experience, of course, but a supporter’s background is a great help here. Also, I wanted my team members to be passionate learners themselves. If they love seeking new knowledge, I know they will do great here. 

Can the Learning and Development Team Train You for Anything?

There is a common opinion that soft skills can’t be trained, which I strongly disagree with. Some of the first training courses we created and then added to an onboarding program were devoted to soft skills for customer support. Even if a person lacks, for example, empathy, they can be taught how to behave and communicate in certain situations. Luckily, people who apply for customer support consultant positions usually already have a suitable set of character traits. This makes it easier for them to learn everything else. 

The only sign that shows a person can’t be taught something is a lack of motivation and will to learn. Otherwise, I believe there is always a way. It mostly depends on how much time they are ready to devote to it. 

I would also note that the Learning and Development department’s function is not just training. It may sound unorthodox, but choosing the right approach helps companies meet their strategic goals.

Career at SupportYourApp

The learning process in our company never really stops, and I believe this is one of our company’s advantages. A journey with SupportYourApp may be challenging, but it is 100% exciting and worth it. Our clients are well-known brands with fascinating projects, and we always make sure that businesses we cooperate with are ethical. If supporters want not just any job, but also stability and satisfaction, they can find it here. I would also emphasize that we have transparent and objective performance metrics and KPIs, and offer constant professional growth. 

The best piece of advice I could give to people who want to join us and build a career here would be to fulfill promises, meet deadlines, and take responsibility. At SupportYourApp, we don’t like micromanagement, we trust our team members, and we would like to know that we can count on them. 

❤︎ Like it? — Share: Share on LinkedIn or Share on Facebook