Support Teams Aren’t Your Catch-All: Let’s Rethink Collaboration with Support Teams.

I'm Alisha (Ali) Joseph & I've created this newsletter as a "safe space" for contact center leaders & professionals. I write about all the nuances & day-to-day chaos, challenges, wins, trends & needed changes with customer-facing teams (experience, support & success), specifically in startups. I "grew up" in startup contact center customer service from frontline to leadership, working with different BPOs, tech tiered teams, senior leadership etc. I share my unique experience & guidelines that will impact people in a positive way, drives quick wins in your day-to-day & continue to strive for departmental excellence in the ever-changing world of customer service!

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Let’s talk about a common myth in the contact center support world: that support teams should be the ultimate bridge between customers and every other department—product, engineering, marketing, finance, you name it. Sure, support reps are on the frontlines, gathering customer insights. But is it fair—or even practical—to expect them or the team COMPLETELY to own feedback loops for the entire company? Probably not.

Let's go through a scenario shall we: A customer calls in to ask why their order hasn’t shipped. The rep digs in and realizes it’s a system error causing delays for multiple customers. The team needs to inform operations to fix the error, update the customer with a timeline, and flag marketing so they’re not running ads for a product that’s backlogged. It’s a lot to juggle! Now imagine a dozen situations like this daily, with no clear handoffs or processes in place. Sound chaotic? That’s because it is.

What’s Really Happening?

Support teams end up taking on responsibilities that other departments should already be owning. Due to the nature of the "startup" world specifically, costs are always the "conversation drivers" of being a startup, thus taking pressure somewhat off other departments & parties. This creates:

• Burnout: When support has to chase down answers or play middleman, it takes time away from their actual job—helping customers.
• Missed Opportunities: Reps spend so much time managing internal chaos that they can’t focus on building LTV (lifetime valued) relationships or resolving issues quickly.

And while higher level & executive leaders love to say, “It’s all about teamwork,” the reality is that teamwork falls apart when the weight isn’t distributed evenly.

Data-Driven Insights on Support Team Burnout

• A 2023 Zendesk survey revealed that 49% of support professionals feel overwhelmed by the number of tasks outside their core responsibilities.
• According to the Harvard Business Review, overloading teams with cross-functional work without proper support results in a 20% decrease in productivity and a 34% higher likelihood of employee attrition.

Support leaders indeed play a crucial role in creating clear guidelines for collaboration. But we must draw boundaries that protect support teams from becoming the “fix-all” for operational inefficiencies elsewhere in the business.

Ali, How Do We Improve This?

Cross-team collaboration doesn’t mean dumping everything on support. It means creating processes where everyone plays their role. Here's a few suggestions to get procedure alignment:

1. Set Clear Responsibilities for Each Team Support can highlight customer pain points, but departments like product, finance, and marketing need to take ownership of fixing them. For example, operations should be ready to handle order delays without needing a full briefing from support every time & for every minor issue that may not even make up 1% of customer complaints.
2. Use Feedback Tools, and Actually Check Them Tools like Zendesk, Jira, Slack, or Dovetail are great for organizing feedback and issues, but they’re only helpful if other teams are actively engaged with them. Every department needs to consistently review feedback, spot patterns, and take action without waiting for support to spoon-feed them the details.
3. Create Dedicated Liaisons Assign a point person in each department who’s responsible for checking tools, triaging feedback, and closing the loop with support. This reduces the burden on reps to chase down answers while ensuring no insights fall through the cracks.
4. Train ALL Teams on Customer Insights Customer feedback isn’t just for support. Every department should know how to interpret and act on the data. Regular cross-department training can go a long way in making this a shared effort.

Here's Your Opportunity Cost of Mismanaged Collaboration

When support teams are forced to step outside their core duties, there’s an opportunity cost & impact to the bottom line:

• Longer response times for customer inquiries.
• Reduced focus on relationship-building and high-touch customer care.
• Lower morale among support teams, which could ripple across the organization.

On top of that, studies show that burnout in support roles leads to higher turnover rates. That means more time and money spent hiring and training new reps—while customers feel the impact of slower service.

If we want collaboration to work, it has to be a team sport. That means every department stepping up, taking ownership, and sharing the load. Let support focus on what they’re great at: helping & retaining customers & not babysitting feedback loops.

What’s your team doing to make cross-functional work actually functional? Are other departments pulling their weight, or does support still carry the load? Let’s swap ideas—because this is a conversation, we all need to be having.

It’s time we stop pretending support can do it all. Collaboration works best when it’s not just a buzzword, but a shared responsibility across the board. Let’s fix this together. If you find this content valuable & worth a discussion in your organization (IT SHOULD), share it out. Would love to hear from other organizations & vendors on how they are combating this. DM me if you want to discuss more & learn more about how I help support/service leaders be a face to their voice! Have a great week & start to December!!