With its classic gray sky and temperate weather, Portland welcomed customer support leaders from across the globe to Support Driven Leadership Summit 2022. Here, folks aimed to hone their leadership skills and exchange customer support knowledge, interspersed with karaoke evenings and hikes in local parks.
Support Driven Leadership Summit is an annual event that brings together support leaders to share their experience and expertise. This year’s venue was Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon–a historic school-turned-performance hall. In between sessions and networks, attendees enjoyed the rooftop bar that overlooked the city and iconic pacific northwest forested landscape, setting the stage for plenty of Twilight and Portlandia references.
It’s safe to say that Guru had a blast at Support Driven Leadership Summit, so here’s everything we did and learned.
What we learned
Support Driven fostered many opportunities to connect with customer experience leaders and learn how they solve shared challenges. We also got to see Guru in action by using it to prepare members of our Support, Sales, and Marketing teams for our sponsorship setup, talk tracks, and travel.
Some of our favorite moments came from being asked questions at the booth that we didn’t know the answer to off the top of our heads. We pulled up our own instance of Guru to search for and surface the answer–both providing an answer in real-time and showing how Guru could be used.
Our two days at Support Driven were filled with great conversations and insights. We came home filled with ideas and inspiration. Keep reading for the inside scoop on how we spent our time at the conference.
Day one
On Monday morning a small crew of the Guru team arrived at the venue a little before 8 A.M. to set up the booth. By 8:30 A.M. the venue was buzzing with people conversing, laughing, and meeting for the first time.
As a sponsor of the Support Driven Leadership Summit, Guru set up a booth in the main corridor outside the lecture hall. We had a table full of swag–notebooks, pens, hats, bandanas, stickers, and, of course, socks.
Once everyone was all checked in, we moved into the lecture hall. Welcoming remarks officially kicked off the conference then talks began.
Day one at Support Driven was a flurry of conversations, group activities, and talks given by leaders in customer experience. Topics like how to rally your company around data to propel customer support initiatives and how to build a customer-centric service model were covered in depth. Establishing a strong remote team, using data effectively, and creating a support model that works for specific use cases were common themes in talks and off-stage conversations.
Support leaders imparted their wisdom on us to take back to our companies and grow. We struck up conversations with those we sat near in the hall and at the booth. Support Driven hosts posed questions to the group between each session and invited attendees to chat with their neighbors.
At the end of day one, attendees gathered in the bar and hallway for a happy hour. It provided a chance for Guru to catch up with people we hadn’t connected with yet and nerd out on all things knowledge management. After connecting with a number of new and familiar faces, we had worked up an appetite for dinner.
That evening the Guru team treated an amazing group of support leaders to a delicious dinner. Those who weren’t ready for the night to end after eating headed over to Migration Brewing for a night of karaoke hosted by conference sponsors.
Day two
At the beginning of day 2, we had the opportunity to share a scenario support leaders can easily relate to—a high-stakes support interaction where a stressed-out agent struggles to hunt down the answer to a time-sensitive question from a top customer. This, as we shared, is exactly where Guru can help customer support teams, with accurate information right in their workflow, so they can do their best work confidently.
After a morning of presentations, we paused for a catered lunch from a local restaurant before returning to our afternoon sessions. Here, speakers covered topics on building teams of people with diverse backgrounds and working with neurodiverse colleagues–presentations that left everyone with something to think about.
By the end of the day, we were tired and jazzed, with a huge list of ideas to bring back to our colleagues at Guru and having made several new connections. Shortly after closing remarks, the Guru team said goodbye and most of our crew headed to the airport.
The Support Driven Leadership Summit was two days well spent. We connected with longtime friends in the industry and made some new ones along the way. We brainstormed ways to solve common problems in revolutionary ways that stick and explored trends in the industry and the role technology plays. Overall, Support Driven was a blast and we can’t wait to see everyone again next year.
With its classic gray sky and temperate weather, Portland welcomed customer support leaders from across the globe to Support Driven Leadership Summit 2022. Here, folks aimed to hone their leadership skills and exchange customer support knowledge, interspersed with karaoke evenings and hikes in local parks.
Support Driven Leadership Summit is an annual event that brings together support leaders to share their experience and expertise. This year’s venue was Revolution Hall in Portland, Oregon–a historic school-turned-performance hall. In between sessions and networks, attendees enjoyed the rooftop bar that overlooked the city and iconic pacific northwest forested landscape, setting the stage for plenty of Twilight and Portlandia references.
It’s safe to say that Guru had a blast at Support Driven Leadership Summit, so here’s everything we did and learned.
What we learned
Support Driven fostered many opportunities to connect with customer experience leaders and learn how they solve shared challenges. We also got to see Guru in action by using it to prepare members of our Support, Sales, and Marketing teams for our sponsorship setup, talk tracks, and travel.
Some of our favorite moments came from being asked questions at the booth that we didn’t know the answer to off the top of our heads. We pulled up our own instance of Guru to search for and surface the answer–both providing an answer in real-time and showing how Guru could be used.
Our two days at Support Driven were filled with great conversations and insights. We came home filled with ideas and inspiration. Keep reading for the inside scoop on how we spent our time at the conference.
Day one
On Monday morning a small crew of the Guru team arrived at the venue a little before 8 A.M. to set up the booth. By 8:30 A.M. the venue was buzzing with people conversing, laughing, and meeting for the first time.
As a sponsor of the Support Driven Leadership Summit, Guru set up a booth in the main corridor outside the lecture hall. We had a table full of swag–notebooks, pens, hats, bandanas, stickers, and, of course, socks.
Once everyone was all checked in, we moved into the lecture hall. Welcoming remarks officially kicked off the conference then talks began.
Day one at Support Driven was a flurry of conversations, group activities, and talks given by leaders in customer experience. Topics like how to rally your company around data to propel customer support initiatives and how to build a customer-centric service model were covered in depth. Establishing a strong remote team, using data effectively, and creating a support model that works for specific use cases were common themes in talks and off-stage conversations.
Support leaders imparted their wisdom on us to take back to our companies and grow. We struck up conversations with those we sat near in the hall and at the booth. Support Driven hosts posed questions to the group between each session and invited attendees to chat with their neighbors.
At the end of day one, attendees gathered in the bar and hallway for a happy hour. It provided a chance for Guru to catch up with people we hadn’t connected with yet and nerd out on all things knowledge management. After connecting with a number of new and familiar faces, we had worked up an appetite for dinner.
That evening the Guru team treated an amazing group of support leaders to a delicious dinner. Those who weren’t ready for the night to end after eating headed over to Migration Brewing for a night of karaoke hosted by conference sponsors.
Day two
At the beginning of day 2, we had the opportunity to share a scenario support leaders can easily relate to—a high-stakes support interaction where a stressed-out agent struggles to hunt down the answer to a time-sensitive question from a top customer. This, as we shared, is exactly where Guru can help customer support teams, with accurate information right in their workflow, so they can do their best work confidently.
After a morning of presentations, we paused for a catered lunch from a local restaurant before returning to our afternoon sessions. Here, speakers covered topics on building teams of people with diverse backgrounds and working with neurodiverse colleagues–presentations that left everyone with something to think about.
By the end of the day, we were tired and jazzed, with a huge list of ideas to bring back to our colleagues at Guru and having made several new connections. Shortly after closing remarks, the Guru team said goodbye and most of our crew headed to the airport.
The Support Driven Leadership Summit was two days well spent. We connected with longtime friends in the industry and made some new ones along the way. We brainstormed ways to solve common problems in revolutionary ways that stick and explored trends in the industry and the role technology plays. Overall, Support Driven was a blast and we can’t wait to see everyone again next year.
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