The Ticket: Discover the Future of Customer Service, Support, and Experience, with Intercom

Sujan Patel, founder of the growth marketing agency Web Profits, has led digital marketing strategy for Salesforce, Mint, Intuit, Expedia, LinkedIn, Zillow and more. In this chat with Intercom's Adam Risman, he breaks down when a startup is ready for growth marketing, where they should start, and how to execute those tactics in a measurable way.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As the co-founder of Copy Hackers, Joanna Wiebe is on a mission to help startups use writing as a tool to grow their business. In this chat with Intercom's Geoffrey Keating she explains the biggest mistakes she sees startups making with their email strategies, how to improve subject lines, what bottled water can teach us about tag lines, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before Asana was a publicly available product, Jackie Bavaro was guiding the company’s product decisions behind the scenes as its first product manager. In this chat with Intercom Director of Product Management Brian Donohue, she shares the way her product team works, how they tackle scoping and prioritization, how to balance intuition with data, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

James Buckhouse, Founder of the Sequoia Creative Lab, shares this short story to inspire and remind us all that we’re never just designing pixels or features or new user flows. We’re designing complements to the human condition, and in the process, there’s a wealth of value to be found in the events happening around us on any given day.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In 2013 Ryan Hoover founded Product Hunt, a community of product enthusiasts who share and discover new products every day. In this interview with Intercom's Adam Risman, Ryan talks about his journey from product management to founder, scaling a community of enthusiasts, and tips for founders to trying to stand out from the crowd. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As Stripe's first marketing hire four years ago, Krithika Muthukumar spanned anything from positioning and branding to developer campaigns, product launches to writing copy. In this interview with Intercom's Adam Risman, Krithika shares how the marketing team has evolved over the years, the importance of launching with intention, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

John Barrows is a sales trainer and consultant whose client list includes Dropbox, LinkedIn, Twilio, Salesforce, Bitly, New Relic and yes, even Intercom. In this chat with Intercom VP of Sales LB Harvey, John explains when a startup is ready for a dedicated sales team, how to better align sales and marketing, the traits that make for a promising sales hire, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Following an eight-year run at Google, where he designed Google Flights and co-founded Android Wear, Emmet Connolly joined Intercom as Director of Product Design in October 2014. In this chat with Intercom's John Collins, Emmet shares how he's evolved the way his team works as its grown, the importance of our design system in that process, how that system serves the product team as a whole, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As Head of R&D and Work Futurist at Atlassian, Dom Price travels the world studying how Atlassian teams work, and visiting with outside teams across industries to share insights, with the aim of keeping teams autonomous, innovative and nimble. In this episode he explains the importance of cognitive diversity in high performing teams, maintaining a culture of innovation at scale, how to check the health of our teams, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Before advising startups at Greylock Partners, Casey Winters played a prominent role in shaping the successful growth strategies at Pinterest and Grubhub. In a chat with Intercom's Adam Risman, he explains when a startup is ready for a dedicated growth team, the problems they should tackle first, user onboarding best practices, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As perhaps the only UX researcher on staff at a VC fund, Michael Margolis is parachuting into startups year-round to help them better understand their users. In this chat with Intercom Director of Research Sian Townsend, Michael walks us through his "start at the end" research framework, the ways in which he quickly develops rapport with new product teams, how to conduct research faster, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

As the author of "Content Strategy for the Web" and founder of the content consultancy Brain Traffic, Kristina Halvorson has built her career around connecting with audiences and users and spurring them to action. In this chat with Intercom managing editor John Collins, she explains the evolving definition of content strategy, how it intersects with content marketing, the common mistakes many startups make with content, and more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

James Buckhouse spent nearly a decade as an animator at Dreamworks, helping craft the Shrek and Madagascar franchises. Today he's the founder of the Sequoia Creative Lab, where his team applies story-driven design to products and experiences for Sequoia and its portfolio companies. In this chat with Intercom's Stewart Scott-Curran, James explains what film can teach us about designing products, exercises your team can do to uncover your own product’s story, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Karen Church joined Intercom from Yahoo in January 2016. Her mission: create and lead a cross-functional team of data analysts, data scientists and data engineers. In this conversation with Intercom editor Geoffrey Keating, she explains the metrics the matter most to her team, the importance of storytelling in her work, how to democratize data across a company, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jason Calacanis is one of the most successful angel investors in Silicon Valley and was one of the very first in the door at Uber, Thumbtack, Robinhood and Wealthfront. In this conversation with Intercom's Des Traynor, Jason explains the qualities he looks for in founders, when they should begin pitching angel investors, how to approach valuation, and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In less than two years, Jeetu Patel has taken Box Platform from a mere idea to an open platform with more than 175 partners building Box content management into their own products. In this episode, Jeetu explains how startups today can repeat Box's process. He covers how a product team's mindset must change, building relationships with developers, and why your customers – not your competition – should dictate your integration strategy.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this chat with Intercom software engineer Ingrid Epure, Honeycomb co-founder and veteran infrastructure engineer Charity Majors explains when your startup actually needs a dedicated ops team, why engineers need to get comfortable with failure, the role cross-pollination plays in a healthy engineering culture, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Joe Haslam, a startup founder and professor at IE Business School with a focus on how to scale companies, breaks down the common pitfalls cause premature scaling, paths to growth outside the Silicon Valley norm, the pros and cons of getting big, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With his new book, Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams, hot off the press, Martin Eriksson chats with Intercom's Adam Risman about what skills define successful product leaders, how startups should approach their first product leadership hire, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Skyliner co-founder and former Stripe and Etsy VP Marc Hedlund opens up about what he's learned from past startups, lessons in engineering management, how to begin correcting tech's diversity problems, and more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How do you better help new users understand what actions to take within your product? Amy Thibodeau, Content Strategy Lead at Shopify, explains how interface content done well can nudge users to success – and when crafted poorly can lead to frustrating, unintended actions. She also takes us inside Polaris, Shopify's new, publicly available design system, and more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Mike Monteiro is the co-founder and design director of Mule Design and speaks frequently and passionately about both craft and business. In this conversation with Intercom's Stewart Scott-Curran, Mike explains the responsibilities designers have to their users and community, why the veil of ignorance is perhaps the greatest tool a designer can use, the issues he sees with design education today, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In February 2013, Slack had no product, no customers and only 8 employees. One of those employees was Ali Rayl, who was tasked with creating the company's customer support experience. Today her team supports more than 10 million daily active users. In a conversation from our archives, Ali shares lessons learned from Slack's early days, the unconventional way she measures her team's performance, how her team promotes knowledge sharing and much more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It’s often said that good product design is simple, and supporting all of the pixels and interactions we create are the simplest element of all, words. John Saito, UX writer at Dropbox and previously the very first UX writer at YouTube, explains how to find and document your product's voice and effectively use words to guide users to success. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nothing will drain your startup's talent pool faster than a bad manager. So what makes for a good one? Kim Scott, author of the bestselling book Radical Candor: Be a kickass boss without losing your humanity, explains how to create a culture of giving and receiving feedback that will help your team do its best, most fulfilling work. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How can product makers offer more functionality without making it harder for users to be successful? Andrew Ofstad, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Airtable and former product manager at Google, explains why complexity slowly creeps in, how his team at Google pared down the Maps UI using first principles, how he keeps product simple at Airtable, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Des Traynor, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Intercom, recounts lessons and stories from the early days of the company and explains how they apply to those who are navigating early-stage startup life today. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Golden Krishna, author of The Best Interface is No Interface and a design strategist at Google, explains the trap of screen-centric thinking, what hardware can teach us about software design, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Edmond Lau, author of The Effective Engineer and a leader on Quip's user growth and engagement team, shares how engineers can make a greater impact, avoiding the layers of product and organizational complexity that often block them, strategies for prioritizing work, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Monal Chokshi was hired as Lyft's first dedicated researcher and tasked with building out the ridesharing company's UX research team and culture – something she'd done successfully before at SoundCloud and Intuit. She shares how researchers can prove their value, the way she’s structured her teams and why lightweight, guerrilla research – an exercise she likens to dating – is the user research gateway drug for startups. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Colin Bentley and Brian Donohue, Group Product Managers at Intercom and two of our first product hires, reflect on how their roles have changed at scale, what they’ve done to stay close to customers, learning to work with marketing and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Everett Katigbak has played a key role in shaping the brands of Stripe, Facebook and Pinterest. In this chat with Intercom's Stewart Scott-Curran, he shares how brand design can support product and spread culture, the story behind Facebook's Analog Research Laboratory, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

If your product is going to grow, new users need to find success with it, fast. Behance co-founder and Benchmark Capital venture partner Scott Belsky explains how to design your product’s first mile, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Janna Bastow, Co-Founder of Mind the Product and ProdPad, talks with Intercom's Adam Risman about how to build and scale product roadmaps, say no to feature requests and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Nearly five years ago Jeff Gardner became Intercom's first customer support hire. Today he manages a team of 50+, who are handling more than 25,000 customer conversations a month. In a chat with Intercom's Adam Risman, he explains how to keep your customer support personal as you scale. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Long before becoming a successful startup founder, Bridget Harris could be found busking Celtic Folk in London. In a conversation with Intercom's John Collins, she explains how her busking days shaped the way she runs YouCanBook.me, why she opted to bootstrap over the conventional VC funding route, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

From pinpointing the Job-to-be-Done to creating successful users and knowing when it's time to rebuild a product, we look back at our favorite lessons and insights from past episodes. Guests include Julie Zhuo, Jason Fried, Matt Hodges, Michael Pryor, Sarah Hatter, Bob Moesta and Samuel Hulick. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tina Roth Eisenberg, author of the Swiss Miss design blog and founder of Creative Mornings, TeuxDeux and Tattly, shares her tips for turning side projects into startups, why every founder must get a handle on sales, and how community can raise your startup's ceiling. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lucy Allen has spent the past two decades working with technology companies of all sizes – from young startups to the likes of SAP and Adobe – to build their profile and share their stories. Here, she chats with Intercom's Jennifer Kutz about how to find PR angles that are actually newsworthy, why conversational interfaces are changing the PR paradigm, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Des Traynor sits down with Paul Adams, VP of Product, and Emmet Connolly, Director of Product Design, to discuss the biggest trends of the past year, including bots, conversational commerce, and voice UIs, as well as where product is headed in 2017. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Maria Giudice, VP of Experience Design at Autodesk, talks to Intercom's Adam Risman about how to create an experience-centered culture, why everyone in your company needs exposure to customers, tackling guerrilla research, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Daniel Burka has spent his career at the intersection of design and business leadership. He’s currently a design partner at GV (formerly Google Ventures) and spent the prior decade-plus helping technology companies with product design. Here, Daniel explains how design can solve business problems, the role of sprints in a healthy design culture, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Intercom Senior Product Manager Hugh Durkin chats with John Collins about why browsers – not apps – are the future of mobile consumption, what shopping centers and fast-food chains can teach us about building better software platforms, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Aarron Walter knows plenty about scaling a design team and culture. Before joining InVision as VP of Design Education, he started the experience design team at MailChimp. In this episode, Aarron chats with Intercom's Adam Risman about hiring for soft skills, the benefits of cross-functional teams, how to design for empathy, and more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Chase Clemons, Support Pro at Basecamp and host of the Support Ops podcast, talks with Intercom's Adam Risman about keeping your support team happy, eliminating knowledge silos, and why self-serve help content can't be an afterthought. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Lara Hogan, Director of Engineering at Etsy, talks to Intercom's Geoffrey Keating about managing with empathy, tech's diversity problem, and her new book, Demystifying Public Speaking. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Intercom's Content Strategy Lead Elizabeth McGuane talks to Des Traynor about the importance of words in product building. Elizabeth's role is all about using language, tone and mental models to create better experiences for our customers. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jeff Vincent works on the product team at Wistia, the video platform for business, but formerly ran their customer support operation. The common thread is a focus on solving customer problems. He chats to Intercom's Director of Customer Support, Jeff Gardner. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

User Interface Engineering founder Jared Spool chats with Intercom's Des Traynor about his new design school, Center Centre. Jared shares why recent design graduates struggle in the workplace and what the Center Centre curriculum is doing differently. They also discuss why successful companies must cross what Jared calls "the UX Tipping Point". See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tasked with running 500 Startups’ Mountain View accelerator, Elizabeth Yin is helping some of tomorrow’s most exciting startups get off the ground. In this conversation with Intercom Managing Editor John Collins, Elizabeth explains the difficulties of running your startup while pitching investors, why founders need to get a handle on taking rejection, and much more. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.