Misdirected by Ali Berman

Misdirected tells the tale of Ben, a 15-year-old who faces the challenge of relocating to a conservative town in Colorado. In this new environment, Ben’s atheism becomes the defining characteristic that sets him apart. Unfortunately, his lack of conformity leads to bullying from his peers and a lack of understanding from his teachers. To add to his burden, Ben’s brother is serving in Iraq, and his sister is preoccupied with her own troubles at college.

With limited support, Ben is left to figure out his place in this unfamiliar territory. As an outsider, navigating the complexities of adolescence becomes an even greater struggle. Will he find acceptance without losing his sense of self? Determined to stay true to his beliefs, Ben rebels against his teachers and engages in fiery debates with his classmates. He challenges the convictions of others, embarking on a transformative journey that captivates the reader.

Misdirected delves into the value of questioning commonly accepted beliefs, even those held by the protagonist himself. Through Ben’s experiences, readers are propelled into a world of enlightenment, as he discovers the significance of challenging societal norms and staying true to one’s authentic self.

Streamlining Product Launches: How Automation Revolutionized Customer Experience

Hi everyone and welcome! Thank you all for tuning in to this remote Athan series event hosted by Guru. Guru is a collaborative knowledge management solution and in this series, we’re excited to feature amazing leaders across customer experience, sales enablement, and knowledge management.

Today, we are thrilled to be hosting Ali Lieberman from a well-known company called Slack. Ali is a forward-thinking, innovative, and empathetic leader who has valuable perspectives to share about maintaining a phenomenal customer experience as Slack continues to grow. In this session, we will discuss how Ali and her team have approached growth, particularly focusing on product launches.

To give you an idea of what to expect, Ali will talk about the challenges her CX team faced when scaling and how they solved them with automation and processes. She will also provide a demo of their workflow and share the results they have achieved. Afterwards, we’ll have a Q&A session.

But before we begin, let me introduce myself briefly. My name is Elizabeth Powell, a senior manager on our product marketing team at Guru. I’m excited to be here with Ali and learn about how we can use process and automation to empower our support teams. Now, let’s turn it over to Ali to introduce herself and tell us about her team.

Thank you, Elizabeth, and thank you to Guru for having me today. I’m Ali Lieberman from Slack’s Customer Experience Operations team. I’ve been with Slack for over four years, focusing on learning, tooling, and internal documentation. I live in San Francisco and have a diverse background, from working in the music industry to being a stay-at-home mom. Our Customer Experience (CX) team has grown significantly over the years, and we are responsible for supporting the entire CX organization and various other teams within the company.

Now, let’s dive into the challenges we faced in scaling our team and how we addressed them to improve our customer experience.

First and foremost, we identified areas where manual work could be automated, leveraging technology to free up our time and focus on more complex tasks. For example, we needed a more streamlined process for handling product changes and releases. In the past, we relied on informal channels and ad hoc communication, which became unsustainable as our team grew.

To solve this, we developed a formalized workflow for intake of upcoming product changes. We created a dedicated channel in Slack where anyone from the company could submit information about upcoming changes. This allowed us to have a single source of truth and be better prepared for customer inquiries.

Additionally, we automated personalized communication with different teams within the company to ensure that everyone was aware of the upcoming releases that could impact their work. This helped us coordinate efforts and avoid last-minute scrambling.

By implementing this workflow, we have seen significant improvements in our team’s efficiency and the quality of customer support we can provide. Managers feel more in the loop, agents are better prepared, and the entire company recognizes the value of proactive and organized communication around product launches.

While there were challenges in rolling out this new process, such as the learning curve and getting buy-in from cross-functional partners, it has been a successful implementation. We continue to refine and iterate on the workflow based on feedback from both our team and other departments.

In conclusion, our key takeaways are to identify areas for automation, communicate the benefits to all stakeholders, and leverage available resources and tools. By doing so, we can streamline processes, improve collaboration, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Thank you for joining us today, and we hope you found this session valuable. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the Q&A session.