Building the experiences your customers actually want—with Bitly’s Brad Harris

Bitly’s links and QR codes may be everywhere, but chances are you’ll find the company’s Global Head of Customer Support, in one of two places: running support experiments from his home office or collaborating with other leaders in his favorite community group, Zendesk for Startups.

“That’s kind of the first place I go to when I’m saying, ‘hey guys, I’m going to test out turning off our chatbot for a bit,’” he said. “Because I’m not the first one to think of something. I don’t need to reinvent the wheel.”

With so much change happening around AI, Harris and his team are spending the year researching and conducting tests to ensure that they’re meeting the actual needs of their customer base. That starts, he says, with acknowledging what you don’t know and not being afraid to ask questions.

“I really want to get a better idea of what it is that we’re missing, right?” he said. “Because we could come into this as support professionals and say, hey I know this is the future and this is the way that customers are going to want to talk to us. But there are still generations of folks and demographics of folks that are used to a different level of support.”

Tune in for more on Brad’s approach to experimentation, what he’s learned, where he’s prioritizing changes, and what he thinks about the future of CX in our latest episode of Conversations with Zendesk.

Have a question for a Zendesk expert, interested in being a guest, or want to suggest a topic for a future episode? Drop us a line at cwzpodcast@zendesk.com—we’d love to hear from you.