The Support Driven newsletter is sent out to over 5,000 people every week, rounding up all the latest news and events for Support Driven, a community of customer support professionals in all walks of and ranks of support life. It’s where I found my two favorite ever jobs at Zapier and Hotjar. I was given free reign to write an “editorial” for the newsletter, starting in July 2021 and continuing through January 2023. Here are two sample editorials. They’re both meant to start with a plain, “{{FirstName}}”, to make it more personal to the individual reader, but instead I use them as an opportunity for enormous run on sentences, as you’ll see.

Over the course of writing these editorials, I’ve received at least 16 compliments, the main motivation for continuing to write these. Or anything. I’m an only child, I need attention.

July 14, 2022

I follow a “jumped-up baldy” and passionate Liberal on Twitter named Ian Dunt, who uses a gratifying and necessary amount of swearing when talking about the alternatingly shambolic and sinister Tory government here in the UK, (especially on the Oh God, What Now? Podcast which started in response to Brexit), so most of his feed is about politics, or about the drinking he has to do to recover from the politics, so I wasn’t expecting to see a tweet saying “the zoom out will destroy you” with a one minute video from NASA’s recent reveal of this square picture from the James Webb telescope, teeming with stars and galaxies over 4 billion light years away, and at first the woman is demonstrating the remarkable leap forward in picture clarity and how many more stars and galaxies you can see in comparison to the Hubble, but then, she does indeed zoom out, and the oddest shiver went through me, seeing that teeming square become a mere pinprick in the sky, unremarkable alongside countless other anonymous white dots, and I thought, boy would I like to rule over that entire thing someday, {{FirstName}},

The lovely 2nd Act story on the latest episode of This American Life was about a Mormon man, Clay Elder, having the trip of a lifetime to the “great and spacious building” – Mormon euphemism for the corrupting outside world – of New York City in 2006, to see as many musicals as he could with his boyfriend. Short on money, they could only afford $20 tickets, which only grants you standing space. That sounds like a good deal, but for only $10, he could have sat down at my blackbox one-man production right around the corner in New Jersey, called, “The Unlimited Bounty Of Love,” which was a powerful 3-hour tear-jerker revolving around the time I accidentally bought too many Bounty paper towels. “No amount of paper towels could soak up the pain in my soul,” one searing line went. 

Having been entertained by a musical despite it not featuring any paper products, he was approached outside by a couple. The man in the couple noted that Clay seemed to be enjoying the show more than anyone in the expensive seats and gave him the huge sum of $200, which in 2006 dollars could have bought you 7 Ferraris, probably, I don’t understand inflation. 

The man urged Clay to see Sweeney Todd, Sondheim’s sanguinary-est musical about a barber who’s so miffed about being sent to Australia he kills a bunch of people. I hear there’s also a cool subplot about yummy pies. Clay didn’t buy a single Ferrari and did see Sweeney Todd. That stranger’s act of kindness revolutionized Clay’s idea of what a musical could be, and showed him the type of musical he’d want to star in. Clay’s now a working actor, performing this year in Sondheim’s “Company,” having declined a role in my musical, “Building.”

Years ago, at the end of a family festival, moments after achieving one of life’s greatest victories – successfully packing a tent in a bag, zipper shut – I was handed the defeat of being unable to start my car. My son had been playing in the car for hours as I packed and the lights drained the battery. Most people had already left, but one woman tried to help with a portable battery thingy. Her kids, embracing the spirit of camping, drained it with iPads. It would be a long wait for rescue. While I was waiting, a car came back into the festival grounds. That same woman had driven past a mechanic, got jumper cables, and driven all the way back! We didn’t figure out how to start the car – I clipped one of the cables wrong – but that act of kindness has stayed with me to this day, and now I’m one of England’s best mechanics. No, I’m still ignorant about cars, but it gave me (a little bit of) enduring faith in humanity and made me look for ways to pay that kindness forward. 

Hey, there are times when customer feedback will destroy your faith in humanity – “it’s not working!” – but it’s essential to collect it to learn where your product needs to improve. Idiomatic’s written this blog post all about customer feedback analysis, including the difference between quantitative and qualitative data, and effective ways to analyze it all!

If you attend stonly’s upcoming webinar, maybe one piece of customer feedback will be, “The information on your site helped me solve it myself! I’m going to have (a little bit) less wine tonight!” How To Deliver a Seamless Self-Serve Customer Experience takes place on Thursday, July 21 at 11am ET!

{{FirstName}}, I bet you’re spreading kindness into the world every day, you beneficent human. May all your pies be delicious, and not made of people.

See you next week!

July 7, 2022

I had all of Sunday to myself and the dogs, so I sold a litre of blood to pay for the petrol – over $8.70 a gallon here in the UK; thanks a lot, BIDEN – to go to a town called Exmouth, which is a beautiful town where people with and without mouths can go, and by the way it’s pronounced EX-mith because England has the same nonsensical pronunciation rules as my home state of Massachusetts, where the town of Peabody is pronounced PEE-buh-dee, and so anyway, on the way to Exmouth I made a necessary stop at a farm shop for fancy cheese and overheard a posh-sounding older woman sounding off on her husband, “Stop being so negative! We’ve driven all the way out here and all I hear from you is ‘Nay, nay, nay!’” and sadly I couldn’t discern anything from the follow up sentence other than her hurling the word MENOPAUSAL at him and that alone was worth the price of petrol, {{FirstName}},

Years ago, I met up with my parents in London for the week with the kids. We hit all the sights: Big Ben, The Magic Circle, Little Ben, Tower of London, Medium Ben, London Eye, Quiet Ben, Natural History Museum, Loud Ben, The Grant Museum of Zoology (which features hundreds of dead things in jars including the extremely literal Jar of Moles and “The Negus Collection of Bisected Heads”) Marmite Ben, Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon, and Mendlesohn (Ben). 

One evening, back at the rental house, I witnessed one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. My parents sat down to watch something on Netflix. As you know, the way you select something on Netflix goes like this:

• You scroll through everything you have on My List but reject all of them. Now’s not the right time for any of those! They’re for a different time! 
• Scroll through every category on the home page. Now’s definitely not the time for Romantic Comedies With 6 Good Sasquatch Jokes And A Strong Female Lead Who Has A Scene With The Alison Bechdel But Ironically They’re Talking About A Man 
• Watch trailer for new Ryan Reynolds movie where Ryan Reynolds plays a Ryan Reynolds type but now’s not the time for that little scamp 
• Take a couple minutes to wonder if Reynolds’s Aviation Gin is any good; those ads are pretty funny, because, after all, that Reynolds is such a little scamp
• Scroll through movies on several other streaming services including ones hiding in the corners of Apple TV that are called things like Heyooooooo! or *BISH* or Scamp: Presented by Aviation Gin and Mint Mobile  
• Oh no it’s 1am 

My rebellious parents flouted this sacred process entirely. They scrolled for 20 seconds, saw a comedian’s special, said, “How about this?”, agreed, and then they watched the entire thing! This is one of many reasons they’ve been married for 45 years. They were probably like this in the era of Blockbuster, whereas ex-wife Sara and I would have to hire a Mediator to chaperone us, lest we start hurling DVD cases at each other. 

Once again I have stolen an editorial idea from Pete Holmes’s You Made It Weird podcast, this week featuring Pete Davis, who wrote a book called Dedicated (based on a speech he gave at Harvard Law School) which was written in response to our infinite browsing, keep all options open culture. His book champions much weightier commitments than choosing a movie, like commitments to advancing civil rights, your community, and long-term friendships. But it’s worth thinking about when the right decision, even in small contexts, is to decide to do a thing, and commit to sticking with that thing. Apparently, it makes you happier overall.

You know what else will make you happier overall? Empowering your support team to grow their careers! Stonly’s hosting another expert-laden panel on how supporting career growth and development benefits your employees and therefore the company. It takes places on July 14 at 11am ET. 

The day before that, on Wednesday, July 13th at 9am PT (12pm ET), theloops is hosting their own webinar with folks from Ada and PartnerHero, this one about how to harness data to increase efficiency and support Product-Led Growth. 

{{FirstName}}, you always choose good films, and unlike the resigned Prime Minister of England, you never overstay your welcome. 

See you next week!