What hiring for support taught me about what customers actually need

I've made three support hires.

Each one taught me something different about what customers actually need — as opposed to what I thought they needed.

Hire 1: The technically perfect one

Incredibly accurate. Never gave a wrong answer. Response times were fast. CSAT scores were good.

But something was off.

Customers kept escalating even after their tickets were marked resolved. They'd email again. Ask follow-up questions that were already answered in the previous reply.

I eventually realised: the answers were correct but the responses felt cold. Customers didn't feel confident in the answers even when the answers were right.

The lesson: accuracy without warmth creates uncertainty, not confidence.

Hire 2: The warm one

Customers loved talking to her. Response quality felt personal. Escalation rate dropped significantly.

But ticket resolution time went up. She'd spend 20 minutes on a ticket that could have been resolved in 5. She struggled with technical questions.

The lesson: warmth without structure creates inefficiency and gaps.

Hire 3: The systems thinker

This one changed how I thought about the role entirely.

Within 6 weeks, she'd built a shared answer library.
Within 10 weeks, she'd identified the top 5 product friction points from support data and presented them to me with ticket counts.
Within 4 months, support volume had dropped 28% because 3 of those friction points got fixed.

Her CSAT wasn't the highest of the three. Her response times weren't the fastest.

But she made the entire support operation smarter — and made the product better in the process.

The lesson: the best support hire isn't the best at support. It's the best at turning support into product and operational insight.

I only figured this out on hire 3.

What have your support hires taught you about what the role actually requires?