From 6 to 130 in 9 Months: Scaling Customer Experience Without Breaking with Ty Givens

Most B2B companies approach customer support the same way: hire someone to answer tickets, buy customer support software, and hope for the best. Then they wonder why they're drowning in inquiries, their team is burned out, and customers are still frustrated.

After 25 years in customer experience operations—including scaling a support team from 6 to 130 people in 9 months at Thrive Market—Ty Givens, Founder of CX Collective, has seen this pattern repeat itself across hundreds of companies. The problem isn't the people or the B2B customer support software. It's the approach.

In a recent conversation on the ONE CX podcast, Ty shared three actionable strategies that fundamentally change how B2B SaaS companies build customer support operations. Here's what actually works.

1. Hire Fractional CX Expertise Before You Hire Junior Staff

The Common Mistake: Most startups hire someone who can answer customer questions and hope they'll grow into an operations leader. But customer support skills and operational leadership skills are completely different.

What to Do Instead: Hire fractional CX expertise first—even before your first full-time support hire.

As Ty explains: "I'd rather pay a seasoned person a full-time salary of a frontline person for part of their time because that return is going to be huge. They can help me program a bot that's going to answer most of my contacts."

Why This Works:

A fractional CX expert will:

• Set up your B2B customer support software infrastructure correctly from day one
• Program AI bots to handle repetitive inquiries
• Create scalable processes before you need them
• Train your first full-time hire properly
• Save you from expensive rebuilds later

The ROI:

One of Ty's clients implemented this approach and now has less than 1% of customers submitting inquiries. The rest find answers through optimized self-service—built by someone who knew how to set it up right the first time.

Action Item: Before posting that job description for a junior support rep, allocate that budget to 10-15 hours per month of fractional CX expertise. Use them to build your foundation, then hire operational staff.

2. Optimize Your Help Center with AI to Save 25+ Hours Per Month

The Reality: Most B2B companies treat their help center as an afterthought—a place to dump documentation that customers never read.

What Actually Works: Update your help center to engage with your AI bot, creating a powerful self-service experience that actually deflects tickets.

Real Results:

Ty's team worked with an established B2B client to optimize their help center for AI engagement. The result? 25 hours saved per month on what they previously spent handling tickets.

"That 25 hours isn't a full FTE, but it's a part-time person," Ty notes. "That's significant savings month over month over month that improves their SLA, improves CSAT, and reduces burden on agents."

The Impact Beyond Cost Savings:

When you save 25 hours per month handling repetitive questions, your team can:

• Focus on complex issues requiring critical thinking
• Build relationships with high-value customers
• Identify product improvements from support patterns
• Contribute to revenue-generating activities

How to Implement:

1. Audit your current help center: What questions are customers asking repeatedly?
2. Optimize for AI readability: Structure articles so your bot can parse and present them naturally
3. Review weekly: Task someone with analyzing bot interactions and updating content
4. Measure deflection: Track how many inquiries are resolved before reaching your team

Action Item: Schedule a help center audit this week. Identify your top 10 contact reasons and ensure each has a comprehensive, AI-friendly article.

3. Understand What Customers Actually Need to Contact You About

The Proactive Approach: Most B2B customer support operates reactively—waiting for problems to arrive. The companies that scale successfully think differently.

"Focus on what people are contacting you about and WHY they need to contact you," Ty advises. "Get ahead of problems—that's the key to being proactive."

The Framework:

Step 1: Identify Contact Drivers

What are the actual reasons customers reach out? Don't guess—look at your data.

Step 2: Ask Why They Need to Contact You

Sometimes the contact reason isn't the real problem. If customers are asking "Where's my order?", the real issue might be lack of shipping visibility.

Step 3: Prevent the Contact

Build solutions that eliminate the need to ask. Automated tracking links, proactive order updates, clear self-service options.

Step 4: Automate the Exceptions

For issues that will always require contact, make the resolution automatic when possible. As Ty puts it: "Have your policies down—sometimes it's easier to just refund automatically than have humans review. Let the humans deal with the exceptions."

Real-World Example:

One of Ty's clients focused on prevention from day one. The result? Less than 1% of their customer base submits inquiries because they've eliminated the need to ask in the first place.

Action Item: Pull your support ticket data from the last 30 days. Identify your top 5 contact reasons. For each one, ask: "Why do customers need to contact us about this?" Then brainstorm ways to prevent that contact entirely.

The Right B2B Customer Support Software Won't Save You

Here's the hard truth: No B2B customer support software—whether it's Zendesk, Intercom, or any other platform—will fix broken processes.

"People think they open the box that has Zendesk and once they set it up, it's going to fix everything," Ty explains. "But it's like AI—garbage in, garbage out. If you don't set up the infrastructure right, what you're going to get out of it is not going to be useful."

What Actually Matters:

Before you invest in customer experience tools, invest in:

1. Clear processes: How should inquiries flow through your team?
2. Quality standards: What does good support look like for your business?
3. Data strategy: What do you need to measure and why?
4. Team training: How do you ensure consistency?

The right B2B customer support software amplifies good operations. It doesn't create them.The difference between companies that scale customer support successfully and those that don't comes down to mindset.

Reactive support thinks: "How do we handle all these tickets?"

Proactive support thinks: "How do we prevent these tickets from existing?"

As you scale your B2B customer support operations, focus on:

• Building infrastructure before you need it: Don't wait until you're drowning to implement systems
• Investing in expertise early: Fractional experts cost less than rebuilding everything later
• Leveraging AI strategically: Use automation to handle repetitive work, freeing humans for complex problem-solving
• Measuring what matters: Track deflection rates, time saved, and customer satisfaction—not just ticket volume

Ready to Scale Your B2B Customer Support?

These three strategies—hiring fractional expertise, optimizing for AI deflection, and preventing contacts proactively—work because they address the root cause of broken support: reactive thinking.

Want to hear more from Ty Givens about scaling customer experience operations? Listen to the full conversation on the ONE CX podcast, where we explore how to build CX that drives business growth, not just handles complaints.

Looking for B2B customer support software that integrates with your existing tools and helps you implement these strategies? Knoccs brings all your customer-facing teams onto one platform, giving you the visibility and context needed to deliver exceptional B2B customer experience at scale.

Book a demo to see how Knoccs can help you move from reactive to proactive support.

About the Expert:

Ty Givens is the Founder and CEO of CX Collective and The Workforce Pro, with 25 years of experience in customer experience operations. She's helped companies from startups to Fortune 500s build scalable, efficient support operations that drive business outcomes.

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