Everyone Is Someone to Us: How Member Support Goes Far Together

Peloton’s Member Support team moves fast, and moves far, together. Team members work directly with Peloton Members via phone, chat and email to answer questions, solve problems, and provide an overall exceptional experience. Member Support is actually four teams: Order Experience, Hardware/Software, Membership, and Service Recovery. Focusing on one line of the business helps team members build expertise in a certain area. As they grow within the company, so does their expertise, with advanced roles supporting more than one of these categories. Every day, these teams work together to assist Members who reach out to Peloton.

We began supporting our Members from our HQ in New York in 2014, then opened our first dedicated Member Support center in Plano, Texas in 2018. Since then, it has grown to welcome the people, legal, technology and finance teams. Because our team continues to grow, we’re also excited to announce the opening of a new Member Support center in Tempe, AZ! The new, 50,000 square-foot campus will be open in October and we’re looking for new team members across Member Support function, Inside Sales, IT, Operations Support and the People and Workplace teams.

What makes this team successful is quite simple: the talented individuals who use their skills to connect with our Members.

Supporting Members by being yourself

This team is smart, they’re hard-working—and at first, that can be intimidating. “I was kind of intimidated,” said Jacie Turley, the Interim Team Lead in the Hardware/Software Department on the Member Support Team in Plano, Texas. “But everybody is so different, super real, and willing to express themselves with no hesitation. With Peloton, I feel like you can be yourself no matter what. It’s an amazing environment. There's no judgment—you just feel welcome.”

When everyone feels safe and respected, there’s no need for cutting down the competition. That’s what Mimi Jackson Huber, a Member Support Supervisor in Tempe, AZ, found when she joined Peloton. “Even on days when I question myself, somebody is always like, ‘You’ve been doing this, you can do this.’”

While many on the team start as Associates, there is ample opportunity to grow and develop into Team Lead and Supervisor roles. When Huber landed her well-earned promotion in 2020, she worried that it might rub some the wrong way, but just the opposite occurred. The team rallied to support her boost. Huber said she was flooded with messages of congratulations. “It truly feels like you're working in a place where your peers want to see you succeed as much as they want to see themselves succeed.” 

This kind of team culture is non-negotiable when your job is to solve Member problems every day. “Customer service can be pretty stressful, so having that support behind you really motivates you to continue to want to do what you're doing and do it as best as you can,” said Turley.

Laura Holmes, a Member Support Agent in the London, U.K. office, said being on the Member Support Team doesn’t feel like being a cog in a machine. “In a lot of customer service jobs, you almost feel like a bit of a number, and you never feel like you're quite included, whereas Peloton really looks after us and makes sure we all feel like part of the same team.”

Ratcliff, Jackson-Huber, Paul, Holmes, Turley

Empowering teams of smart creatives

The Member Support Team is driven by the principle of paying it forward. No one gets to where they are alone, and that’s understood. If the team is going to succeed, every individual must succeed. 

As employees move up within the team, they bring others with them. “Whenever I start to feel confident and knowledgeable about each role that I'm in, I really love to pass that knowledge along,” said Turley. “I feel driven to help in any way possible—be it coaching my team, leading my team, or lending a hand or ear if anybody needs support—that's what I love doing. And I think that's my favorite part about the journey that I've had with Peloton.”

There’s an undercurrent of gratitude and generosity to the basic operations of this team. Blake Ratcliff, a Member Support Team Lead out of Plano, Texas, pays it forward by developing team members in a way that ensures they have a long, successful career at Peloton. “What I focus on the most is development. I tell everyone that joins our team: ‘My goal with you on my team is to set you up for success so you can knock this role out of the park, and either develop within Member Support or explore other areas of interest within the company. We focus on internal mobility at Peloton, even if it means you eventually move to another department.'"

“I want to give back to Peloton and its people what Peloton and its people gave to me, which is a career,” said Ratcliff. “I never thought that at 22 I would find a place that I'm like, ‘I could be here for the rest of my life.’ My goal is to give that back to other people.”

This kind of culture makes a sticky company. A supportive environment keeps talented people around for a long time. Huber said she’s here for the long haul. “Somebody asked me a couple of days ago, ‘When was the last time [you] looked for a job?’ I said, ‘The job I got at Peloton.’ That was my last time. I have not looked for a job and I'm coming up on three years and I don't want another job. I want to be here. This is not even a job. This is my career.” 

When everyone is united behind the same goal—putting Members first—motivation is contagious. “We all have the same goal,” said Ratcliff. “We're trying to put Members first and give them the best Member experience possible. I've met so many people that are so motivated about their jobs, and I think a lot of that comes down to how Peloton treats its people. Peloton treats its employees like family. And then we in turn treat the Members like family. It turns into one big community, one Peloton.”

Together we go farther

Peloton is quickly expanding to new markets, which creates many opportunities for advancement within the Member Support Team. Ratcliff said the team he works with in Plano has increased 400% - and is still growing.

So, what does it take to succeed on the Member Support Team? “Personality,” said Mason Paul, a Member Support Supervisor in Tempe, AZ. “No one wants to call in and talk to a robot, no matter how efficient it might be. We're also looking for experience, whether in a call center, a grocery store, a gas station or even a college. Sometimes it's even better if you don't have call center experience because you have more customer service experience and not customer 'handling' experience.” Paul also said the best agents can think on their feet and deploy the STAR method—situation, task, action, result—in-flight. It’s a problem-solving job, so those muscles have to be strong.

But no Peloton employee comes in fully formed. Part of being on the Member Support Team means you have a Team Lead, Supervisor and Manager behind you, pushing you to be better and better. 

Huber’s journey at Peloton took off quickly—she started as an Agent and earned the Team Lead title within six months—but then she hit a wall. She had her eyes on the Supervisor position, but her manager didn’t think she was ready. “What do you mean I’m not ready?” she said. “I took that very personally. But I came back and I was like, I need you to tell me what I need to do.” Huber took the advice. “I did what I needed to do,” she said. And in August 2020, she became a Supervisor.

For Holmes, knowing that her upward trajectory can be flexible is a reason to stay invested and engaged. “I think that Peloton is so amazing for how much you can grow within the company. They really push for that. That, for me, is so exciting. The way I am treated at Peloton makes me want to stay as long as I can. I feel like in a lot of places, you go down one path and that's the only path. But here I could change paths and still stay at Peloton. I feel totally supported and comfortable exploring any number of paths here.”

At the end of the day, Member Support can still be a tough job. “Member Support doesn't get a lot of happy calls...we are where Members go when something doesn’t go right,” said Ratcliff. “But some of my most valued memories are Member interactions. I treat every Member interaction like their question or issue is the most important thing. Because it is.”

He’s not kidding. It’s amazing the lengths to which this team will go to serve Members. Paul said he once spent more than two hours on the phone with a Member who needed help clipping into their pedals. “It was someone who was unfamiliar with the bike,” he said. “Their son or daughter was usually there to help them, but they weren't there [that day]. I just walked them through it, and we were talking about everything from bikes to paychecks. It was a lot, but it was fun. There was nothing else that I wanted to focus on but making sure the problem was resolved.” 

Paul said he always keeps the end goal in mind, even when he takes tough calls. “Those passionate Members who come in frustrated because they expected a certain experience—they are the ones who stick around the longest if we do it right.”

In everything they do, the Member Support Team commits to, well, putting Members first.

“They're Members, not customers,” Holmes said. “They're in the community. It's this family. Most of the time, even when the Members that call in are unhappy, they're still nice. It’s so rewarding because at the end of the day, my job is to help them. I understand why they’re frustrated and I want to help them, so I will do everything I can to do that. That's really rewarding.”

Maintaining that consistent customer experience is what sets Peloton’s Member Support Team apart. “I think that's one of the features of our ‘star-tup culture’ that we've carried over through the IPO and through scaling so much—treating everyone as if they were our hundredth customer,” Paul said. “It's not really a numbers game here. It's a names game. Everyone is someone to us.”