This is part 3 of a 3-part series about the challenges support teams might face during an acquisition. You might want to go back and read Part 1: The Good Stuff and Part 2: The Bad Stuff first)
It seems every week a new acquisition is announced here in the tech industry*. Last week, I gathered on a Zoom call with a group of customer support friends new and old to discuss our experiences, cheers, jeers, tips, frustrations, and questions related to companies either acquiring or being acquired.
Here is some of the questions, concerns, advice that we gathered by the end of the session:
What Remains
Not everyone in our session had been through an acquisition so those of us who had wanted to also use this session to answer lingering questions for those participants who were at once excited about and afraid of the prospect of either acquiring a company or having their company being acquired. As mentioned in Part 1, being acquired can come with financial reward and it can also support a boost in the shares held by people on the acquiring side. That said, it also can open up a knowledge vacuum where fear and uncertainty can come flooding in, clouding our thoughts and making it hard for us to do our best work. Here are some tips we share for anyone who might find themselves in an acquisition transition.
Make The First Move
When the acquisition is announced, it is never a bad idea to make haste to LinkedIn and seek out a few people who are likely to be your peers post-acquisition. In the early days, they are probably as much in the dark as you are and will often be open to meeting you — if only to pump you for more information.
A good faith effort to get to know the people and the company might feel like needless extra work, but it can give you the edge, when the integration work starts to get seriously underway. In the best case scenario, you might make a new colleague friend, but at the very least you’ll already know who to talk to — or who to avoid (just sayin’) — and can (hopefully!) avoid wasting time going down blind alleys.
Stay Curious
Despite the many negatives we mentioned in part 2, several people on the call still stressed the importance of continuing to ask questions and poke your nose in to conversations to try and get information about what is going on. Even in the trickiest of acquisition situations, you are likely to find friendly or at least helpful people on the “other side” who will be happy to tell you what they know and learn more about what you know.
No matter how unwanted the change might feel, at the end of the day everyone is just a human being looking to get their job done. If you approach things from that perspective rather than the “us vs. them” that we spoke about in the past section, you might be surprised at the results.
Know Your Limits
Towards the end of call, someone who’d never been through an acquisition asked us how we determined whether the post-acquisition company was still right for us, and how they might gauge for themselves if/when the time came. While the prospect of a big payday can certainly be reason enough to stick around and see what happens, if it comes at the expense of your mental health or overall well-being, the price may be too high.
When most of us are interviewing at a company, we are often assessed as to whether we are a “culture fit” and savvy job hunters also want to make sure the company aligns with their interests and values as well. However, an acquisition can sometimes result in a cultural collision. The cliche is one of buttoned-up corporate culture clashing with a laidback in hoodies startup, but the reality is often a lot more nuanced. In one case, a participant spoke about having a culture of consensus in decision-making before being acquired and then having to accept decisions from “on high” once the company was acquired. Someone else spoke about joining a company and enjoying good work-life balance until the acquisition, and then being asked to work late into the night to meet the demands of their new owner.
The people in the group who’d been through acquisitions all agreed that it was important to know your “non-negotiables” and hold to them no matter how glittery the gold. Someone in the group mentioned meeting with the acquiring company’s CS team and realizing they had a totally conflicting approach to support that seemed fairly ineffective would undoubtedly have a negative effect on customer experience. Another spoke to needless silos being put up between CS and Engineering, making it harder and more time-consuming to escalate issues.
In yet another case, people spoke to feeling redundant in a new company. One participant said they made the tough decision to leave because there simply wasn’t enough to do. The fast-paced shuffle of startup life was replaced with a lot of slow meetings and weeks of waiting for people to cut red tape. As one person put it, “If the energy changes and you don’t like it. It’s time to go.”
On the other hand, sometimes working within a larger company affords you the opportunity to really hone-in on what you are most passionate about and deepen your relationships with the people on your team. As one participant so wisely put it, “If you like the people you work with, it might be worth sticking it out just for that.”
Have you or someone you know been part of an acquisition? How did you handle it and what advice do you have for your peers? Drop your thoughts in the comments!
* Non-exhaustive list of new acquisitions
Camille E. Acey 
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