When you’re out in the field and your software hits a snag, you don’t want a robot or a “support ticket” number. You want a real human who knows the grit of this industry. In Episode 70 of The Ride Along, Brad Lowery sits down with two legends behind the chat bubble: Lisa Lack and Matt Wheeler.
These aren’t just tech support names. Lisa has been a cornerstone of the Palmtech community since 2004, and Matt is a Senior Platform Specialist who has led thousands of ISN data migrations and backend setups since 2016. They are the ones who handle the data loads and software configurations that keep your business from breaking.
Tune in to learn why having a senior pro is the “secret sauce” for your business’ stability and get a first look at the new training updates Lisa’s building to help you power through reports even faster. Episode 70 gives you a look at the people doing the work to make sure your home inspection company runs like a well-oiled machine.
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Transcript
Brad Lowery
Guys, a special episode. See, I already have to start over right there.
Lisa Lack
Hahaha
Brad Lowery
It is 9 a.m. on a Tuesday, y’all. And we have a very special episode for y’all today because we’re speaking with two of my favorite people at Porch. We have Lisa Lack and Chris Daughtry. I mean, I, Matt Wheeler, but now, honestly, guys, these are two wonderful people because you’ve heard Matt, Matt Brading the co-host, and I talk about Porch and ISN previously and.
Matt Wheeler
is 9 a.m. on a Tuesday, y’all, and we have a very special.
Lisa Lack
Thank
Brad Lowery
all of the awesome services that they have to offer. And it’s no secret that Porch puts on this show, but what you guys don’t get to see is the people behind the scenes. And so today we are highlighting Porch’s Customer Success team that helps inspectors everywhere to elevate their business and their experience with all of purchase products. So Lisa, Matt, welcome to the show. And I want to really emphasize kind of the human element here because a lot of people, when they think.
Lisa Lack
Thanks, good to be here.
Matt Wheeler
Thank you so much.
Brad Lowery
Customer support, they hear Customer support. We don’t just have Customer support, we have Customer Success. Because if customers are not successful, then are we really supporting them, right? But I want them to get to know you guys because I love that at Porch, we place a huge value on the human element. We’re not just a chat bubble or anything like that. We have people behind the scenes that are helping real people in the field. So Lisa, let’s start, ladies first, tell them a little bit about yourself and your background because you have quite an extensive background with working with inspection software and services.
Lisa Lack
Yeah, awesome. So I am from Cincinnati, Ohio. I’ve lived here my whole life. I love, you know, we’re big hometown proud people, you know, we root for the Cincinnati Reds, the Bengals as bad as they can be. We still root for them. So we love our sports. And I have been, I started with Palm Tech inspection software 20 some years ago in 2004, I started with Palm Tech. So been around for quite some time. I’ve worked with ISN quite a bit over the years, even before we kind of joined forces. I did a lot of the integrating Palm Tech with ISN and getting to know that product as well. So been around for a long time. I love working with home inspectors. I love what I do. And yeah, I don’t know, Brad, anything else that you want to know, but.
Brad Lowery
I mean, is your favorite player for the Reds the same as mine? Ken Griffey Jr. I mean, that was a long time ago. I’m dating myself here, but man, he was the best in it. Yeah.
Lisa Lack
Yeah. He’s a classic for sure. I mean, now everybody is like into Ely, of course, you know, seeing what he does. He’s hot and cold with me, you know, if he botches my bets, then I’m not a fan of his. It’s happened more than once.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, absolutely.
Matt Wheeler
Thanks
Brad Lowery
I get that, definitely get that. Now see if there was going to be a drink of the day, I would say that it would be sponsored by German beer because Cincinnati has the biggest, the biggest Oktoberfest outside of Munich, if I understand correctly. Yep. So Zinz and Adi.
Lisa Lack
Yeah. Yep. And it’s an honor if you’re in that Oktoberfest to be the person who leads to chicken dance. That’s a huge honor. No, I have not.
Brad Lowery
Have you done it? dang it. Okay. See, I figured you would have. now, awesome city. I’ll actually be up there later on this week. So yeah, absolutely love it. And Matt, honestly, we’ve got to hang out at several conferences. You are one of the staples at ISN. People that have been using it for a long time know you so well. You’ve helped so many people get started with their businesses, get off the ground, get integrated. You’ve been doing this game for a long time, man. So tell everybody about you. I would love to love for them to know you the way that I know you.
Matt Wheeler
Yeah, I appreciate it. So I’ve been with ISN for 10 years now. I got brought on in 2016. And usually when I say that, I have everyone in the room beat. But Lisa, after your introduction, I’m the least tenured one here. yeah, it’s been an awesome ride for me for 10 years and still loving what I’m doing, just like Lisa said. prior to this role, I was doing other software support and thought it would just be more of the same. And it hasn’t been this experience here with ISN and with Porch has been fantastic. They’ve allowed me to grow and working with inspectors is really kind of something that has always been close to me. I actually had the opportunity of purchasing a house when I was 20 years old. And, and so I’ve always felt close to the, to the experience. And, and so to now be able to help those inspectors that are also close to that just that whole environment has been fantastic for me.
Brad Lowery
No, I love it, man. You helped me to get off the ground with ISN as well when I was setting up my own LLC and just seeing how simple it is to set everything up. The process of doing that and knowing that I didn’t have to just do it myself was amazing. So what is what is your work week look like? What’s your role with home inspectors? Let’s tell everybody a little bit about that. Like what tasks do you do and what is your process in which you go about supporting inspectors in the field?
Matt Wheeler
Yeah, we have such a great team, you know, that is responsible for making sure that everyone is successful. But my role specifically, you know, so my title is Senior Platform Specialist. And it’s just basically knowing the things and being around long enough that many people wouldn’t know that need to be addressed. you know, if something’s broken in the software, I am often one of the few around that, I remember we had that issue seven years ago, you know what I mean? Stuff like that. And just knowing all the little things that may not be obvious to everyone, that’s where I’m well utilized here, I would say, in the software and in the business. But my role day to day, as far as just what do I need to get done? A lot of backend stuff nowadays, so data loads, data preparation, as we have an inspector maybe joining our softwares that came from other softwares. You know, we need to, they don’t want to start over. They can’t start fresh. They have a book of business. They have history, all that. So we need to figure out how do we get that into, into ISN or any of the Porch products. So helping with that stuff, helping our team or support team grow and try to help them get the knowledge that I’ve, you know, been able to obtain over the last 10 years is a big win for the inspectors also just making sure that we all have the knowledge and it’s not just siloed somewhere. So just kind of helping bring the team forward helps bring the inspectors forward. So that’s a big part of what I do, I think.
Brad Lowery
No, that’s awesome. And let’s actually talk about the team because Customer Success as an entity is a little bit newer here at Porch. But it was an initiative that we undertook headed up by Aaron Ziomek umm We’ve we featured him before. If you go back to a video about it, I think it was two years ago. We featured him in his new role there. But we kind of moved everything under one silo in order to help everybody. Lisa, can you talk a little bit about that and what that has helped to accomplish as far as actually helping inspectors win?
Lisa Lack
Yeah, absolutely. I think that, as you said, it’s been about two years now, we’re going on two years, that we’ve been under Aaron and the new umbrella, like I would like to call it, of just everybody kind of living under one umbrella of all our products come together. you’re going to, you know, somebody reaches out to us, they may need a product for their back office and a report writer. They may also want to add warranties, all of these things. Well, it’s all under one umbrella now. So, you know, you call in and we have all of this stuff available to you. So it’s huge that we’ve kind of all joined forces. One of the things I really love about what we have done with joining forces is like I have my team, now they are able to cross, know, train on different things. you know, they come in, they may be coming in to get onboarded to ISN or to Palm Tech or to HomeSpectre Pro. Well, we can also cross-train them to where they can also onboard them to our ISG services and able to answer any of those questions that may come up. And just having them have that broader knowledge, I think is a huge win. Instead of, like you said, we were in these little silos before where they may not have had the broader knowledge of all the other products that we offer and able to help our inspectors.
Brad Lowery
And honestly, I feel like it’s a more holistic effort. Like everybody’s kind of pulling in the same direction. So what can inspectors do that they’re not already doing for people who aren’t leaning on the tools and resources that we have? What should they be considering about how they can leverage the Customer Success team to continue to grow and improve their business?
Matt Wheeler
To be honest with you, Brad, I have heard that question because I was going to piggyback on what Lisa was just talking about for a second. if you don’t mind, I’ll kind of just jump in on that one. you know, she was mentioning just the cross team, the collaboration that we have, you know, that’s been huge. will say, for everyone on the team, it’s not even just the inspector benefit there. It’s on the team. Like I’ve learned so much about how these other teams operate and I’ve, you know,
Brad Lowery
Yeah, jump in.
Matt Wheeler
Stolen little processes from them and they’ve asked how do you do this over there? you know, it’s really, I think it’s built, it’s given us all the opportunity to grow beyond what we could have done alone. So, you know, if I was just ISN and only ISN forever, I wouldn’t be as, you know, as developed, I would say, as someone able to support as I am now because I’ve been able to really just lean on the things that I think we could improve on and been able to share with them where I think they could improve. So, you know, just the cross team collaboration, I think is not to be understated.
Brad Lowery
Now, absolutely. And there’s so many things that have come out of that because the last year and a half has run so smoothly, truly. There’s been so much feedback that’s been taken from inspectors and been applied across the board. What ways are we going to be looking to continue to do that going forward?
Matt Wheeler
Yeah, I will say from what I’ve witnessed, know, it’s there are ways you can apply fixes or apply improvements. There are band-aids and then there are like, let’s take a step back and maybe spend extra time really understanding why did this happen and not just how do we fix it this time? How do we make sure it doesn’t happen next time? And like you mentioned, it’s you’ve noticed in the past year and a half that things have gotten better, more stable, more consistent that’s all just credit to the, the, the development team and the teams that assist them and really approaching things the right way in my opinion, and not applying quick fixes. But, you know, how do we make, how are we more successful in five years from now? Not just how do we get through today?
Brad Lowery
That’s good.
Lisa Lack
And that too, that’s a big way, that’s another big win of us all joining forces. Cause we have those resources that, you know, we can apply like, like Matt was saying, you know, these fixes, we’re joining these resources. It works for Palm tech. works for, you know, ISN and Home Inspector Pro. So we’re, really streamlining that in the backend too. And the developers have just really done a great job of, you know, joining those resources together as one instead of three separate.
Brad Lowery
Well, it’s not even just three separate. mean, we were talking about this off air, but we play in a very big sandbox and we acknowledge that. That’s one of the coolest things I think as much as we love and would invite people to use Home Inspector Pro, PondTac, the ISN Report Writer. ISN works with almost every home inspection platform that’s out there.
Lisa Lack
Yeah. Great.
Brad Lowery
Right? So whether you’re you, you love what you’ve got right now while you’re out in the field, we won’t name names, but, you know, we, we integrate across the board. And so I loved the idea here is that, you know, while we’re helping inspectors when yeah, on some level, we’re probably helping our competitors win too, but a rising tide raises all ships. Right? And so we’re taking that same kind of a principle and we apply it in-house first. I think it’s fantastic.
Lisa Lack
Thank you.
Brad Lowery
Let’s talk about this too. What are some of the core values for the Customer Success team when it comes to helping to elevate the inspector experience?
Matt Wheeler
So for core values and elevating the experience, know, here at Porch, we have a number of values that we try to stay close to align our daily efforts to. And so I’ll just start with together we win the kind of, we we’ve basically been talking about that just now, cross team collaboration and the more the merrier when it comes to knowledge sharing and you know, if I know something and the person next to me doesn’t, how about I share it? We both know it and then we can both apply it. So I would say together we win is a great value there. I would say also a Porch value that I like to stay close to is solve each problem. You asked earlier, Brad, what are my daily duties essentially when it comes to my role? It’s a hard question to answer. I don’t do the same thing every day. It’s you figure out what needs to be done today. You solve each problem. Even though I’ve been doing this for 10 years, I’m telling you every single day I run into a problem I haven’t faced yet. And it just takes dedication and willingness to solve it for the inspector, with the inspector. So just getting scrappy, I would say that is just often what it takes. It’s not just a carved out role that I’m in. There are problems in front of us and one way or the other, we’re going to solve them.
Brad Lowery
That’s good. Lisa, can you tack onto that a little bit too?
Lisa Lack
Yeah, absolutely. think too, just, as you we were speaking earlier about the experience and like kind of solving those problems. I think.
I think Matt mentioned something about like just stepping back and not just fixing it for now, but fixing it for the longterm. And really that takes collaboration across the team to just come together and figure out a solution, not just let’s band-aid it for now, because it’s going to come back up again. And just really being able to be proactive about things. So fix the issues before they even come up. And we have a really great team across the board for that. have great leaders that think, you know, think bigger than, you know, and, and I think that’s huge of just kind of getting together with all of the knowledge we have across the, of the teams and, thinking about things before we go and release anything or before we roll out a new process. I think that’s huge. And again, I think with all of our joining together, like we’ve also had a lot of changes in our processes altogether. And I think that’s been a really big advance in the right direction of all of us being on the same page, being able to help our customers better because we’re all following the same processes now.
Brad Lowery
No, that’s fantastic. Definitely. And honestly, this helps inspectors everywhere that are willing to tap into it. But I get a feeling that very few inspectors actually lean into the values and the resources that we have to offer with the Customer Success team. So I would love to hear some Success stories if you have some or, you know, Matt, you were even talking about this. A majority of people that do finally reach out to Customer support and Customer Success. It’s when they’ve got a problem. But are there things and ways that they could be tapping into our resources ahead of time that could just help them in general, only when they have a problem.
Matt Wheeler
Absolutely. mean, this is something I hear of a lot, you know, as I travel and do some conferences and meet a lot of inspectors in person. I’ll hear, you know, I know ISN does a lot or, but I don’t know what I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m not using. And, you know, I, I’ve always said, call us, can do an account review with you. We’re happy to sit down and just offer suggestions. I’m never going to tell you what to do with your business, with your account, but I can say, I’ve seen this be used and I’ve seen it be successful. I noticed you’re using this. How about we try that with this and pair things and see what works? there are a lot of options, a lot of different ways to configure your accounts, regardless of if it’s ISN or any of our softwares. We on this side, we’re in those softwares every single day. we know, we do, in our opinion, we know what works and we know what doesn’t, and we’re happy to give those account reviews. So I think that is often missed and maybe inspectors think they can only call us when they have problems and that’s absolutely not the case. We’re here to help, you know, help you grow or help when you have the problem.
Brad Lowery
No, that’s good. Lisa, you have anything to add onto that?
Lisa Lack
Absolutely. That’s where my team shines. if you, you know, any inspectors out there want to know more, we have a great training and onboarding team. They’re fun too. Like they’re just really great people. I love everybody on my team. They have great personalities. They’re so empathetic. They know the product. Like Matt said, like they’re going to take the time to say, Hey, maybe it wasn’t designed to do this the way that you were thinking, but we can do a workaround and we can make it work. So that’s huge. I think that we’re successful when we train and teach our inspectors to use the products that we provide for them to the max, because that’s going to help them be more successful. that just, know, knowledge is strength. if you teach them how to use it, you know, they’re just going to be more successful at it.
Brad Lowery
Yeah, I totally agree. Honestly, the time to do marketing with home inspections is when you’re busy, right? I’ve preached this to home inspectors. I’ve had a preach to me, but I also think when it comes to the effectiveness of your business and keeping it moving and optimizing it, it’s not when you have a problem. It’s when everything’s going great, right? So if you have a lull in business or even if things are clipping along, always be asking yourself, what could I be doing better? How can I optimize this even better? We’ve got people and resources that can help with that.
Matt Wheeler
I want to add to that too, Brad. Even if, you did an account review with us six months ago, a year ago, and you think that you’re completely caught up and everything is exactly how it should be, I will say our development teams for all of our softwares are so hard at work every single day, every single week. We’re releasing new information, new, not information, but more new settings and new fixes and new enhancements every single week we do releases in all of our softwares. So although you may feel caught up, a month later, you’re maybe not. So I would say that, you know, always be willing to assess it again, even if it feels like you recently did.
Brad Lowery
No, I absolutely love it. Now let’s talk about this then too. People need a way to reach out to you guys, right? And obviously we have a slew of ways to do that within ISN, within our softwares, but what is the most direct way that people can get in touch with the Customer Success team so that they can make those optimizations in advance?
Lisa Lack
Absolutely.
Matt Wheeler
So for the support side of things, we do email, we do chat, we do phone support. We don’t have a preference, whatever works for you. However, in my opinion, the easiest thing to do is hop into your ISN account, hop into any of the software accounts you’re using with us, and hit the live chat bubble. You’re immediately going to be presented with the option to talk to a representative, and you can get live support. And if you’re a self learner and you want some self-led content, some help articles,
They’re there off to the side for you to click on. If you want direct help from a human, we have that. have staff available, ready to help, ready to assist. So to me, that is the most efficient and easiest way to get help is to just look for the chat bubble once you’re in your software.
Lisa Lack
Yeah. And then if you, you know, even he said you have your, all of our help centers, you can get right from there. If you want to request a training too, you can do all of that from the chat bubble. So yeah, that’s the easiest by far to just jump in chat bubbles.
Brad Lowery
Fantastic, no, I love it. Well, at least you actually put on a bunch of trainings throughout the year too. Are there any coming up that we can let everybody know about?
Lisa Lack
Yeah, as far as trainings, we are adding to that and I’m excited for 2026 because we’re revamping a lot of the trainings for all of the products that we are across the board, like we’re redoing Home Inspector Pro stuff. So just keep an eye out on our support sites. We do monthly webinars. So, you if somebody wants to just jump into a monthly webinar to see what we’re teaching on, we just had a huge release for Palm Tech. So we’re going to be covering a lot of the new features and the upcoming webinars for Palm Tech. you know, yeah, absolutely. We’re constantly updating the training stuff, the help articles there. They’re getting updated constantly as well.
Brad Lowery
fantastic. And two years in now with Customer Success. not only are we offering live support, not only are we offering ongoing education, what is Customer Success looking to do within the next, say, three years as we accomplish a five year mission? What can inspectors look forward to there?
Lisa Lack
just grow and get better 100%. I think if you ever get to the point where you think you’ve accomplished everything, then that’s not a good place to be. We want to just continue to get better, to give better service and provide it for our inspectors because I truly, truly feel that the better service that we provide for them, then they can provide better service for their customers. And that’s the bigger picture. We’re helping all these new homes buyers and maybe somebody that’s buying their final home or whatever, that’s huge that we’re a little part of that.
Brad Lowery
Absolutely, Well guys, give a final thought here to the inspectors that are watching and for one quick way that they could really look to optimize their business this week.
Matt Wheeler
One way to optimize your business this week, would say, you know, we’ve basically already touched on it, but I’ll reemphasize. Find the time. know you guys are all busy. We’re all busy. Totally get it, but find the time. Find five minutes to even just start. Go into the account and just try to find something that you don’t know what it does. Try to just start there. You’ll question it. You can, you can lean on us. can lean on the self-led content. Learn what it does. And I just, I can almost guarantee you that that’ll lead to something else, which will eventually lead to something that really works for you. So, just be willing to admit that you don’t know everything about the system and go find something that you need to know more about. And, and I think, you know, that paired with the fact that we’re here to help, I think, you can move your business forward doing that this week.
Lisa Lack
Absolutely. And I think another huge thing is just, you know, reflection. Like even if you were very, very successful last year, just always keep that growing kind of spirit about you and just say, what can I do this year to kind of elevate more than where I was last year? That’s huge in any small business, think. Are there any different tools I need to use? Like Matt said, there may be things in the software that is going to streamline what they’re doing on a daily basis and make it even easier or faster and better. Reach out to us because again, we’ll take the time and we know like this is busy season. We understand that. We’ve been doing this a long time on both ends, like Matt on the support side, us on the training onboarding, we understand. But just taking an hour out of your time to do a training session maybe with that could be save you hours of work in the long term, you know. So just take the time to reflect and look at the things you can change or tweak to make your business even better.
Brad Lowery
I love it. love it. Well guys, thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. Again, guys, it doesn’t take a whole lot of time to ask some questions and to reach out to these folks. And there are one click on the live chat bubble away to talk to a real human to optimize your business. These guys are here for you all throughout the week and all throughout the year, lots of cool stuff coming up. So thank you guys so much for watching. Lisa, Matt, thank you so much for being here today.
Matt Wheeler
Thank you, Brad.
Lisa Lack
Thanks.
Brad Lowery
All right, so be sure to subscribe to the show. Hang with us. We’ll be back next time. Better than ever, right here on The Ride Along.