[Evan HamiltonParticipant]

If you’re new, then this is your welcome thread! Thanks for being part of making this forum a fantastic resource for those who care for customers. You rock!

What you need to know:

• This forum is a safe, private place
• You can find our forum guidelines here
• Everyone is here to learn and share, so please do the same
• There’s no such thing as a dumb question or bad answer. The more we all share, the more we learn
• Some great places to start are:
  • “What ONE tip should your fellow UserCentrics know?”
  • “What have you/your team done lately that’s pretty damn cool?”
  • “Who’s your favorite superhero?”

So we can all get to know you, please reply to this thread with answers to the following questions:

1. What do you do?

2. Why did you join this group?

3. What do you like to do in your spare time?

4. What is your favorite cat image, animated gif, or YouTube video? Paste the URL here.

(And if you have something you want to ask the group, don’t be afraid to post it!)

---

I’ll get us started…

My name is Evan. I’m Head of Community at UserVoice. I’ve been in tech for about 6 years doing community management…and during much of that time I was doing customer service work. These days I only do a smattering of customer service each day, but I work with an awesome company to ensure that we treat our customers great.

I started this group because I love learning from others and couldn’t find much like this for folks who do customer service.

In my spare time I like to play Americana music as Kicking Tuesday. It’s a great release to write for myself and pair it up with (hopefully) beautiful music. I also enjoy riding my bike, drinking beer, playing video games, eating good food, and living in Oakland. I co-created a holiday, International Beer Day, so that the world could have a country-agnostic beer celebration. It’s a lot of work but it’s pretty fun.

My favorite cat is probably Maru or maybe Winston.

I know many of you pretty well, but I can’t wait to hear more from you and learn a lot on this forum!

[Evan HamiltonParticipant]

@jessica I’m going to put you on the spot to go second. It’s good practice for UserConf.

[Jenn EmersonParticipant]

Hi Evan and all! My name is Jenn. I practice community management for Telligent in Dallas, TX. We build community software, so the pressure to be awesome at community management is slightly heightened. *cranes neck, loosens collar* <- Yep, I’m one of those people that provides textual imagery between two asterisks. Sorry.

I’ve been working in community management for a few years professionally. My path to community management started out with building my own hobby websites for fun. I married that amateur experience with social media work I was doing while working for interactive ad agencies. It’s been a somewhat organic trip to where I am now. I’ve always been a bit of a consumer advocate and a #CX critic. So, I’m really happy to be working with a customer community full-time now. I juggle a little social media management with some customer support to be the customer advocate - the voice that is always on the customer side.

I want to keep growing in this job. So, I am really looking forward to learning and sharing with everyone in Customer Service Central!

[Jerry SparksParticipant]

Hi All! I’m Jerry Sparks and I am the founding member of the User Operations Team (Product Support, Customer Service and many other Customer related duties) at Asana. I’ve had a rich history of various Customer Service oriented roles but have been performing my current role for almost 2 years. I really love being the link between our Customers and our full Asana team; you learn so much when you can translate between both sides.

When I’m not neck deep in work, I really enjoy the various shapes and sizes of pasta. I really think I find a new type of pasta every time I go shopping!! My current obsession: Anellini

I have two lovely lil kittie brothers named Dr. Charles Okra III & Professor Umlaut Zorlac DDS (Okra & Umlaut for short). And I’ve got a fuzzy lil mini lop eared rabbit we call Dr. BunBun Gus McGhee. I also have a dream of one day owning a farm in North Carolina, but for now, I’m settling for convincing my boyfriend that we need a couple alpacas in our yard in Berkeley. And yes, I would walk them to the park.

I’m currently reading books on Physics, Biology & Chemistry because I’m a huge nerd and think Science is freaking awesome…SCIENCE!!!

It’s great we’re developing a Customer oriented community - I’m really excited to contribute to and learn from it!!!!!!!!

[Evan HamiltonParticipant]

Woah…I don’t think I’ve ever had Anellini. I’m not even sure what to do with that pasta. Mind blown.

BTW folks, I can attest that Jerry is super-passionate about customer service. So happy to have her as part of the conversation!

Paging @kendall next, since she’s already posted elsewhere in the forum…

[Kendall SweeneyParticipant]

Hello to my fellow Support Professionals! My name is Kendall Sweeney and I am the Head of Support at BandPage, a music-tech startup here in Sf. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible for musicians to develop a strong online presence to interact with their fans. This way they can spend more time playing music and less time fiddling with technology to try and reach everyone. I was first drawn to the company because of a deep rooted, and life-long love affair with all things musical. I geek out on new music discoveries daily, but that is what we all do over here, so it makes for a really fun work place!

My work here serves two primary purposes- one is to help our users understand how best to utilize their BandPage, and the other is to help our Development team communicate with BizDev, Artist Relations, and Product. Sometimes things get lost in translation, so I do my best to make sure everyone is on the same page! I am really excited to be working on this with you all and can’t wait to start learning new tricks and techniques

I also love science and often find myself at the Planetarium Nightlife series, immersed in the latest National Geographic, or drooling over nature documentaries! The natural world BLOWS MY MIND!

 

[Lauren BuchsbaumParticipant]

Hi, all! Lauren here, looking forward to some good ol’ fashioned industry discussion.

I work at ToutApp, an email productivity tool for sales and biz dev folks. My official title is “Happiness Officer,” which our customers love and are always really curious about. I do a combination of community work, product management - oh, and I’m the one-person support team for our 30,000+ users. We’re all about making our customers happy, so it’s really important for me to think outside of the support requests we get to notice the larger patterns in usage and shape our product accordingly.

Work keeps me pretty busy. But outside of it, I can be found horseback riding in the hills, laying in the park, going to comedy shows and wishing I was funny enough to get on stage, and geeking out over videos of red pandas.

Here’s one for you all to enjoy!

P.S. Jerry, we use Asana! Great tool

[Christa ColinsParticipant]

Hey everyone! My name is Christa, and I’m really excited to be here.

I am the Customer Support Director at Squarespace, and I’ve been there for almost 6 years now. I started as a one-woman support team, and now manage a department of 30+ support staff. We’re constantly evaluating customer feedback to improve our product, and looking at ways to educate our customers and make them successful and happy! Also, I try to ensure that my team always has the tools they need to get their job done effectively, so a lot of my job is supporting our support.

Outside of Squarespace I’m a mother to 4 girls which keeps me pretty busy. I can’t live without coffee, my sewing machine, and my kindle.

[Ted ChoperModerator]

Hey all!

I’m Ted, Head of Support here at UserVoice. Really looking forward to seeing this community grow and hearing all of your thoughts surrounding what we do every day (and sometimes night!).

When I’m not working to build and maintain an awesome support department, I love playing computer games, reading, food, and running (well I don’t enjoy the running, but like the results).

Cheers!

[Mathew PattersonParticipant]

Hello,

 

I’m Mat, head of customer service for Campaign Monitor. We’re based in Sydney but my support team are additionally spread out in the US, Canada, England, Ireland and Norway. I started 6 years ago when Campaign Monitor was just the two founders and a developer but now we look after customers 24 hours a day all over the world.

Like Christa, I spend most of my time helping the support team be more effective and backing them up when they need it. Outside of customer stuff I live south of Sydney with my wife, my two boys and our 4 chickens and spend a lot of time playing trains and trucks.

In Sydney there isn’t a huge number of web type businesses doing customer service of the same type or scale as us, so it was awesome to be at UserConf and meet folk like me, and similarly I’m excited to be here.

[Courtney DuhringParticipant]

Hi Everyone,

I’m Courtney, Manager for Eventbrite’s Client Services Team. Over the past 2.5 years that I’ve been with Eventbrite, our team has grown from 5 to 44 members, with 8 individuals based in our London office. Between the two offices, the team supports 24/7 service through phone and email. A big initiative that we’re currently testing is adding live chat into the mix. We’re really excited to release this option out into the wild, and engage customers through whatever form of communication they prefer!

When I’m not hanging out in the “Briteland”, I enjoy singing with The Choral Project and taking extended walks/hikes around SF and the Bay Area.

It’s great to see the discussions taking place already through this community forum. I really love hearing so many perspectives and identifying best practices from around the service industry.

Cheers,

- Courtney

[Chase ClemonsParticipant]

Hi All!

I’m Chase. Course, I guess that’s redundant since you can see my name and photo over to the left of this post. Anyway….

My background is in all things related to the customer - everything from retail to restaurants. I work on the stellar support team at 37signals. We’re a small team at seven but we’re adding a few more people in the coming weeks so that’s always fun.

Outside of that, I also blog a little over at Support Ops. My wife’s a photographer and always on the hunt for a great photo, which leads us on many crazy roadtrips. I’m also a lover of good whiskies and quite partial to my Jack Daniel’s whiskey since I live 15 minutes from the distillery.

I’m stoked to be here!

[Julie EdwardsParticipant]

Well hello there. Nice to meet you

I’m Julie, Client Services Manager for BoomTown. We’re a technology company based in Charleston SC that builds a lead generation and tracking platform for Real Estate Agents. Now that the boring stuff is out of the way, here are some things you should know about me:

I’m originally from Arkansas and while I’m terribly proud of my home state, I’m awfully glad to be living near the beach
I have a degree in fashion (yep, you read correctly) which led me to Boston where I fell in love with the city, spent way too much money on drinks, and eventually learned that not fashion, but technology was the industry for me - the client facing side of tech companies of course.
I hate Math. (Sorry Math Lovers)
My gentleman friend and I were in the same kindergarten class. Kindergarten - does anyone think that word is strange? What are we. German?
Like any good BoomTowner, I have 2 dogs - Crash Davis and his Sister Hazel (Wordplay intended)
I love showing people around Charleston and connecting with fellow bright minds! Please let me know if you’re every in Charleston, SC!

[Anonymous]

Julie Edwards is a hard act to follow, but here goes!

My name is Erica Dean, and I am the Operations Lead for BoomTown. We’re build Real Estate Web Marketing Platforms for Real Estate Agents and Brokers all over the US, and we’re based in Charleston, SC.

I moved around quite a bit as a very young child, but I’ve called Charleston, SC home for almost 20 years. I have a B.S. in Mathematics with minors in Actuarial Studies and Economics (nerd alert), but I fell in love with the tech industry my senior year of college, and I’m happy to say that I haven’t taken a derivative or calculated an integral in almost four years (MAJOR nerd alert)!

I have two dogs, Gabby and Grant, and when I’m not chasing after the two of them or cleaning my house (I may or may not have an unhealthy obsession with clean surfaces), you’ll likely find me in the kitchen trying out a new recipe. I started learning to cook just over a year ago, and I absolutely love it! Most of all, I enjoy cooking for others and will often make something just to take it into the office for my coworkers to enjoy. Needless to say, I think it makes me one of the favorites. Right, Julie?

I’m really looking forward to getting to know most (all?) of you through the forum. And to second Ms. Edwards, if you are ever in Charleston, let us know! We’d love to have you.

Erica

[Molly LevyParticipant]

Hello everyone! I’m Molly and I am in charge of US customer service for Avira GmbH. I came to Avira from a startup, SocialShield, that Avira acquired in March of 2012. Avira Inc. is Avira’s only US office and we are growing rapidly. Our customer service team is brand new and all of us wear many different hats to contribute to the dynamic (though technically no longer a startup) startup-esque environment

Like I mentioned, our team is brand new which has been a blessing but has also created some challenges. Processes for internal and external communication, training, supervision, performance evaluation, and everything else that goes into a successful customer service team are essentially up to me. Yikes! Needless to say, I’m a fan of exceptional customer service and believe that delivering quality service to Avira customers will help to build brand recognition and loyalty, and has the potential to increase user acquisition. I hope to get involved in this community to contribute and learn as much as possible!

Spare time…. What’s that? I don’t like to leave my work at work although I am able to do so sometimes. I enjoy texting pictures of my cat to my entire contact list, eating pancakes, and going on “walks” (I do not like to call it hiking since I think too much will be expected of me). I also watch HGTV exclusively and like to go to open houses on Sundays just for fun.

I am looking forward to learning from all of the great minds of the customer service world.

[Author]

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