Kildare, County Kildare, Ireland
E2M is the global team responsible for managing customer-facing communications during events that impact the AWS platform. Operating under a follow-the-sun model, my directs and I provide coverage for all incidents around the world occurring during our site hours, 365 days a year.
First Drop is the magazine supplied to members of the European Coaster Club. Every new issue contains at least 48 pages of roller coaster news and views from all over the world, along with scores of pictures. I proof-read and (where necessary) edit articles ahead of publication, and contribute my own from time to time.
I was brought into Ground Labs to take charge of and develop a 24x5 support operation that needed discipline and organisation. Achievements include: • Recruiting and onboarding of staff members, including a completely new division operating from Austin, Texas. • Raising of our customer satisfaction scores from a very low base to over 99% positive, while maintaining an average first response time of around one hour. This was recognised in May 2020 when the team won a bronze Stevie® Award for Customer Service Department of the Year. • Performance management, training, and mentoring of existing team members, several of whom have since moved on to more senior positions both inside and outside of the organisation. • Managing (and defusing) occasional high-temperature customer situations. • Working closely with the Ground Labs’ engineering and product teams to prioritise customer-impacting issues through JIRA. • Promotion to the company management team after one year in role. • Installing, configuring, and maintaining the Dublin office network, comprising two managed switches, four VLANs, VoIP phones, a wireless access point, and conferencing equipment. While in this role I completed both the Front Line Management and Essential Skills of Management courses at the Irish Management Institute, and a Zendesk Certified Support Administrator certification. This role ended with redundancy due to the impact of the COVID pandemic.
My day-to-day role within Amazon involved problem solving and architectural guidance for customers using the AWS Cloud to run their businesses. I was also involved in other projects: • Developing and delivering training courses for onboarding of new engineers. • Management of service events during Dublin hours, many of which ended up listed on the AWS Service Health Dashboard. • Recruitment of new candidates; I completed over 250 interviews on behalf of Amazon both in the Dublin office and at a special recruitment event in India. • Training of members of the AWS Infrastructure team to improve response times during rack failure events. • Travel to China, Taiwan, and Korea for delivery of both internal and customer facing training. • Identification of a number of potential security issues impacting the AWS platform, which I narrowed down and drove to resolution. While at Amazon I held a number of industry certifications, including AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional, Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS), and ITIL® v3 Foundation.