Production Support Lead

Varolii Corporation provides the most comprehensive array of enterprise notification solutions from a single, proven source. Corporations and government entities use the high-availability, high-capacity technology to proactively and personally interact with customers, employees and other constituents via any wired or wireless device. The company’s hosted, automated services meet the needs of the entire enterprise, helping them communicate information across the customer lifecycle, from collections to customer service and marketing, as well as through unplanned events and emergencies that threaten the continuity of business operations. Customers include US Airways, Medco, Bear Stearns, Nextel Partners and Symantec. For more information, visit www.varolii.com.

Job Summary: A leadership position within the Production Support Team of Customer Management, the Production Support Lead is an experienced role with potential for growth. Working closely with other members of the Production Support Team and other functional groups within the Customer Management organization and Varolii Corporation as a whole, the Production Support Lead provides technical expertise in handling production issues and complex inquiries for customers.  The Production Support Lead will provide supervisory oversight and be responsible for ticket and queue management.

Primary Responsibilities: 

· Provide highly technical production/applications support and assistance for enterprise class customers and act as a technical escalation point for PSE or PSE II.

· Manage ticket assignment and resolution, ensuring that issues are addressed within our contractual SLAs.

· Act as a crisis/high pressure escalation point within the Production Support Team, and work with other Teams within Varolii to craft excellent verbal and written responses to Enterprise class Customers.

· Work with any Varolii individuals or Teams and Enterprise class Customer Executives to determine and enact necessary change to wide reaching policies and procedures or to institute them where they don’t exist.

· Independently oversee the production environment/personnel to ensure that Production Issues and responses to Enterprise class Customers are being addressed in a timely manner and within predetermined quality standards.

· Enact and enforce process and policy improvements for the Production Support Team.

· Work with the PSM, and HR if need be, to handle Personnel issues that occur within the Production Support Team and to enforce policy and procedure where they are not being observed.

· Provide ongoing team coaching and have input into performance evaluations.

· Works independently to gather information, pose workarounds, carry out necessary research, and provide an in-depth analysis to resolve production/application issues, customer requests and inquiries, escalating to a PSM, or other Varolii teams outside of the Production Support Team (e.g. Operations, Professional Services, or Product Development) when appropriate.

· When the opportunity presents itself and it is appropriate, work with a team or individually, to educate and empower the customer to understand how to perform tasks and investigations on their own.

· Provide severity and scope analysis of issues, inquiries and requests; maintaining ownership until resolution.

· Will provide a concrete explanation of resolutions to issues, inquiries and requests to Enterprise class customers.  These contacts will range from technical to those of an executive level within their organization.

· Work in group or independently on side projects as needed and assigned.

· Provides feedback and shapes production support procedures, policies and documentation where none exist or where they are stale and need to be updated.

· Efficiently organizes and addresses multiple production issues, customer requests and inquiries from several sources, delegating when appropriate.  The sources of which would be phone conversations, email, paging system, Instant Messenger chat, or face-to-face conversations.

· Work with Customer Advocates, the Sales team and other Varolii teams to determine the scope of moderate to complex modifications being done to existing applications.

 

Requirements (Knowledge, Skills and Abilities): 



· Technical Call center supervisory experience is a must.

· Is self motivated; will work well autonomously and within a team environment.

· Thrive in a high pace, high stress environment.

· Must be calm and clear headed in crisis/high pressure situations and able to clearly communicate faults that occurred, why they occurred and how they will be preventable in the future (in both verbal and written communication).

· Requires a strong working knowledge of trouble-shooting and problem resolution methodologies, company applications, production support policies and procedures.

· Ability to work multiple tasks simultaneously to completion.

· Must have a strong working knowledge of UNIX/Linux, SQL, shell scripting, XML, and a general understanding of encryption technologies (such as PGP and MD5).

· Must have an intermediate to strong knowledge of computer networking and network protocols, such as FTP, telnet, HTTP(S), and SSH.

· Must have a strong understanding of object oriented programming concepts such as methods, inheritance, abstract classes, etc.

· Must have a strong understanding of relational database concepts such as table joins, indexes, data types, etc.

· Exceptional dedication to World Class Customer Service with a focus on excellent phone and email etiquette.

 

Education / Experience:

· A Degree in the Computer Science, or Information Technology discipline

Or,

· The equivalent work experience of a minimum of 4 years experience in a highly technical customer service role with a strong understanding of customer service principles.