Executive Insight: Diversity is Key
By Austin Winters

Austin Winters is Vice President of Business Operations for Treetop Technologies, a provider of IT support services to government and technology companies. Winters is responsible for global business operations, including the management of client sites and their respective delivery teams. He currently oversees a workforce of hundreds of IT specialists, satellite offices in seven states and three countries, and the management of more than $4 billion in IT technologies that support over 30,000 worldwide users. Winter’s primary focus is the continued development of innovative service and delivery models designed to meet the strategic business objectives and profitability goals of clients.The company is headquartered in Boise, ID with offices in Canada and Singapore.

Winters took a few minutes to talk with SSPA about Treetop Tech’s approach to recruiting and developing support staff and support managers.

SSPA: What attributes do you look for when staffing your support center?
Winters: What makes a good support person is their personality and their approach to trouble-shooting and problem-solving. That’s true for entry-level people through support managers. As people advance in their support careers, their ability to handle themselves in a professional manner, when dealing with customers and other employees, becomes more and more critical. It’s one of the skills people can continue to build upon as their careers progress. It’s of the utmost importance.

Another attribute we look closely at is the person’s techniques for solving problems. It doesn’t matter what technical question is asked, the important thing is the process the person uses to solve the problem, to get the information, and to deliver a solution to the user by the end of the call. We look for the ability to rationalize and quickly understand what others are saying – that’s what allows support people to be successful.

SSPA: That ability would seem to be critical in diffusing angry or anxious customers.
Winters: Whether they’re customer-facing or managing internal employees, managers face a lot of escalations and by the time managers get involved, the person is typically pretty upset. The ability to quickly understand, act professionally, process the information and create a solution, and connect with the person helps to diffuse the situation and more gracefully resolve the issue.

SSPA: What other characteristics do you look for?
Winters: We always look for people with experience within the support organization, working with customers, as well as experience from the business side, from outside the support organization, someone who has perspective and understands the impact support has on the rest of the organization.

We also look for people who work at keeping current with technology and are constantly looking for areas of improvement – in both the processes and methodologies of doing their jobs.

It’s also important to be able to blend metrics with the humanistic side of managing. Too many managers, especially within support, drive and manage the organization solely on metrics. This is one of the most dangerous things to do in a support organization. Metrics play a critical role in defining and benchmark the success of the organization but it can’t be the only measurement of success. For example, you can drive the cost of each call down and negatively impact customer satisfaction, employee morale, loyalty, etc. It’s important to have the ability to step back and put yourself in employees’ or customers’ shoes.

SSPA: What do you do as a company to help and encourage employees to acquire the skills and experience in these areas, in essence to develop the managers you want and need?
Winters: We have very aggressive training plans. From the day you’re hired, for as long as you work with us, we provide the tools, the means, and the funding for people to further their education, but without the desire of the individual, we don’t press the issue.

We encourage all of our level 1 staff to become certified in some capacity and work with their managers on their next steps within the organization -- whether that’s becoming a better support professional by learning more about project management or by learning more about relevant technologies or support theories.

We use mentors to help the process and to help people understand how the organization works and what they can do to contribute. It’s also important for people to get training in subjects like communication, writing, analytical reasoning, and other courses that they can get from college courses.

SSPA: Customer expectations of support are changing. How is the role of support managers changing?
Winters: If you look at the trend of support continuing to be outsourced offshore, the role of the support manager within the organization is going to become even more critical. They’re going to become the ones who are responsible for managing those remote teams and those remote escalations. That becomes a more complex and critical issue when you consider all that entails.

It’s possible that the internal support managers become the only interface between the company and the outsource provider. Their job will not only be to bridge the issues within the support team but to bridge and help the customers and internal team understand the complexities of support from a multi-shore approach and understand how to work in a multi-cultural, multi-lingual environment.

The role of the support manager will also continue to evolve as there becomes less dependence on your most basic, entry-level support personnel. If you look at emerging self-help tools and processes, you may be able to remove a layer of the support organization. Support managers will then no longer be responsible for managing the people and the communication issues at that level, but to managing the processes and methodologies for how self-help is delivered and how it relates to level 2 support.

SSPA: Any final thoughts?
Winters: It’s important for managers to find their rhythm and a management style that works for them. We have managers who are very formal and some that are informal. Each is successful for different reasons and it works for them.

We have a lot of diversity in our managers and feel very strongly that it’s important to have that diversity to allow our teams to be responsive and understanding in any circumstance or environment. We also work in a model that incorporates the concept of “individual contributors.” Individual contributors can work without a manager, they individually contribute to a team or process and are responsible for their deliverables, their time, and managing the issues that arise. They also have to know when to engage others appropriately. We’re a team of individual contributors who can manage ourselves but understand the importance of being managed. It creates an awesome environment and opportunities for everyone.

There are exceptions to the rule but if everyone starts to think about learning to manage themselves, their time, and their deliverables, even if that’s within a structured team, it helps them groom themselves for a team lead or manager position. It starts to put them in the right mindset and lets them apply management principles to themselves before managing others.