With his extensive knowledge and expertise, our Head of Support has been a highly valuable member of our team for over 9 years and is always ready to help our customers and colleagues solve their problems. Of course, I’m talking about… Remon! In this blog, I’d like to introduce him to you.
Can you tell us something about yourself?
I’m Remon, 36 years old and I’ve been working at Shock Media for more than 9 years. Before that, I worked for another hosting provider for 5 years. My interest in computers and IT started early in my childhood, with my first experiences with DOS and Windows 3.11 in primary school. At home, tinkering with batch scripts and building HTML websites grew into creating my own CMS & webshop in PHP for friends. The transition to Linux happened almost naturally because I needed to host the applications I created myself. The hobby started early on, so it’s not surprising that I later ended up in the Linux world professionally. Outside of work, I also regularly pursue this as a hobby. In addition, I read a lot of books, enjoy watching movies or series, and love going for walks in nature with my wife. Both in beautiful Twente, but we also like to seek out nice and quiet spots elsewhere in the Netherlands or abroad.
Within Shock Media, I’ve taken many steps and have now grown into the role of Head of Support. I am responsible for the highly technical support department and act as the bridge between complex technology and communication with our customers—both in terms of policy and operations. The support team at Shock also dives very deep into the technical side. Ensuring this technical knowledge is available within the team and maintaining short lines of communication with other departments are also among the many tasks I fulfill in my role.
What is the secret to a good Support team?
Working together to provide our customers with the best possible experience can only happen by helping each other and avoiding a “silo mentality.” This means not only answering the question, but also thinking ahead and trying to prevent questions or problems from arising in the first place. How do we ensure that a question or problem doesn’t recur next time? How do we make sure that colleague A can take over an issue from colleague B without the customer experiencing any disadvantages? How do we make sure we are a little bit better each day than the day before? We are, moreover, a technical team with a lot of specialist knowledge in-house to answer any question that comes our way.
What challenges do you encounter when supporting customers in the managed hosting industry?
We have a diverse group of customers, which means we manage many different types of environments tailored to each client. But the common denominator is that high performance, high security, and high availability are extremely important for all these customers. This brings a wide range of challenges, such as:
Technical complexity: We use many different technologies to configure each solution to fit. Think of different operating systems, database servers, application servers, network components, and security solutions. The team must be familiar with these various technologies and able to solve problems quickly and provide support to our customers. Through automation and tooling, we continually try to simplify technical complexity.
Time pressure: Customers who depend on our managed hosting for their business operations naturally have high demands when it comes to the availability and performance of the service. To meet these expectations, it’s essential within the department to react extremely quickly and work very efficiently.
Security: Customers may face various security issues, such as (attempted) hacks, malware, phishing attacks, and DDoS attacks. Our team must be able to anticipate these problems. And should they occur, identify and resolve them quickly, and advise the customer on improving their security.
Monitoring and reporting: Managed hosting teams must ensure reliable monitoring and reporting of the performance and availability of the hosted systems and applications. This requires the use of advanced tools and techniques in monitoring, so we can react as quickly as possible to anomalies and issues.
Communication: Managed hosting is a technically complex industry and it can be challenging to explain technical information to customers in an understandable way. Strong communication skills are needed to convey technical information clearly. From (technical) contact with external developers to the end customer—and not just reactively, but proactively as well.
What does the support team need to perform well?
Personal development is very important; through regular meetings, knowledge sharing, and events such as sys-updates, we ensure everyone stays up-to-date with the latest developments and projects within Shock. We are an informal company, which means lines of communication are short and there’s no barrier to coordinating something with a colleague or sharing your own initiatives. Finally, we see support as a team effort, and there’s always a colleague nearby to help you or take over tasks.
For the hesitant reader: Why should someone apply at Shock Media?
Are you looking for technical challenges in IT, do you want to work in a company with an informal working atmosphere, have many opportunities for growth, and spar with fun colleagues who share your passion for IT? Then Shock Media is the right place for you!
Can you see yourself working at Shock Media? Check out our vacancies page. Curious about our other colleagues? Then read our other blogs.
