Before Parex, what is your experience with helping businesses resolve issues across the full suite of Microsoft products and services?
Prior to Parex, I worked at Microsoft for 27 ½ years. 15 of those years were spent as an equivalent to a designated support engineer (DSE) role with a System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). I completed transactional work as a field engineer for the next 12 years at Microsoft and was shifted to a DSE role there before leaving. During that time, I travelled to 32 different states to provide support for clients on-site, so I was going all over the place doing workshops, implementations, migrations and doing what I loved.
How does your role as a Technical Lead (EA) impact client success?
Normally, at Microsoft, an engineer will get a break-fix ticket and must figure out the client’s environment, who has access to what, who do they need to talk to, etc. They must ask a ton of questions before they can try to understand the issue or attempt to fix it. My role at Parex lets us truly get to know our clients. We’ve gotten to know their teams and how their environments operate, giving us all the information we need to get to the heart of the problem right away.
Our solutions aren’t siloed like they are at Microsoft either. While you may have a cloud question that your DSE doesn’t know because they are specialized in like SharePoint (for example), our team has members who are specialized across multiple backgrounds, eliminating the game of email tag.
Can you describe a memorable experience while troubleshooting problems regarding Microsoft services? / Can you share a recent example of a challenging issue you resolved for a client and how you approached it?
I was brought in as a consultant on a ticket along with a break-fix engineer. I offered to join the call with them, and we were able to resolve a situation with a very unhappy and frustrated customer who had just worked a night shift and was woken from his scheduled sleep time to help us troubleshoot. I was able to empathize with the customer’s difficulties first, then I helped them get their Microsoft issues resolved.
What are your preferred strategies to support the timely and efficient resolution of client issues, especially with complex Microsoft products like Azure and Office 365?
As a technical lead, I lead my team in daily meetings to assign tickets that come into our queue. We know who supports what, allowing us to assign tickets directly to the team member who has the most relevant experience to support that ticket—even if it’s not me!
A resolution may take multiple resources, so we will apply as many team members and resources as needed to ensure that no customers are left with half an answer. This is possible because, as a lead, I consistently encourage our team to collaborate and reach out for additional expertise as often as possible.
What is your best piece of advice to give to a client seeking proactive Microsoft consulting services?
We often see break/fix issues crossing our desk that are disguised as proactive needs. My best piece of advice to a client seeking proactive Microsoft consulting services is to be sure to distinguish between proactive and reactive needs so that your ticket goes to the right team. Not knowing the difference can promote unnecessary ticket escalation more often, but knowing the difference can help you ask for support in an efficient manner. And when that part of the process is optimized, that means that your Microsoft solution can be determined more swiftly.