Q&A: Global support & services leader on 20 years of tech support

As we close out our 20^th year in business, we’d like to introduce someone you probably don’t see much. Hossein Ghazizadeh (“Hoss”) is SVP, Technical Support & Chief Services Officer at Barracuda. Hoss is the driving force behind our exceptional customer support and training operations. His support teams have won the SC Magazine Excellence Award multiple times and have been nominated almost every year.

Hoss agreed to chat with me about his history with the company and his philosophy on service and support.

How did you get started with Barracuda? What’s your journey been like?

It’s been a long and exciting journey. I’ve probably been here longer than most of our leadership. This is my 18^th year with Barracuda, and we are celebrating our 20^th anniversary. So, I’ve been with Barracuda for most of its life.

I was brought in to start a support team for our spam and virus security system, which is today’s email security. We were still a tiny startup at the time, and we had a few people in the office who would take customer calls, but we were at the point where we needed a proper team. We now have hundreds of tech support representatives internationally. Our team has grown, and our department has carried out quite a bit, and that’s exciting to think about.

You’re an extraordinarily formidable opponent of phone trees and automated systems. Can you tell us about that?

Customer service is one of those things that has changed across the industry over the last 30 years. Automated systems, self-service systems, all those things will save a company money, but they do not supply customer service. Tech support is customer service.

One thing that has never changed at Barracuda is that customers will never go through a phone tree. Our customers will not be expected to talk on the phone and push a button to get tech support. When I call a company for help, I do not want to answer 50 questions before getting to a person who might not even be able to help me.

We want the customers to realize that if they have an issue and they're contacting our support team, somebody will answer the phone at once. That is my priority. Very much priority.

What happens behind the scenes when those calls come in?

It’s important that we start on the right foot, by answering within 5-10 seconds and greeting the customer in a friendly and professional way. That’s when we gather information and create a case based on the issue, they have brought to us.

From here, the case is assigned to the right people who can help the customers. Barracuda has several products, each with a support team with multiple levels of support. The customer contact center representative decides where the case will go. When the case is turned over to support, a representative will start working on it as soon as possible.

Can you talk more about our tech support teams? How are they structured? What do you look for in a tech support professional?

One of the first things we want to ensure is that our team members have passion for what they are doing. When customers call us, they might be yelling or screaming, they might be angry because their boss is yelling at them. And if someone is upset with us, that is the time for us to make a difference. That is where we must be nice and courteous and make sure that we understand the customer. We must ensure we’ve solved the customer’s problem as soon as possible while treating him with respect. If you do not have the passion to work with these customers to resolve their issues, then tech support is not the right position for you.

We also want people who have passion for the technology they support. When someone is brought on board, they can begin the product training and start working a career path. Our development program moves people through the various tiers of support and trains them up to be lead support engineers. They also get regular pay raises as they move through tires. We want our employees to stick with us and keep that passion for the customer and our products.

How have the challenges of tech support evolved over the years?

I am a firm believer that customer service stays the same. The customer is king, and the only changes come with new products or services. The pandemic is the only true challenge that disrupted our methods of customer service. Pre-Covid our support teams worked in pods of five people who run at different tiers. They could collaborate and ask questions easily and learn from each other just by sitting nearby. When Covid hit, we had to send everyone home.  

There were many challenges to this. We had to be able to keep our phone response time, and we were able to do that, but it was difficult at first. We had to continue our career path training, which is harder when you are working from home with no one sitting next to you who can answer questions. And of course, we had to keep our customer service standards and solve the tech support issues. This was sometimes more difficult because our representatives were isolated at home, and it took longer to get answers from colleagues.

Despite all of that, we had everyone operational in their homes within 3 days. We had to work around the shortages of laptops and webcams, like everyone else, so we had some people just working with tablets to start. There was a small learning curve, but even during this time our customer satisfaction was at 97% and above, and we were winning awards for our level of service while working from home.

Our service levels are particularly important to us. We were recognized for our customer service early on, and we’ve received multiple SC Magazine awards for best customer service and support. We’ve been nominated nearly every year. Our customer-centric culture means everything to us. And again, it all goes back to passion.

If you’d like to connect with Hoss, you can reach him on LinkedIn here.