Joe Kaler
Firestone, Colorado *****
***.*****@*******.*** 303-***-**** linkedin.com/in/joe-kaler-6716713
http://qmz88.site.moboom.com/
Customer Success, Relationship and Team Management Leader
Helping change clients from Customer to Partner
Experienced professional with extensive expertise in supporting product implementation practices for integration into existing data systems. Adept at identifying issues and developing customized resolutions for complex challenges in organizations ranging in size and revenue from initial start-up to Fortune 500.
Skilled in developing and maintaining collaborative relationships with internal and client stakeholders. Lead teams of technical professionals in maximizing customer experiences - and with a background in Six Sigma, ensuring continued measurable success of designed and implemented processes. Proficient with technical product concepts and maintaining committed focus on customer satisfaction and retention.
Client Relations & Technical Support Competencies
Technical Support Management
Team Leadership and Development
Relationship Management
Customer Advocacy / Satisfaction
Executive Level Communication
Develop Trusted Advisor Relationships
Collaborative Account Management / Support
Product Awareness and Adoption
Solution Value Recognition and Retention
Product Customization / Integration
Process Design and Standardization
Centralized Support Center Management
Career Experience
Western Dual Sport Motorcycle Adventures, Lafayette, CO 8/2016 – present
Consultant, Customer Success and Support,
Consultation on methodologies and creation of best practices for customer service and support. Design and deliver standardized processes for user safety and satisfaction. Develop customer expansion and retention programs and define and measure customer satisfaction metrics to ensure client protection, success and corporate growth while promoting proactive service requirements.
Key Contributions:
Designed and standardized new customer on-boarding procedures reducing logistics time required by rental customers prior to starting their adventure.
Defined customer satisfaction metrics and implemented post engagement survey to capture customer satisfaction scores to feed into service enhancement and development.
Designed and integrated vehicle inventory and maintenance tracking application to track costs and profitability against individual vehicles and maintenance actions.
Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, Denver, Colorado 2/2006 – 8/2016
Director, Customer Service and Support – Global Strategic Division, 10/2013 – 8/2016
Led technical support and high-value post-sales relationship management efforts for most-strategic global customers through direction of team of highly-proficient technical account managers. Manage all post-sale support deliverables to ensure client success and corporate growth. Promote proactive service requirements. Design customer process integration and intimacy, develop customized services to address complex client enterprise needs, and limit negative customer impact with minimization of outages through rapid issue resolutions.
Key Contributions:
Increased productivity, recognition of team value, and satisfaction of customers and colleagues through establishment of standardized processes and production goals.
Improved employee retention with implementation of focused organizational structure resulting in more positive employee morale, reduced training costs, and greater customer satisfaction.
Director – Global Customer Relations, 11/2009 – 10/2013
Led technical support and customer relationship activities to address management of critical situations and advocated on behalf of clients. Directed cross-functional internal and client teams in resolution processes for highly-charged, stressful production outages within client operations. Collaborated with executive leadership, internal teams, vendors, suppliers, and client representatives to identify and deliver resources needed for prompt and efficient resolutions and for minimization of negative operational and financial client impact. Demonstrated commitment to customer partnerships and excellent support for retention of customer confidence.
Voiced client concerns, requests, and recommendations regarding corporate support processes to senior leadership. Interfaced with product management teams to deliver product enhancement and future product direction requests from clients. Resolved non-product support issues. Engaged customers in integration of client processes into corporate support engagement models.
Key Contributions:
Retained $50M annual-revenue client through management of critical situation with implementation of specific customer processes.
Delivered detailed visibility for clients of solution performance failure rates and trends with proactive visibility into potential configuration issues to encourage project partnerships and resolutions.
Senior Manager, Global Services – Global Product Solution Support, 10/2007 – 11/2009
Managed operational and fiscal performance efforts of technical support teams for Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions to ensure resolution of Tier 3 support escalations. Designed and deployed processes for new and emerging technologies. Maximized support resources to ensure customer satisfaction through alignment within global geographies.
Key Contributions:
Facilitated utilization of corporate and technical partner resources for resolution of critical issues and retention of customer satisfaction of $5M customer environment.
District Manager, Customer Service and Support 2/2006 – 10/2007
Led field based technical support and account management operations for five-state district. Drove customer satisfaction and corporate sales efforts. Managed staff, territory planning, and customer support.
GE Access Distribution, Westminster, Colorado 10/1995 – 2/2006
Manager, Technical Support
Led team of more than 14 engineers in addressing over 3K inbound pre- and post-sales technical support calls each month. Created Optical Storage Subsystem technical support team for call center and field support. Collaborated with project team to reduce post-sales operational support costs and deliver greater customer satisfaction through streamlining of organization and processes. Developed methods for managing expected 185% increase in customer contacts with no increase in headcount or reduction in customer satisfaction through participation in Six Sigma quality team.
Key Contribution:
Maintained first-call resolution average of more than 90% for technical support inbound calls.
Directed multiple teams in configuration of $100M to $150M multi-vendor servers and workstations monthly.
Education and Credentials
Bachelor of Science in Business Management, University of Phoenix – Denver CO (in progress)
Liberal Arts, Normandale Community College – Bloomington, MN
Computer Science, Control Data Institute, Minneapolis, MN
Professional Training
Enterprise Computing Certified, Workgroup/Enterprise Certified Instructor, Sun Microsystems
Six Sigma Green Belt, Workout Facilitator, Six Sigma
Practical Management for a Technical Staff
Train the Trainer for Occasional Trainers