Sr. Service and Support Manager

Rishi Thakkar 310-***-**** *************@*****.***

Technical Manager Service & Support Engineer Team Leader

Expertise in delivering innovation, building relationships with stakeholders, and focusing on the customer experience.

Proactive, driven, and experienced Technical Manager and Engineer with a proven record of transforming and scaling business initiatives within a SAAS environment, developing full understanding of models, architectures, and financial operations, and supporting crucial relationships with internal and external business partners. Skilled in delivering multiple and complex projects to large customers, while continually seeking more efficient and effective processes, procedures, and programs.

Service & Support Engineer

Strategic Project Management

Customer Success

Analytical Problem Solving

Cross-Functional Teamwork

Transformational Leadership

Selected Career Achievements

Single-handedly generated the idea of utilizing Salesforce as a medium for customer interface in creating tickets and as a tool to measure service and support volume KPIs.

Owned the "Get Clean" Project to cut down a back log of cases by 38% within 90 days. Support team worked with R&D to look at all active cases and asses legitimate ones.

During company downsizing, regained the team’s confidence and reorganized the internal department to be 35% more efficient with case closure and customer satisfaction to 98%.

Enabled $5.2M in client revenue growth by successfully closing 18 projects for highly visible clientele, including AT&T, DirecTV, FOX, Sinclair, Grey, ABC, BYU, CBC, and Encompass Digital Media.

Fostered solid engagements with customers to secure multimillion-dollar projects and to clearly define project goals and timelines.

Support rapid revenue growth through pre-sales contributions, partnering with direct sales team to educate customers on Grass Valley services and solutions.

Established New Learning and Development center catered to companies business model of working in a SAAS cloud environment.

Professional History

GRASS VALLEY INC., Sr. Manager Service and Support Engineering, February 2013 – August 2020

Led the execution and integration of key service and support delivery processes, coaching and directing a global team of high-performing Service/Support Engineers, and TAM’s. Delivered cross-functional projects, automation software support, and ensuring project transparency via collaborations with software developers, executives, and vendors.

Developed and deployed successful UMP project at DTV, enabling operations entirely in a Virtual Environment for Playout Automation Solution.

Served as global leader enforcing KPIs and standards for project management / engineering teams for enterprise-wide initiatives across the Americas.

Project managed multiple key service delivery solutions, including project tracking, monitoring, risk management, and reporting.

Involved directly with our customers to support and ensure quality of success.

Established Follow-the-Sun Model for global coverage to greatly improve overall customer support satisfaction on a 24/7 business model.

GRASS VALLEY INC., Technical Account Manager Team Leader, Los Angeles, CA, January 2011 – February 2013

Directed a team of technical resources in evaluating clients’ automation architecture and challenges within a Linear and SAAS environment. Partner with clients to integrate Grass Valley technology solutions with project scope and requirements. Launch internal best practices, methodologies, templates, and tools to enable Project Management standardization.

Drive seamless project execution via continuous monitoring and tracking of project activities.

Provide custom service integration and customer support engineering tasks as it relates to the software solution provided to key accounts.

Identify, assess, and mitigate complex risk scenarios for client projects.

Create custom documentation for new integrations to enrich team knowledge and ensure compliance with various requirements and standards.

Introduced the use of the Slack product line to drive Swarming and a more robust forum for responding to customer case needs.

DIRECTV GROUP, Technical IT Project Manager, Los Angeles, CA, July 2007 – January 2011

Provided project management for strategic IT initiatives, verifying delivery within established timelines and budgets. Played a key role in planning, scheduling, risk management, and project reporting.

Fostered business relationships with internal and external customers to define goals and timelines.

Efficiently managed the overall project lifecycle from inception through post implementation to ensure compliance with SDLC and OPS Project Management processes.

Ensured timeliness of project kick-off, planning, development, testing, and production readiness.

VICTORY PACKAGING, IT Manager, Santa Fe Springs, CA, December 2004 – July 2007

Collaborated with clients to diagnose internal support issues, evaluate root cause, and assist in identifying workarounds to meet specific project goals. Devised and developed remediation plans with engineering teams to ensure proper delivery of requirements.

Identified critical problems and implemented scalable, long-term solutions.

Boosted team productivity by facilitating leading-edge training and development.

Refined monitoring tools and reporting strategies related to operational software platforms and operations.

Education

BS. – Computer Information Systems, California State University Fullerton

Technical Expertise

Software: Slack, Beginners C#, Visual Basic.net, VB-Script, Beginners Python, JIRA, Confluence, SFDC, vSphere, iTX, NMX-XMS, MS Office, Project, SQL, Windows 2008-2014 Server, Windows 7, Windows 10, HTTP, DNS, UBUNTU

Broadcasting: Video Routers, SCTE Triggers, Automation, Receivers, MAM’s, Data Networks, SAN's

Compression: MPEG, AVI, WVM, MOV, MXF, LXF

Video: 4k, HD, SD, IP

Hobbies

Activities: Recurve Bow Archery, Tennis, Travel, Rafting, Bowling, 4x4 Off-Roading, Photography

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