Service Desk Engineer
What is your role in Tuum?
My role is the role of a service desk engineer. In short, we make sure that the customer is satisfied with using our product and that they don’t have any issues with it. So if they have any issues then they send us a ticket and we need to double-check and confirm that this is a real issue. If it is, then we report it to the product team or to the developers. If not, maybe the customer has made a mistake or misunderstood something. So we really make sure that they understand the product. Sometimes they send us a service request, which we usually forward to the implementation managers because they are the ones to decide whether we will implement it or now. Some days are quiet, some days are intense with a lot of tickets.
We have to explore a lot. I don’t know everything about the product, it’s a big product, there are different things that you have to go and check and explore yourself, learn, and then respond to the customer. That’s how we learn ourselves as well. Once a customer reports something, it increases our knowledge as well.
Describe yourself in 3 words. Why those words?
Firstly, I’m really careful. For example, if I’m answering a customer or checking an issue, I’m very careful with how I respond because I know I’m representing the company. I double-check things even if it takes time. This comes from my first job in customer support at Nintendo where we were told ‘quality over quantity’, so we had to double-check everything before sending anything out. If a customer sends in an issue, I always check because there must be a reason they have contacted us. I try to approach things from different perspectives and angles. I know it takes time but I believe it’s much better to get your answers right the first time.
Secondly, I’m eager to learn. The product is complex, you just can’t know everything about it. The questions from customers can be related to the code base, to the database, to the front end, and the back end. We are always learning. So whenever there is internal training available, I always ask to be included, even if it’s something I know already, it’s good to get a refresher. Before coming to Tuum, I had, for example, knowledge about Payments but didn’t know about Loans. These are two very different things. I’m always trying to improve my knowledge.
Lastly, I think I’m helpful. Recently I’ve been assigned as a buddy to a new joiner, which is the first time in my life that I have to teach someone. It doesn’t matter if I’m busy or not, if someone has a question, I will always jump on a call and try to help. Also, when I learn something new about the product then I share it with my team. It makes me happy to share my knowledge with others.
It’s also important to communicate and be ready to ask for help. When you are stuck and can’t understand something then staying confused isn’t the solution. It’s easy to stay stuck in a box so I ask my colleagues for help.
What do you like most about Tuum’s culture?
My job as a service desk engineer means I need to interact with almost all the teams in the company. What I have found and love about Tuum is how approachable everyone is. I have previously worked in companies where there was a lot of hierarchy and not everyone was open to helping. Here, if we have some issues, we can easily even approach co-founders and they are always ready to answer our questions. You can just reach out to anybody and people are willing to help, even if you don’t know them personally. From the first day, even though I was very nervous, people made me feel so welcome and relaxed. This is how I knew that this company is different, the environment is different, it feels comfortable here and there’s no stress.
This is something we should definitely work on to maintain, in my opinion, it’s one of the strongest aspects of Tuum’s culture.
What’s your favourite animal and why?
I have 2!
Firstly, I like big dogs like Huskies and Akitas. We don’t have them in Pakistan because of the hot weather. So when I go out to the beach and see these dogs, it makes me happy.
Secondly, I love wolves. I have watched movies and they are just so fascinating. I like werewolves as well.
So dogs and wolves, I can’t choose just one.
