Member-only story
The Genius in Customer Support with Petya Sotirova
What does customer service mean to you and how did you decide to follow that career path?
I was in the second year of my software engineering university degree when I signed up for software development training at Telerik Academy, a tech-ed initiative by Telerik. While learning about Telerik and the company’s best practices, the idea of interacting with customers appealed to me. At some point during the training, they asked us to list in order of preference the roles the company was hiring people for. We could choose between being a Developer, a QA, and a Technical Support agent. With Telerik Academy being a software development training, the Support role was less popular. I recall sitting at home late one evening, looking at the form I had to fill in and wondering whether to pick what my gut was telling me to — Support or cave in the peer-pressure and select one of the other two options.
Today I’m glad I chose customer support. To me, this role is what bridges the gap between the software products we build (which, let’s face it, are never perfect), and the actual pain-points our users have and need to be solved. I am also extremely fortunate to have started my career in a company with solid support practices and amazing mentors to learn from.
