A Day in the Life of Support

What is your background and how long have you worked at Hopewiser?

Amy: Prior to starting at Hopewiser I was at college studying A-Levels in Law, Religious Studies, Sociology, and History, as well as working part-time at Camelot Theme Park. I applied for various university courses in teaching but decided against going due to not knowing what I really wanted to do.

Whilst looking at apprenticeships, I came across Hopewiser who were offering a Business Administration apprenticeship role. I applied and got the job.

I have now worked at Hopewiser for 8 years. Starting as an apprentice I have worked my way up and through the business in various roles. In 2014 Hopewiser offered me the opportunity to undertake an innovative work-based undergraduate degree at Manchester Metropolitan University called iBusiness. The course was fully funded by Hopewiser. The degree included units such as Project Management, Developing a Digital Business, Business Intelligence and Strategy. This was in addition to a Work Based Learning Project unit aimed at making improvements to support processes whilst working as Technical Support within Hopewiser. I graduated with a first class honours degree.

Since graduating I have been promoted to Assistant Technical Support Manager. In 2018 I was offered the role of Portal Product Manager, whilst still working in Support.

Rodrigo: As a Portuguese boy who lived in a very rural area of Portugal, it may not come as a surprise when I say I used to be a farmer of sorts and that I even studied this in school (you’d be surprised how scientific a farmer’s life can be). I even have a Portuguese tractor’s licence. However, my desire was always to get into IT, something that was considered nearly impossible to do in Portugal due to the small amount of IT companies and the vast amount of people with similar aspirations to me.

At 20 years old I moved to the UK on my own and after a couple of years of struggle and frustration, I finally achieved that goal. I will have been with Hopewiser for a year on August 1st.

Describe a typical day in your job?

Amy: Working a dual role means no two days are the same. I spend half of my time ensuring internal and external clients are receiving the technical support they need and assisting the sales team on meetings. The other half of my time is spent managing Portal projects, coming up with new ideas on how the Portal can be improved, and spreading the word on the Portal.

Rodrigo: I do not believe there is a “typical day” when it comes to Support. Speaking for myself I am constantly in a state of learning new things and improving. Also being relatively new to the business, I have been able to look at processes and methodologies, and have recommended ideas and enhancements.

What do you enjoy most in your role?

Amy: I enjoy helping people and the role allows me to fulfil that.

Rodrigo: The constant learning and self improvement required to effectively perform any tasks that may get thrown my way. This role keeps me on my toes and that is very exciting, even if one may trip up sometimes during the learning process. No two days are the same.

On average, how many support queries do you receive in a week?

Amy: It very much depends, but usually less than 10 ticketed queries a week.

Rodrigo: Usually around 10.

How quickly do you aim to solve them?

Amy: We aim to resolve Support queries as quickly as we possibly can. We always ensure the client is happy with the resolution before we close the ticket, so this can be dependent on their response times.

Rodrigo: Instantaneously if I could. I don’t believe anyone likes to wait for their problems to be resolved or helped with. Sadly this is not always possible.

What processes do you use in Support?

Amy: We have many different processes within Support which the team follow. For example, when we receive a support query the first thing we do is ticket it on our tracking system. All details of the support query must be input on the system, so it can be tracked from start to finish. At the end of the process we mark the ticket as resolved.

Rodrigo: We follow many different processes in Support, some of the most important ones being the ticketing of relevant queries and the constant and permanent addition to our knowledge base. More specifically to me, at this point in time, would be the activation procedures for our client’s products and the administration facet of this. Additionally, the monthly Windows updates which are researched and performed by myself on most user’s machines.