Christopher Lawton Barker

VP - Global Customer Success & Support

Responsible for a global refresh of IGEL Technology's Customer Success & Support organization in response to the companies refocus toward becoming the leader in End User Computing (EUC) software market. Lead global teams in Germany and in the United States morphing support into a 24 hour follow the sun model ensuring seamless technical assistance to any enterprise customer regardless of time zone or time of day. 

• Lead cross-functional RFP team to determine best in enterprise-class partners to provide cloud-based global contact center telephony and a robust omnichannel trouble ticketing system.
• Refocused support teams from being regionally focused to a global focus where support issues were shared regardless of support location resulting in a 47% reduction in time to resolve and a 35% improvement in customer satisfaction scores.
• Introduced Zendesk Suite which provided IGEL with both a ticketing system and a contact center telephony platform. In addition to utilizing the entire Zendesk suite of products, Answer-bot AI was also utilized resulting in a 24% reduction in tickets enterprise-wide.
• Rolled out "Welcome to IGEL Customer Success & Support" which was an outreach program that educated new customers on how to navigate IGEL Customer Support as well as providing a blog channel to communicate support innovations on a regular basis. This was viewed by new customers as proactive and continues to cement the customer relationship with IGEL.

Director| Sales & Customer Care Service Delivery - Enterprise/B2B/Cloud Software & SaaS Technical Support

Had executive responsibility for global customer care for the QuickBooks accounting software product, including overseeing the management of onshore and offshore service delivery using Intuit’s strategic outsource partners, as well as Intuit badged agents. Accountable for 2,000+ Tier 1&2 agents globally, leading efforts to reduce customer pain by working cross-functionally with both product and engineering teams.

• Improved customer experience in FY2013-16 where 1M per year contacts were removed from the care eco-system.
• Worked alongside the Care Engineering teams to successfully develop customer and agent tools that both predicted and alleviated product issues. Worked with technology care engineering team and developed innovative sales and service channels in web and in product that increased NPS and Sales revenues.
• Effectively managed a $80M outside services budget with responsibility for more than $100M in sales revenue within the Care sales channel.
• Increased the Transactional Net Promoter score 25 points during FY2013-16 while bringing in $100M consistently per year in revenue.
• Implemented Zendesk as complete CRM solution for multiple product test implementations. Have deep knowledge of breadth and scope of ZD capabilities. Currently rolling out Jira as bug/issue tracker between CS & Engineering teams.

Director| iTunes, iCloud (MobileMe) Apple Care Business Manager -- B2C Cloud Technical Support

Led a global staff of as many as 1,800+ contact center support agents, managers, project managers and vendor managers in the response and resolution of account, billing and technical issues related to supporting Apple Print Products, iTunes Store and MobileMe / iCloud service. Additionally, made recommendations on the strategic direction and operations strategy, overseeing the design and creation of Internet Services contact center operations.

• Personally managed day-to-day operation to ensure all response, resolution and customer satisfaction objectives were met, including developing and maintaining cross-functional partnerships internally to resolve product issues.
• Managed outsourced vendor operations and relationships relating to supporting the iTunes Store, delivering on all policies, programs, staffing, organizational design, strategy and budget planning.
• Ensured teams had up-to-date and accurate information to effectively deliver quality support as needed, setting action plans to ensure customer satisfaction.
• Represented end users and the service and support business community, ensuring customer requirements were considered during the development and implementation of strategies.
• Effectively performed all personnel management, including recruitment, training, performance evaluation, salary management and professional development.
• Completed the successful turnaround of customer satisfaction operations, increasing positive resolution metrics from 30% to more than 92% satisfied.
• Successfully introduced Chat support to Apple for the first time as the exclusive global multi-language support channel for MobileMe / iCloud, as well as an alternative support channel for iTunes customers.

Director| Worldwide Customer Care & Technical Support -- Enterprise & B2C Hardware & Software Technical Support

Directly accountable for global customer service and technical support call centers, including personally overseeing three US-based call centers and one European outsourced call center. Directed support policies and balanced customer need with budgetary constraints.

• Developed various “pay for support” programs, ensuring Technical Support operations became a revenue-generating profit center.
• Personally handled all technical escalations, ensuring the highest levels of customer satisfaction through a swift and effective resolution.
• Collaborated cross-functionally with other department heads during product development cycles, gaining hands-on familiarity with ACD, CRM and technical desktop tools and systems.

Earlier success can be seen in leadership positions with Pacific Bell, NETCOM and AT&T Internet Services, consistently exceeding all established goals and objectives leading to numerous positions of increasing responsibility and scope. Key position titles included Manager of Customer & Technical Support Operations, Sr. Manager of Online & Escalation Support, Director of Technical Support and Sr. Director of DSL & Dial-UP Customer & Technical Support.

Selected Achievements

• Responsible for service quality across two 24/7 centers, including 750+ technical support engineers in the US and India.
• Exceeded all talk time reduction and customer satisfaction targets while managing a $22M customer support budget.
• Achieved 96% overall customer satisfaction by implementing a continual process improvement program within the organization, as well as customer-facing automated call avoidance and talk time reduction tools.
• Directed a global support organization that included two corporate call centers and one outsourced relationship of 350+ support engineers, including managing a department budget of $18M.