My 2020 Journey @ Armory

It's been around 2 months now since I've embarked on my journey at Armory. As a result of joining a tribe of amazingly talented, and thoughtful tribals here, I've learned the importance of experimenting, looking back, learning, and iterating. This is mostly a reflection post, and as always, my crazy overly optimistic inner thoughts on what may be possible.

Rewinding back to two months ago, I was telling myself that I've experienced as much as I wanted on the Technical Support spectrum of things, and wanted to transition my career towards Product/Engineering. My mind was actually made up already, and the main reason for that was due to my belief that Technical Support is a constant world of firefighting, and it is subject to constant pressure/stress and dealing with angry customers. I thought that one could only take so much of this before they burn out and have to look for an alternative (which is also difficult, as being an effective Technical Support Engineer means having a broad range of expertise, but not much depth).

Yet... I ended up accepting another leadership role in Technical Support. If I look back and retrospect on how I've arrived at where I am, it's due to the fact that I have an extreme amount of hope that there's an opportunity to change the landscape and environment that our Technical Support Engineers operate from. I once used to refer to Technical Support Engineers as "Firefighters", but based on a recent discussion with Sue Ko (our Director of Business Operations), I realized that we are actually not "Firefighters" but "Smokejumpers or Firejumpers". Firefighters generally fight a fire from the outside in, but Smokejumpers or Firejumpers are individuals who skydive from death-defying heights into remote, flame-engulfed locations that are not easily accessible by road. It's intimidating, it's uncomfortable, it's dangerous, but someone HAS to do it.

Once again, I realized I love my job because of the breed of people I get to work with. Despite the heavy stress, the unexpected fires, being the frontline for all the heat, these are people that genuinely care about the customers that we have and their success. Everyone I work with and have worked with has my back, and I invest all my resources and energy to have their back. How could I NOT find purpose and love working in an environment with people like this?

Now that I've found myself in this position again, I've decided to go all in, and my 2020 vision for Armory is to build and establish a team that delivers a world-class customer experience out of their genuine desire and belief to do so, and I commit to the following points -

1. Take the best care that we possibly can of our frontline smokejumpers, and maximize their level of happiness and purpose. They are maximizing the level of happiness for our customers, and it's up to us to ensure that there is replenishment and recognition.
2. Establish an optimized, proactive approach to preventing fires, rather than reacting to the ignition of one. Context-switching is expensive, and with the right mindset, we should be able to prevent as many fires as possible.
3. Evangelize and publicize a lot more about this journey so that we're not only paving a new path and transforming the Customer Success industry at Armory, but rather for the entire world.

For all of the customer-facing superheroes out there, realize and embrace the importance of what you do day-in and day-out. You are appreciated!

We will take risks, we will experiment, we will look back, we will learn, we will iterate, and we will pave a new path for what it means to deliver a world-class Customer Success experience because we genuinely WANT TO, not because we need to.