Working in a bank and not happy about it, I was looking for career progression, a new challenge and a more exciting career opportunity. That was five years ago; today I’m a key member of the Global Service Assurance team at Indigo and my client is one of the largest telecommunication companies on the planet. My journey started when I heard about a temp position in Indigo’s Global Contact Centre; I knew nothing about networks or telecoms but was ready for a change.
Luck was on my side because Indigo had just won the support contract for the telco’s global IP networks and was looking to build a support team. Although I had a very junior role at the start, I was joining at the perfect time. I spent a lot of my first couple of weeks getting to know the client’s business and understanding exactly what they wanted from us.
Never looked back
The workload grew quickly and after two months I was recruited full time. I’ve never looked back. I started out working shifts for Indigo’s International Dispatch and Control Centre on the helpdesk, where we act as middlemen, dispatching Indigo engineers out to customer sites if there was a problem. I had helpdesk experience in my previous banking job, but it was nothing like Indigo. Every day was different and challenging in a good way.
I would get call about a problem with a site and issue a ticket. Then I had to line up the Indigo engineer, explain the problem and track the progress of the work until the issue was resolved and the ticket could be closed. The telco’s customers include huge global brands, companies that stand to lose a lot of money any time their networks go down, so it can be a lot of pressure.
After ten months I was made Team Leader, overseeing six people. I was now having weekly operations calls over Teams with the client, just to make sure there were no issues and to be updated on any new network sites that were coming on track. It helped that there was a really good relationship between the two companies. One of the nice things about Indigo is that they bring you into projects from the start and encourage you to deal directly with clients and get to know them.
When I first joined, I struggled with some of the language around the technology, and I was worried that I would never understand it, but it’s incredible how quickly you can pick it up with training and just through experience.
Promoted through the ranks
After two years as Team Lead, I was promoted to Service Assurance Executive. It’s now my job to make sure that the services we provide to the telco meet pre-defined service level agreements. Basically, it’s my role to make sure they get the service they are paying for and that we have the logistics and engineers in place to support them.
If an issue is escalated, it’s now my responsibility to put in a root cause analysis and discuss the results with the client. I think it just helps massively that I’ve been working with many of the same faces since I started. It’s always been a good and productive working environment.
Part of my role is compiling reports which we present to the client management team every month in a face-to-face meeting (on Teams during Covid). We give them an update on how tickets were resolved and progress around new sites. It’s gets quite high pressure and demanding, but I’ve got a really good manager who supports me, and an excellent relationship with the client team.
Right from when I started five year ago, I was always made to feel part of something at Indigo. That hasn’t changed. It’s what got me thinking about the career in telecoms that I have been able to pursue.
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