Norman Gennaro’s Post

I’ve completed one year at Zendesk last week. And these are my takes on moving from a 100-ish people startup to a 6.5k employees company. 1/ Resilience is a superpower Keeping positive and a can-do attitude became part of my survival kit. You have more people engaged in the decision-making process and navigating through the corporate politics intricacies may be complex—sometimes frustrating. How you recover from setbacks defines your path. 2/ Visibility and exposure are harder to conquer Well, it’s a 6.5k company. And you can imagine the number of people collaborating on a project. Therefore, getting the visibility and exposure to climb the career ladder requires a strategic approach. Establishing partnerships is your passport to success. I invested a lot in my inner circle and established meaningful relationships across the company. 3/ Clear is better than smart I fought the desire to be interesting many times—after all, I was new to that environment, and I wanted to show off my skills. But I realized that being clear does a greater job than being smart. That’s because I constantly have to convey a message to larger groups, different stakeholders, and cross-functional leaders. I need to ensure my reports understand the message and propagate it realistically to my skip-level reports. I had to adapt my communication to make my message clear, precise, and easy to digest. 4/ Balancing my needs with my team's needs Weirdly, this is not a typical me against you. But it’s a thin line between achieving your excellence with driving your team to excellence. I have to journal my goals, and priorities and plan on how I can blend my needs with my team's needs, and create a win-win situation daily. If I want my team to work with excellence, it needs to start with me. And in a big company, this can make or break your journey. What’s your preferred takeaway?

Self-promotion can be challenging, and there's a fine line between promoting oneself and making others cringe. 😅 That's why, as a manager, it's important to weave self-promotion and broader team recognition into your overall process. At Zendesk, we had a great process for sharing roadmap releases in our product updates Slack channel. Here's the formula for day-of-release comms: 🔹 Roadmap Item Name & Description 🔹 User Reach & Impact 🔹 Goals 🔹 Supporting Visuals 🔹 Initial Metrics 🔹 Release Plan Strategy 🔹 Team Involved + Gratitude I loved this process so much that I implemented it with my product teams at TED and PartnerHero. It gave PMs the chance to proudly showcase their achievements, acknowledge the broader team's contributions, and achieve its main objective: communicating a new product release to the broader org. 🚀👏

3rd installment in my Keeping the Faith Friday series... I'm completing my first week as a Customer Success Manager at Zendesk, and what an amazing experience! I'm more excited than I was when I received the offer. From the get-go, I’ve been welcomed by an incredibly talented and supportive team. Having an employee onboarding experience that includes thorough education, autonomy to learn the product/solutions, and the support to ask all the questions has been refreshing. This is relevant to Keeping the Faith Friday because a month ago I didn't have this job. I didn't think an offer would come and questioned myself, but I kept the faith. Please don't lose hope and don't forget who you are and how valuable you are. Keep the faith in yourself! Don't give up! #happyfriday #keepingthefaithfriday #womenintech #careercoaching #tgif

I am so grateful for awesome customers like Sebastien & Olga at DMA architectes. At Layer, we believe there is tremendous value in staying close to our customers. Here are a few ways we do that as a team: 🌟 Super-responsive technical support: Our average response time this past week was 2 minutes and 37 seconds (which is pretty average for us) 🌟 Engineer rotation into support: Each week, a different engineer from our product team oversees support, providing immediate technical insight to customers and gaining a direct view of how customers use Layer. 🌟 Systematic customer feedback collection: We collect and collate feedback, using it alongside our high-level product roadmap to prioritize and make informed decisions about what we build next. 🌟 Thoughtful and fast development: We link customers to features and improvements they suggest. When we decide to build a feature, we ask linked customers clarifying questions to inform our development. Once complete, we notify them and share how their feedback shaped the feature. 🌟 Personalized onboarding and training: We ensure every customer receives personalized onboarding and training, delivering value immediately and throughout their time with us. Everyone on our team interacts with customers regularly, and we believe deeply that keeping our customers close is imperative to building products people love. ❤️

Learn how Slack block out time to address the smaller things that wouldn't see the light of day otherwise, not only delighting users but giving their people a sense of ownership an fulfilment. “Past awards included the ‘Sandpaper Award’ (for smoothing rough edges), the ‘Biggest User Impact Award’ (for closing the most Zendesk tickets), and the ‘Don’t Make Me Think Award’ (for reducing product complexity).” Link in the comments 👇

Follow the Zendesk Events topic to be notified of upcoming events connecting you with both the Zendesk team and fellow users. These events include product feedback, listening sessions, product deep dives and more! #Community #CustomerService #Zendesk

Follow the Zendesk Events topic to be notified of upcoming events connecting you with both the Zendesk team and fellow users. These events include product feedback, listening sessions, product deep dives and more! #Community #CustomerService #Zendesk

Follow the Zendesk Events topic to be notified of upcoming events connecting you with both the Zendesk team and fellow users. These events include product feedback, listening sessions, product deep dives and more! #Community #CustomerService #Zendesk

.@Zendesk users, don't miss their upcoming What's New event on Nov 8. Just a sample: 5️⃣ Five mini masterclasses that guide you through the latest Zendesk releases 😃 Deliver superior employee experiences 💬 Better conversational CX with #ZendeskAI

💫 Agents Of Change: Empowered, Skilled, and Ready for Tomorrow 💼🚀 At Zendesk, we believe in harnessing the power of our products to uplift communities and ignite impactful changes. The Zendesk Agents of Change program underscores our commitment to Social Impact by partnering with nonprofits dedicated to workforce development and upskilling services for underserved populations. 🎉 Milestones to Celebrate! As 2024 unfolds, we are delighted to celebrate the growth of the Agents of Change program: - Nearly 200 Agents trained 🌟 - Five transformative new partnerships 🤝 - Expanding access to opportunity 🌐 Our program further commits by providing: - Grant funding from the Zendesk Foundation 💰 - Sponsored Zendesk software 🛠️ - Complimentary certification exams for tangible credentials 🎓 Through these avenues, nearly 200 individuals have embarked on new career paths, powered by confidence and equipped with industry-grade skills. Moreover, the collective earning potential has soared, crossing $3.5M in total wages by our graduates, creating not just workers, but robust career trajectories. A gigantic thank you to our phenomenal partner organizations who are the real change-makers. To our Agents of Change graduates, congrats of your efforts and career growth. Interested in learning more or becoming a part of this journey of transformation? Check out our most recent blog and sign up to become a hiring partner (https://zdsk.co/3HvCCph)