As part of a new customer-centric drive, we’ve revitalised and expanded our team of Help Desk heroes.
Topping the (org.) charts is music lover, Gareth ‘Gaz’ Sutherland, who demonstrates how a career grounded in a service ethos can help our customers’ businesses sing. Find out how he’s rocking STL Support Service.
Rocking the Support function
While he’d always been ‘a bit of a geek’, Gareth ‘Gaz’ Sutherland commenced his career in sales in a determined bid to buy himself a car upon leaving school.
Selling bathroom brassware for a Burnley-based finishing business might not have been the sort of metal that rocked his world, but it did teach him valuable customer-centric skills, such as engagement, listening and responsiveness.
The tempo of his career increased when his employer tasked him with managing its IT system. As the IT ‘soloist’ he had to quickly teach himself about every aspect of business systems and was often ‘jamming’ (improvising) on the way. But, as the company grew, so did their IT and space demands and it wasn’t long before he was conducting an accomplished IT band at the company’s new Halifax depot.
Despite his success, the long commute eventually drove his search for a more local gig – which he found with STL’s Software Support team in 2017.
His service credentials and broad IT skills saw him fast-tracked onto a multi-discipline team that delivered STL’s game-changing platform – Evo – which meets wholesalers’ next-generation business needs for performance, agility, mobility and security.
Evo was launched as the pandemic continued to disrupt operators and their supply chains around the world. But Gaz says his early career gave him a vital ability to empathise with end users and a commitment to seeing through the resolution of their issues no matter how difficult the hurdles along the way.
Our customers soon came to value his calm patience – a natural trait that Gaz says his three-year-old son has helped to strengthen!
As a qualified barber, he can literally let his hair down to relax or, more typically, he’ll tune into Formula 1 motor racing or listen to bands like Alter Bridge ‘rather loudly’.
Even then, thoughts of our customers are never far away; in fact, his play list could be hijacked to summarise STL’s own service philosophy:
- Your system may have a ‘Dying Light’
- But don’t fear ‘The End is Here’
- Because, right until ‘The Bitter End’
- We’ll ‘Watch over You’.
From Gaz and the Gang: Enjoy!