Employee stories: Interview with technical supporter Mike

With pleasure! My name is Mike and as a technical support employee I answer all our customers’ questions about our merchandise management software JTL-Wawi. When I joined, the team consisted of two other people. Today there are about 15 of us at the Hürth site alone.

I’m originally from Berlin. When I moved to the Rhineland in 2010, eCommerce was still in its infancy. At the time, I was responsible for setting up marketplace sales for an online retailer, particularly on eBay and Amazon. As part of this work, I was looking for a solution that would allow me to manage these channels centrally in order to work more efficiently. That’s when I came across JTL-Wawi and the JTL-eazyAuction marketplace interface.

Exactly! After a while, I wanted to make a career change. Since I was already very familiar with JTL-Wawi anyway, I applied.

It was a hot summer’s day. When I reached the office, the head of department saw me coming towards him from a window on the first floor. He smiled and said: “Come on, you’re welcome to climb through the window!” Naturally, I wanted to make a good impression, so I took him at his word. We still laugh about it today! But joking aside, during the conversation I quickly realized that I could make a good contribution with my specialist knowledge and that there was a very friendly atmosphere here. That was important to me then and still is today.

Before the pandemic, we often had lunch together in the office, but we also did a lot outside of work. I recruited one or two teammates from my private life. You don’t say to friends and family: “Come to JTL! Working there is fun!” if you’re not convinced that they’ll be happy here.

I’ve missed some of my colleagues since we’ve been working from home. However, if time permits, we also try to chat a bit virtually outside of work. I’m looking forward to when Company events are possible again! At the summer party, there was food and drink as well as a sports program and you could bring the whole family along. We also traveled to Holland as part of a workshop. That’s where the idea for our mobile point of sale system JTL-POS was born.

It usually starts with a team meeting where we clarify any questions and issues. After that, I review our ticket system and answer customer queries by phone, via the JTL forum and our Facebook group. Since 2018, I have also been responsible for training new support employees. I provide them with intensive support and introduce them to all of our work steps and processes. I take a lot of time for this.

In support, it is important to put yourself in people’s shoes to a certain extent in order to meet them where they are with their prior knowledge. You also have to learn to prioritize and not let things get out of hand. I think that our support is now impressive. We get positive feedback almost across the board.

At times, yes, but it’s very varied and I simply enjoy helping people. If they leave the conversation satisfied, I’m happy too.

In addition to the friendly atmosphere, I appreciate the fact that we deal with problems pragmatically. If something isn’t going so well, we talk about it openly. That leads to things improving quickly.

At JTL, we develop our software directly from the requirements and wishes of our users – in line with the principle of community-driven development. We in the support team are the interface between the customer and development. Our task is to collect ideas and feature requests from our discussions and pass them on to the development team.

As a computer nerd, I also work a lot with IT in my private life. I’ve even built websites for one or two friends. I also go hiking with my wife and my dog. I’ve also recently discovered photography, and I especially like taking pictures of stars! I generally like to get to grips with new topics, whether it’s image processing, computer hardware or websites.