Matt "Chang-a-rang" Chang
If you saw this post, then the face above is no new face to you. You're familiar with that beautiful 'stache already. Okay, so I'm being a little misleading... Matt Chang doesn't walk around with that glorious caterpillar on his face all year round. We're working on that though.
You're likely wondering why I'm putting incredible pictures of Matt Chang on the web and why I'm even writing this. Previously I mentioned that I want to start recognizing the people I work with when I feel that they're going above and beyond. I did this with Cam Sapp not too long ago, and I plan to keep doing it for all of the great people I work with. There are a million ways to recognize someone, whether it be in team meetings, personally, or by doing what I'm doing right now. I hope he finds it at least mildly embarrassing, and I hope you get to realize just how important Matt Chang is to Team Magnet.
The Origins of The Chang
It must have been just under a year ago now when we were going out to recruit, if my calculations are correct. Based on the density of moustache growth that was on Matt Chang's face, it must have been pretty late into M/November. We had an instantaneous bonding moment when Chang, my colleague Tayfun, and I stood at our Magnet Forensics booth and introduced ourselves--With our mighty 'staches. It just goes to show you that we were all on the same page when we made the conscious decision to leave our nose sweaters on when going to a public event. Needless to say, our conversations with Chang went great, and he was definitely our top candidate for the position based on everything we had heard from him.
In the early days, having Matt on board with us didn't affect my day-to-day all that much. If there were customer questions/concerns coming in, he wouldn't necessarily be able to answer them because he was brand new to the product. Completely expected. The only difference in my work was that now I'd periodically chat with a 'stacheless Chang about potential bugs or customer questions. (I'll get to the good stuff a bit later, hold your horses).
Aside from work, Matt Chang was a great addition to the Magnet culture. He's one of our pro-star soccer players, and even the sales and marketing side of the office like him! They're a tough crowd too, so that really means something. Whether it's because it's required by his job or just because he's an awesome dude, Chang is incredibly approachable and easy to get along with. Simply put, he was a damn steal for us.
Above and Beyond
So now you know a bit about Matt Chang. Pretty sweet guy, right? No doubt. So what's actually so good about Chang (aside from being able to grow a beauty 'stache and being a great team player)?
Chang is our front line tech support guy. It's probably the toughest position we have at Magnet. For anyone that knows me on a personal level, I get over the top sarcastic when I'm frustrated (actually, I'm almost always sarcastic). And sometimes I find it hard not to get frustrated when I hear things aren't going right for the customer. Whether it's actually a fault of our own or if the customer has misunderstood some instructions that were provided to them, it gets me pretty riled up. "We must be geniuses if we let that slip by us" and phrases like that are things I'll mutter under my breath. It's not positive thinking, but I'm working on it. Of course, I know just who to learn from.
Matt Chang always keeps his cool. Not only is he servicing customers all day, he has to put up with the development team's crap. He does such an incredible job of it though, which is why I have to call him out. No matter how much effort he has to put into a customer support ticket (even if it's a really small issue that the customer just really needs help with) he's calm, collected, and gets them what they need. On the customer side of things, Matt Chang does an excellent job of ensuring that the customer is happy when they're done talking with him.
That same Matt Chang is also a blessing from the developers' perspective too. Before having Chang on board, and even in his early days when he was getting on board and learning our products, there would be a lot of back-and-forth with customers. If a support ticket came in, we'd have a lot to figure out. What was the customer seeing? Did they have debug logging on by chance or was there a crash log? Was it reproducible? Did they actually put their license for the product in the right spot? The questions would go on, but of course, Chang would take care of the customer in the end. At this point, Chang is an absolute super star. When he comes up to me to ask about a support issue, he's already collected the information he needs. Sometimes, he'll give me a heads up and tell me that he's already getting the information I'd require, and he'd offer up what he thinks is happening. Hell, at this point in time, Matt Chang will go directly to the person who worked on the feature or previous bug fix to get even more information. He's quick to get developers the information they need to debug a problem, and that's absolutely awesome for us.
Tech support used to be invasive for the developers, but it was always handled reasonably well for the customers. Chang has taken it up a notch on both ends and made it relatively pain free for developers to help or look into issues while customers are kept quite pleased with the responses.
Wrappin' It Up
We've received praise from our customers for a long time now that our product, Internet Evidence Finder, makes a big difference in investigations. It's always amazing to hear that we're having a positive impact. A more recent trend is that people are raving about our tech support, and there's no doubt in my mind it's because Matt Chang delivers the experience they want. Plenty of companies have cool software or software that has a positive impact, but few have superstar customer support to back them.
We knew Chang was going to be awesome from the day we met him, and he hasn't let us down once. Thanks for being an awesome addition to Team Magnet, Matt. You hold the bar high, always deliver, and do a kick-ass job around the clock. Our hats are off to you.