Customer Support Specialist

Customer Services (CS) covers customer service in different areas such as technical support, account support, operations, maintenance, network design / deployment / integration / transformation, and education. Generates revenue and the increase of customer satisfaction through planning, designing, deploying, integrating, optimising, operating, and maintaining phases.
Care (CAR) comprises the support of customers (in line with contractual service agreements) and internal Nokia stakeholders in pre- and post-sales activities with technical and non-technical topics, including first level contact with customers for software and hardware incidents or requests. Ensures readiness of service delivery and covers the provision of recommendations to product houses on design for serviceability aspects. Contains escalation of key issues to appropriate functions.

Impact
Accountable for quality and accuracy of own output. Responsible for contribution to teamwork. Errors may have impact on function/project/customer. Usually delivers results with a short-term, operational focus and limited impact on others. 
Scope & Contribution
Individual Contributor: Participates as individual contributor to team, usually with limited professional expertise. Makes decisions affecting own work within set parameters, elevates others. Reviews priorities with supervisor. High personal or low collegial interaction. Managerial/Supervisory: May act as Team Leader or Project Leader with some indirect supervisory responsibilities in addition to own work assignments.. Makes decisions that affect own work. 
Innovation
Semi routine tasks of moderate complexity requiring some discretion and judgment. Carries out tasks/activities according to assignment and set guidelines. Moderate degree of supervision and coaching needed. Demonstrates initiative and adaptability to changing business environments. 
Communication
Explains facts, practices, policies, etc. to external and internal parties. Takes actions which respect to the needs and contributions of others and reaches agreement through flexibility and compromise. Manages situations where there is a common desire to reach solution within a team. Sometimes requires ability to influence others outside of own job area on policies, practices and procedures. Builds cross-cultural knowledge and global mindset. English is mandatory
Knowledge & Experience
specialised or broader knowledge of theory and principles within a professional discipline. Typically 1-2 years directly related experience and a graduate equivalent degree.

• Works effectively in a mixed environment and uses best practices and knowledge of internal or external business issues to improve products or services.

• Uses advanced analytical skills to solve complex problems or problems that do not have routine solutions and takes a new perspective.

• Shares initial ideas for professional direction of own organizational unit.

• Acts as a professional advisor and mentor for staff / work team / taskforces.

• Provides working leadership and training to less experienced personnel.

• Provides expertise and delivers advanced system troubleshooting methods like system level tracing, debug, protocol flow analysis. 

• Identifies, reproduce and characterizes defects and collaborates promptly with R&D teams for fixes.

• Leads and resolves complex situations derived from technical activities such as software upgrade, audit, equipment swap, network expansion, multi-vendor issues, acceptance testing, feature testing, tailored technical support, end-to-end performance improvement, etc.

• Interacts with customer for complex cases, providing workarounds, etc.

• Ensures SLAs are met for escalated cases.

• Leads the Root Causes Analysis (RCA) analysis and report creation.

• Complies with the requirements as per the emergency process role and ensures quick recovery for issues categorized as critical outages and code red.

• Creates and approves knowledge articles (author, reviewer, approver, coach).

• Communicates internally and externally with customers, R&D and 3rd party vendors.

• Creates technical documents and guidelines.

• May work as a key user for care tools.

• Performs system level product competence training and knowledge transfer across team.

Technical:

• Fluency in English is required.

• Experience working in R&D and/or customer-facing environments.

• Hands-on knowledge of Linux / Unix

• Hands-on knowledge of BASH

• Hands-on knowledge of VMware/Openstack/Container.

• Hands-on knowledge of Kubernetes / k8s

• Working knowledge of java and / or python

• Working knowledge of IP standard, routing protocols, OSI model, etc.)

• Working knowledge of Rest-API

• Alcatel-Lucent products would be desired, but not necessary (Training will be provided to the right candidate):

• Knowledge in Nokia IP products would be desired, but not necessary (Training will be provided to the right candidate)

Non-technical:

• Should be able to articulate technical issues / solutions to internal / external customers.

• Self-motivated (Does not require constant ‘oversight/assistance’ to get jobs done, etc.).

• Adaptability (Adapt to change quickly; Ability to learn new technology, products, processes, etc. quickly).

• Accountable and open to constructive feedback.

• Exceptional customer service skills. Placing customer needs first is an absolute requirement.

• Ability to objectively think and solve problems under pressure (Very important)

• Be available to work during off-business hours (i.e., after 5 pm) and on-call rotation (On-call 24hrs / day for a predefined period at a time).

• Be available to travel on short notice (i.e., one day) for trips of short duration.  Expected yearly travel is low (~5%).

• Good Communication and Public Speaking to negotiate case resolution.

• Customer Focus.

• Drives Results.

• Customer Relationship Management.

• Provide remote technical support on Nokia IP products and networks to customers based in Latin America and North America.  It includes isolating issues within a customer ION IP network and guiding the customer on how to rectify the issue(s) identified, amongst several other things.  

• Ensure that work records (AR's) are updated in accordance with defined processes and that all metrics relative to the contractual commitments are, at the very least, met or exceeded.

• Create and maintain customer relationships on a day-to-day basis.  Maintain a high level of customer satisfaction by providing services fully compliant with the SLA.

• Provide remote technical support to all customers on Nokia IP products and networks via telephone or Teleconference system. 

• On some occasions, travel may be required on short notice.

• Assist both internal and external customers with the isolation of problems within a Nokia IP network and develop solutions to rectify reported issues.

• Identify potential patterns of issues observed in the field (i.e. Product and/or service related) and take the lead in documenting, reporting, and tracking these issues to resolution.  This directly impacts the quality of products / services offered by Nokia. 

• For outages, identify the impact of the outage and changes made to the customer network.  Ensure outage situations are documented per guidelines to meet contractual root cause analysis obligations. Provide pragmatic and effective recovery. Manage and communicate the related risks.

• Each Customer issue is tracked using the SALES Force Trouble ticket system, Engineers are responsible for ensuring that tickets / records for each issue are continuously updated and maintained per Nokia Processes.