Meet the Team: Q&A with Rowan, Junior Support Analyst
Meet Rowan, Junior Support Analyst at Nublue. Read about his route into hosting, life on the support desk, and what's got him excited about AI and GPU hosting.
By Betty Burrell
Behind every hosting query, however big or small, is someone on the other end who has to make sense of it fast. That's the job of Nublue's support team: turning technical hosting problems into clear, calm answers for the people who need them.
This Q&A features Rowan, Junior Support Analyst, on his first year in the industry, what a day on the support desk actually looks like, and why he thinks Nublue's client-first approach is what sets the team apart.
About Rowan
Can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your role at Nublue?
Hi, I'm a Junior Support Analyst here at Nublue. I deal with incoming support tickets, helping customers with a plethora of hosting queries. I also answer both phone calls and live chat to assist with client issues alongside them, using my knowledge of their hosting setups to quickly resolve problems.
How did you end up working in hosting? Was it always the plan?
Nublue is my first job after graduation, and I knew from university that my preference in IT-related jobs was something network or hosting related. I particularly enjoyed cyber security at university, but I couldn't give up the opportunity to work for Nublue after the interview showed it as a place I could thrive and grow.
Rowan's Role at Nublue
What does a typical week look like for you?
With the wide variety of projects, tickets and clients, every day is different! I may spend a day working on one big project, be it migrating multiple servers or updating clients on security breaches and the steps we're taking to remedy them. Another day may be spent dealing with tickets if there are a lot of queries that day. I spend a lot of time working together with the Systems Administrators to provide essential, and appropriately technical, feedback to clients so they know exactly what is happening behind the scenes.
What kind of problems are you most often brought in to solve for clients?
Some of the most common queries from clients are regarding their hosting setup and the systems that connect with their servers. Think Cloudflare integration, Google Backups, Redis & Varnish, and BotBlocker. These are just some of the systems I work with every day, configuring, troubleshooting and helping clients get the most out of them.
What's your favourite part of the job?
My favourite part of the job is working in a small team where all of us are happy and confident to speak to each other about issues, providing helpful insights when one of us isn't sure. We have, admittedly, a lot of banter while maintaining professionalism towards each other and our clients. I genuinely enjoy coming into the office to see everyone!
Expertise and the Industry
What do you wish more clients understood about your area of work?
With how quickly the world is progressing at the moment, we often find ourselves getting queries from clients about issues or problems we've never seen before! This is a great opportunity for us to learn, especially when it comes to those issues related to up-and-coming technologies that we're trying to implement more into our service. This can sometimes come with some uncertainty on our end, which can occasionally lead to clients feeling less confident in us, but we all have to learn somewhere!
What does great look like in your field, and how do you know when you've nailed it?
I always find that a job well done is met with client satisfaction. That doesn't always mean, or have to be, a direct message from the client expressing their satisfaction, but instead can often be silently appreciated through a job well done, when they can see a service working as expected, or an issue resolved that they had been frustrated with.
What's one thing Nublue does differently that genuinely sets us apart?
I think Nublue really emphasises the client and their needs. We as a team will often go out of our way to help a client, and even having only been here a short while, I can see how this has led to some long-standing customers who have stayed with us for years. I pride myself on being part of the team at Nublue that genuinely wants to give the client good service and great technical support, by sharing our knowledge and experience in an easy-to-understand way.
Outside of work, I'm a big gamer, often spending evenings enjoying the company of my friends online, or playing board games at a club set up by a childhood friend. I also enjoy bouldering, frisbee, and spending too much money on seeing terrible films at the cinema. I will literally watch anything, I just like going!