How an AWS associate used the power of listening to make a difference for cloud users

Eat, sleep, help customers solve their most pressing cloud computing issues, repeat?

If you’ve ever wondered what the support team at Amazon Web Services (AWS) does on a daily basis, get it straight from someone on the inside. Here’s a breakdown of what an average day at work looks like for Shengkai Chang, a technical customer service associate at AWS.

“I really enjoy talking to and building relationships with people, and I usually deal with cases surrounding customer accounts, billing and more,” he explains.

As cloud computing services become more embedded in the business world and spending for it increases, schedules like Chang’s will only get more commonplace as cloud providers like AWS hire more support engineering or customer service employees for their users.

For Chang, this also means that there’s even more potential for career advancement and to take things to the next level. Here’s a closer look at his AWS journey so far.

From numbers to people

Chang is no stranger to life’s twists and turns. Though he’s in the cloud computing space now, he originally graduated from National Taiwan University (NTU) in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in accounting.

“I initially planned to study abroad for one year, but I chose to graduate directly from NTU and work in Taiwan, mainly due to the pandemic,” he says. “I was eager to work in an environment where I could interact with people from different cultures. And at the end of 2020 I started running a gym that offers various exercise programs in New Taipei City with some partners.”

Chang’s role at the gym was to oversee IT and finance. As he got to know these functions better, he found a new calling.

“I realized that I’m really passionate about industries that are critical to international businesses like finance, AI, and cloud service, so I started looking for new opportunities,” he says.

Going from running a gym to AWS was definitely a huge jump / Photo credit: AWS

That opportunity came knocking at a networking event for diverse talent organized by AWS. Chang met a talent acquisition representative from the company who was impressed by his background, which combines economic studies and exposure to various sectors such as finance and engineering. More importantly, Chang has curiosity, persistence, and experience running a customer-facing business – all of which the AWS representative was looking out for.

For Chang, this was a perfect opportunity to blend his business interests with his desire to work in a multicultural environment. After completing the functional and Amazon loop interviews, he was off to the races.

Getting up to speed

While eager to embark on his first international job at AWS, he would have to face his fair share of opportunities and challenges.

“In the beginning, I was overwhelmed with the vast amount of technical knowledge my role requires,” he explains. “AWS offers so many products and solutions, such as Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS, Amazon SageMaker, and more.”

In his first three months at AWS, Chang took training courses to learn the ins and outs of his role. Much of the training involved learning how the different AWS services work and how to communicate well with customers to understand their needs.

Communication is key / Photo credit: AWS

Under his mentors’ supervision, he also got to deal with real users during training. This experience proved useful: He eventually became comfortable interacting with customers independently.

Chang credits his managers from the Mandarin customer support team and mentors for helping him learn on the job and the opportunities that came his way.

“All my team members were extremely welcoming and inclusive,” he says. “They all showed tremendous patience while instructing me, answering questions and addressing any doubts I had. I felt really accommodated with such a collaborative culture.”

Chang is especially appreciative of this as he has a hearing disability.

“Sometimes I can’t clearly hear what my colleagues are saying. However, I’ve never felt stressed about asking them to repeat what they said or explain again since they’ve all been really inclusive and friendly to me,” he shares.

Walking in others’ shoes

Technical skills weren’t the only thing that Chang had to pick up. Since his role involves extensive interactions with customers, he had to learn how to communicate effectively.

He needed a lot of help with this initially, as he was more solution-oriented and would sometimes overlook customers’ emotions and perspectives.

A customer once opened a support ticket to cancel their subscription to some AWS services. The services were activated accidentally and would have cost the customer extra money if left unattended. Completing the cancellation request would take several weeks – Chang informed the customer and left it at that.

“He contacted me around two weeks later, feeling anxious as he was having trouble paying the subscription fees while the request was still underway,” he says. “I realized that I needed to reassure him consistently through phone calls so that his mind would be at ease.”

This taught Chang a valuable lesson that he then applied to other cases: To keep customers from worrying, they should be updated clearly and regularly.

With his mentors’ guidance and more experience under his belt, Chang also became better at understanding customers’ needs by diving deeper into their issues and knowing them on a more personal level before offering relevant feedback and solutions in a warm and friendly manner.

It’s not just what you do but how you do it too / Photo credit: AWS

This comes in handy when he’s solving more complex problems that involve multiple AWS services at once. By empathizing with customers, Chang gets a clearer idea of how to target the issue and which internal teams he should reach out to for assistance.

For example, many customers migrating to AWS need a high usage quota for different services almost immediately after activating the accounts. That’s because for these firms, many mission-critical applications operate on the cloud. However, there are certain restrictions that hinder new accounts from launching large quantities of cloud services.

To solve this, the cloud support engineering team works with teams like business development, service operations, and financial risk assurance to ensure a smoother migration process and to get the required services up and running for customers as soon as possible.

“It takes a lot of time and effort to communicate and update all stakeholders in complex cases,” Chang explains. “But by putting myself in the customer’s shoes, I’m usually able to come up with better solutions and patiently deal with more unexpected situations.”

Aiming bigger

Now that Chang has settled into his role, he can serve around 5x to 10x more customers’ tickets on average every day compared to when he was starting out.

“I’ve become extremely patient and active when negotiating with customers, and it’s really helped me enjoy my role,” he says. But beyond assisting customers, Chang says he adopted this newfound mentality too when working with international colleagues.

These international interactions are also a reminder of what drives Chang: the desire for a multicultural environment. After finding that, he has set his sights even higher.

“I’m keen on taking on more responsibilities and perhaps in the future, take up an international-level role here at AWS,” he says.

AWS is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud, offering over 200 fully featured services from data centers globally. Curious to learn how you can play a part in shaping the future of technology? Click this link and check out the open roles.

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This content was produced by Tech in Asia Studios, which connects brands with Asia’s tech community. Learn more about partnering with Tech in Asia Studios.