By Ocient Staff
Customer Operations and Product Support play a crucial role in aligning customer support efforts with the company’s overall business goals and ensuring a positive customer experience throughout the product lifecycle.
In this employee spotlight, we highlight Director of Customer Operations and Product Support, Greg Papadopoulos. Greg specializes in developing and implementing strategies to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, collaborating with Product to understand features, updates, and improvements, and streamlining customer support processes and operations to improve efficiency.
Let’s learn more about Greg’s background and see how he fits into his role here at Ocient.
Where are you based and how do you take advantage of our remote first policy?
I’m based in the West Loop in Chicago, and I take advantage of remote work by making and cleaning kitchen messes in between work.
All joking aside, being a remote first company has forced everyone to be efficient in their communication, cut on time wasting endeavors of the past, and allowed us to hire awesome people from a global talent pool. It has also been nice to to control your own destiny in a sense that you can choose when/how to engage with your colleagues. On a personal front, being remote has led to a healthier physical lifestyle by being more in control of my regiment.
How long have you been with Ocient?
Just closing 4 years.
What are some things you like to do in your free time?
My wife and I love to take long city walks, stopping off places to grab a bite. Being in the city for more than 10 years, we’re always looking for the next fun spot, even if we never intend to visit. We were both raised in families that show their love through food and hospitality, and we are definitely trying to maintain that custom. When we’re not talking about what we’re eating next, we’re hanging out with friends and family and talking about what we ate recently.
What’s the next place you’d like to check off your travel bucket list?
I didn’t qualify for the summer Olympics this summer so we’ll have to pay our own way to a honeymoon in Paris.
Are you binge watching any shows right now?
We’re on a home renovation show kick right now for some reason, like “Why the heck did I buy this house?”. A few favorites from 2023 were Shrinking, Severance, Poker Face, Silo, Dave and really looking forward to the final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
What’s one thing you can’t live without?
A comb. Keeping with the food theme, lemon. And inside joke for the Greek family, socks…
What’s your go-to comfort food?
I love eating healthy dishes, but if I’m ever rescued from a stranded island, it’s homemade French fries (in Olive oil, don’t be scared) and Tzatziki.
Which Ocient core value do you resonate the most with in your daily working life?
Customer focused is obvious based on my role, but it’s something I and our team holds dear to our heart with every activity, whether it’s collaborating internally to improve the product, our processes and communication, or working directly with a customer on a problem. There is nothing better than helping a customer achieve their business goals, and we want them to have a great Ocient experience while doing so. It’s serious business. People’s careers are on the line with your product, and we want them to share in our pride of building a great team and product.
What is one of your proudest career moments while working at Ocient?
Just being a part of launching new customer deployments. Seeing them start from an initial conversation/scope to production launch is so rewarding. It’s incredible to see how each one of those efforts improves everything at Ocient, from our communication, processes, product and leadership qualities. My proudest moment is seeing my team and colleagues shine through these engagements.
What do you find unique about your job?
We have a fantastic culture of openness, collaboration, ideation that is very empowering when combined with the rapid development of an early stage company. The reason we are all here is to make an impact, every day. What each person works on matters, whether it sees the light of day or not. The quality and talent of Ocient separates it from the pack. We get to work with people who have been part of successful companies and teams and new hires at their first job who bring fresh and exciting ideas and energy to the table. It’s the epitome of iron sharpens iron.
Describe your growth journey at Ocient.
So much has changed in the last four years. In the earlier stages, you have to wear many hats, and ownership of certain areas could sometimes be nebulous. You have to figure out how to fly while you’re just starting to crawl. What is great about Ocient is that there are fantastic colleagues to help you along the way, people with experience, ideas and with the intentions of building something that scales. Our customer operations team has grown over the years, which is very exciting. We are always looking to improve, back each other up, and add value wherever we can. With other teams and functions also scaling, we’re seeing awesome velocity in getting improvements in the product.
What career advice would you give your younger self?
Don’t leave gaps in your game, and always look to improve. Leaving gaps will limit your ceiling, your options and contributions. Balance self-improvement with the long hours, don’t rely on speed and effort to make up for inefficiency.
What advice would you give to someone entering the tech industry?
The word value comes to mind.
Value yourself, value your position and team, and always find ways to add value. Your opportunities will blossom when you contribute, don’t shy away from visibility, look for feedback and lean on your teammates and mentors. Forgive yourself for mistakes, understand there’s a lot of growth to come. Take pride in your work, but acknowledge others’ perspectives, and challenge yourself. You will never regret taking on a challenge if you enter and exit with the right perspective, which is growth. And always be a positive force, you never know when you’ll cross paths with someone in the future.
Would you like to give an employee shoutout?
First, the wonderful Customer Operations team that treats everyone with respect, is highly skilled, a pleasure to work with and continuously steps up to take on challenges.
Two individuals outside of my organization I’d like to highlight are Dylan Murphy (VP of Product Management) and Shantan Kethireddy (VP of Customer Solutions) , who have been at my side since day 1, as a colleague and a person. They’ve lifted me up through the daily challenges, kept me focused and motivated on the big prize, and helped me grow in many ways.
Interested in learning more?
Ocient is a remote-first company full of efficiently effective & craft driven contributors. We are passionate about delivering the very best in hyperscale data solutions to our customers. Meet other members of our team on our Meet the Team page or explore our partnership opportunities.