Nick Blasier Email & Phone Number

Madison, Wisconsin, United States

I teach one on one lessons to top level players, write strategy books, and travel as a professional commentator for the biggest backgammon tournaments in the world. I also provide education and community through my YouTube channel, where I interview other members of the backgammon community, and provide educational materials.

Madison, Wisconsin, United States

Non profit software and payment processing solution, helping charities raise money for good causes.—Joined a team of 10 as first dedicated support leader to bring together a cohesive team and offering. * Broke down silos to revitalize interdepartmental relationships, especially Success, Support and Engineering.* Regained operational organization and control, after recognizing widespread bloat of systems and processes from recent acquisitions. Reduced complexity of Zendesk ticketing system, established reporting, brought support tiers together, normalized processes across different product lines, and merged Support between the payments and non-profit sides of the business.* Hired a customer service team of 5 and developed training and onboarding materials for them.* Created internal documentation and culture of internal sharing; set up Wiki and encouraged staff to write and share articles. * Developed managerial talent. Promoted leads of each Tier of Support, defined roles, and provided leadership training.* Improved metrics and customer satisfaction - 50% rate of response within first day increased to 90% plus, Customer Satisfaction rating of 50% improved to 80% within first 5 months

Chicago, Illinois, United States

Automotive aftermarket company providing industry-leading calibration solutions, including both hardware and software for OBD vehicles.Joined team of 5 support engineers in company of under 50 employees as first dedicated Support Manager, to build out a department and team. * Broke down silos to revitalize interdepartmental relationships, especially Sales and Engineering. * Formed team tiers to match tickets to representatives with appropriate skill and knowledge. * Hired right people; greatly improved quality of the team. * Created internal documentation and culture of internal sharing; set up Wiki and encouraged staff to write and share articles. Hired and managed Technical Writer. * Upgraded team, supporting them in developing strengths and matching to tasks. Kept team current on new product releases—they had been left uninformed of important developments. * Initiated parental leave policy where none was in place.

Austin, Texas Area

Global technology partner for corporate legal departments and risk & compliance professionals. Staff of 350 supports ten product lines to raise productivity, control expenses, and mitigate risk. —Championed projects for improving department operations while managing key tactical teams. * Forged plan to consolidate acquired companies with uniform processes and methods. * Created synergies and helped employees to fit into the big picture. * Championed organization-wide testing infrastructure solution and created an interdepartmental, dedicated team. Centralized solution is dependable, available and manageable. * Standardized reporting and metrics, presented analysis and directional suggestions based on data, such as hiring needs.* Enabled cross-departmental feedback and collaboration by absorbing Technical Writing team into Support and by organizing and making workloads transparent.* Drastically reduced complaints and improved predictability for clients by revamping defect resolution process. Helped overwhelmed maintenance team manage demands from multiple departments; improved transparency in engineering response & assisted with prioritizing tasks. * Vastly improved client service by spearheading creation of team providing free upgrades to clients. Largely eliminated difficulty of supporting multiple versions. * Researched addition of technologies such as AI and chatbots to automate work and reduce costs; recognized need to first build out our knowledge base.

Support Manager | Information repository | Wiki | Coaching | Mentoring | Playbooks | Best practices—Managed team of 20 with help of Team Leads; supported client relationships for flagship product. *Refined methodology and interdepartmental processes, built out structure and coached team leads in new roles and team management.* Revitalized training and onboarding, making new employees useful much faster, moving from dry lectures to hands-on work with objectives. Involved engineers best suited and most interested in training. Minimized impact of onramp on Support’s day-to-day operations.* Built central information repository to find and share information internally; introduced Wiki. * Drastically reduced client complaints and issue escalations by overseeing “war room” response teams for critical issues. Kept client well informed on progress, ensured issues handled. * Greatly improved morale with regular one-on-one meetings, development of yearly goals, and career direction discussions. * Developed process playbooks for entire support organization. Brought together best practices, simplified Director’s management job, and simplified interactions.

Promoted to lead a team of 6 through prioritization and performance review, managed a subset of client relationships. This was my introduction into Support Management.

Helped resolve most technical escalated issues for enterprise software solution, using J2EE, Java, SQL, HTML, Javascript, CSS, JSP, etc. Performed root cause analysis across all layers - internal hosted infrastructure, client-maintained infrastructure, various middleware technology, our application itself, and client solutions developed on application.Made client facing calls. Fostered cross-departmental collaboration to resolve issues, bugs and other performance issues.

Austin, Tx

Installing and configuring JBoss application servers. Automating the installation process and supporting the servers.

Austin, Tx

Led classes and individual client sessions; provided entertaining workout experience and troubleshot physical limitations and challenges.Led a team of coaches in upgrading their skills.Promoted to head coach; collaborated with gym owner on financials, organizing promotional events, client satisfaction, and projects to improve product offering.Built membership as happy customers brought in friends.

After IBM acquisition of Lombardi, I moved into technical support of our cloud-based application.

Hired as a Java Developer, assigned to develop solutions and customizations using Business Process Management software, a J2EE application. Worked with team to provide best practices on client request, deliver prototypes and samples, perform software installations, and develop project- based customizations. Clients included CVS and Home Depot.

Austin, Tx

Coded in Java, SQL, and Hibernate for a client/server application for use by the Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services (DARS).

Client/server application using Visual Basic, and a database language called Cache.