Sorenson Employee Spotlight: Customer Care Director Shahzad Merchant

Shah works to make Sorenson’s VRS Customer Care team is able to answer every question you ask and solve any issues you have properly and thoroughly.

He explained his role, the impact he sees deaf leaders having on our products, and some suggestions for how you can make your Customer Care call the best experience.

TRANSCRIPT 

Hi, my name is Shahzad Merchant. I work as Director of Customer Care here at Sorenson. I joined Sorenson back in 2004 in New York. I was an installer, and at that time I would actually go to customer's homes to do the VP 100 installation. Wow, it's been over 20 years ago!

My role has changed over that time. I went from trainer (installer) to Tech Support. I helped people who had videophone problems, later becoming a supervisor, and most recently now serving as director for Customer Care. The responsibilities include managing teams for both VRS and CaptionCall.

What we do in Customer Care

I'm responsible for overseeing tier two and tier three support, which focuses on providing support to different products like videophones, ntouch mobile, CaptionCall devices, and CaptionCall Mobile. My team resolves issues that may come up, and if we need to we can bring in the quality assurance team from engineering to help resolve issues.

Importance of employee perspectives

I think it's important that Sorenson has a diverse Customer Care team so we can really understand the different customers across the U.S. Customers may have their own regional signs, so we want to make sure we can work with them in their native sign language.

Deaf leaders are also consumers

It’s important to have Deaf people in leadership roles because we are also consumers. We use the products and services so we can give feedback, ideas, and suggestions about how to develop and modify products to improve them. We also share ideas on how to share our message through marketing or how we perform outreach with customers out in the field or at community events. Those are direct impacts of having Deaf people in leadership roles.

Having this job, no day is ever the same. The dynamics are always changing. What I may expect one day will change the next day, and that's what makes it fun and challenging — is that we are working to resolve issues, and so we want to find out how we can best solve them. And there may be something new, and so it becomes a learning opportunity in the process. Also there are times we may have to pivot, so I love that the job is never the same.

Contacting Sorenson Customer Care

When individuals call in to Customer Care, we ask them to be prepared with the needed information:

• name
• phone number
• what product is being used
• whether it's the device itself or the app on a mobile device
• and then what are the questions or issues so we can quickly and efficiently answer or resolve them as soon as possible.

Any time individuals have a problem that they're facing, maybe there's some kind of question or they need feedback, we ask that people contact us so that we can figure out how best to resolve the issue. Or if it's feedback to something that's occurred we can use it as a teaching opportunity for persons who may not know because we value everyone here on our team as well as our customers. I'm truly proud to be a part of the Customer Care team.

It's really wonderful to see everyone doing their best to resolve issues that come up every day, and then to be able to answer questions and move things along. It's really what makes this job so satisfactory is knowing that we are able to do our best in resolving whatever issues may come.

TRANSCRIPT END

You can find help with your Sorenson VRS products or service — including contact info for Shah’s team — any time on our updated Support page.

And if you’re enjoying our new website look, you can thank Austin Balaich, who had a lot to do with that. Check out his employee spotlight.