Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Accomplishments
Certification
Affiliations
Timeline
Kat Gaines

Kat Gaines

Summary

I'm a customer-focused leader with overall 13+ years experience in customer facing roles, 2.5 years as a developer advocate, and 7+ years experience leading technical support teams.

I build award-winning teams with high standards for core metrics and overall quality, resulting in highly successful team members and end-users.

My focus areas are in crafting a memorable customer experience, cross-functional partnerships, incident management and building a diverse and inclusive team. I drive success through meticulous coaching and development of individual contributors and managers alike, with 20+ promotions of previous direct reports on record, as well as through cross-functional collaboration and analysis and shepherding of data as it applies to my function.

Overview

13
13
years of professional experience
2
2
Certification

Work History

Senior Developer Advocate

PagerDuty
10.2021 - Current
  • Assisted in Sales engagements by delivering best practices, thought leadership, and brainstorming sessions to customers on a 1:1 basis as needed
  • Delivered thought leadership sessions at industry conferences, educating developer community on incident management and/or customer support operations dependent on audience
  • Created content (podcasts, articles, operations guides, webinars) to educate community on best practices
  • Internal collaboration across multiple areas of the company

Director of Customer Support

PagerDuty
07.2014 - 10.2021
  • Hired as an individual contributor, promoted quickly through management to Director
  • Scaled the team from 4 agents in one office to 30+ across five offices globally, led the team to win multiple awards, and mentored 20+ agents to promotion or parallel movement across the business
  • Implemented CS programs from scratch, such as creating a Premium Support offering, standardizing team incident management programs, and working cross functionally to partner team members with Product for an ambassadorship program.
  • Consistently maintained above average metrics including high customer satisfaction and fast response and resolution times
  • Maintained a high standard for the global Support organisation, worked cross-functionally to build and scale Support and Help Center tools, resources, and process, and held responsibility for overall strategy and resource planning of the Support organisation.
  • Took on a secondary role as Senior Program Manager reporting directly to PagerDuty's CFO, in order to drive critical business projects in 2020

Customer Support Representative

Sparkart
06.2011 - 07.2014
  • Supported end-user customers of Sparkart products via email and phone communication
  • Responsibilities included technical support, managing refunds and merchandise shipments, communicating with customers regarding purchases, and supporting event ticket pre-sales for members of fan clubs associated with Sparkart clients
  • Hired as an individual contributor and quickly promoted to manage a subsection of the overall Customer Support team
  • Oversaw quality and acted as an escalation resource for my team, as well as trained and performance managed new hires.

Manager, Customer Support

ooShirts
02.2012 - 02.2013
  • Performed a dual role as an artwork department representative, liaising between customers and artists to resolve concerns and approving order artwork based on quality and other criteria.

Education

Bachelor of Arts - Creative Writing

Mills College, Oakland, CA

Bachelor of Arts - Art History

Mills College, Oakland, CA

Skills

  • Project Management
  • Agile development methodologies and DevOps principles
  • Customer-First
  • Technical Support
  • Talent Development
  • Strategic Planning
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration
  • Troubleshooting and problem resolution
  • Process Improvement
  • Analytical Skills
  • Written Communication
  • Employee Coaching, Mentoring, and Development

Accomplishments

  • Personal: Global Services Leadership MVP 2019, PagerDuty Sales Achievers' Club.
  • Team: Stevie® Award Winning Team (Customer Service Dept of the Year, distributed across bronze, silver, and gold medals). Awarded 2015-2019
  • PagerDuty Halloween Costume Contest, Winning Team for Group Costume 7 years running (2014-2021)


Certification

  • Harrison Metal General Management Training, February 2019
  • Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Master Training, January 2016

Affiliations

  • Support Driven Community
  • ElevateCX Community

Timeline

Senior Developer Advocate - PagerDuty
10.2021 - Current
Director of Customer Support - PagerDuty
07.2014 - 10.2021
Manager, Customer Support - ooShirts
02.2012 - 02.2013
Customer Support Representative - Sparkart
06.2011 - 07.2014
Mills College - Bachelor of Arts, Creative Writing
Mills College - Bachelor of Arts, Art History

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Kat Gaines