Steadfast Support Worthy of Salute

Any day when I get to celebrate an employee milestone here at Rogue Amoeba is a good day. I’m thus very pleased to honor our support technician Robert Charlton, who recently reached five years of service with the company.

A Key Member of Our Dependable Support Team

Since our earliest days, Rogue Amoeba has made fast and responsive customer support a top priority. We’ve had many talented support techs in our more than 20 years in business, but as a result of the demanding nature of the role, Robert is only the second employee to reach five years of helping customers.

Robert first joined us back in 2017, as we were expanding from a single support tech to a team of two people. Since day one, he’s been a remarkably steady presence at Rogue Amoeba. Robert’s thoughtful, calm, and confident disposition was a great asset. He’s always eager to help users, demonstrating tremendous patience and a desire to get to the root of every issue.

Even as needs have changed over the years, Robert has always managed to fit the bill. The expanding nature of work-from-home culture at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a substantial increase in demand for support, as usage of our products soared. We realized we’d need to quickly transition from two support techs working together to a team of three, with long-time support tech Chris Barajas moving up to be manage this expanded team. Robert has been instrumental in making that transition viable, first by working with a temporary contractor, and then helping to bring our newest hire Aaron Wasserman onboard and up-to-speed with our resources and policies.

During Robert’s tenure, our support team has gotten even more responsive and well-organized. Our documentation has been enhanced across both our public Knowledge Base and our own internal resources, and our processes have grown to support a team environment. Individual users who request assistance weren’t the only ones to benefit, either. By better integrating customer feedback into our development process, the very way we build our products has improved too. Everything we make at Rogue Amoeba is a team effort, and we’re grateful for all that Robert contributes.

Superb Bags for Superb Support Techs

Whenever one of our employees reaches five years of service, we present them with a personalized gift. Robert spends a lot of his free time working on music, so we initially considered providing him with some studio time. However, after a bit of discussion we went a different route.

Back in 2015, we presented our now-support manager Chris with a gorgeous briefcase for his five year anniversary. This, along with Robert’s feedback, led us to create a new tradition: superb bags for our superb support technicians.

In Robert’s own words, because he frequently walks and uses public transit, he’s “more of a backpack guy”. He thus selected a tremendous bag from Tom Bihn, one which will let him tote his laptop (and anything else) for years and years. He also shared an amusing story:

If you recall in my earlier times at RA, the “7UJM” row of keys on my MacBook Pro was broken. That was due to water damage sustained when toting it in…my $30 Amazon Basics backpack.

Never again!

We also sent Robert a card custom-made by our designer Neale, along with one of the custom challenge coins we’ve been issuing since 2013:

Below, you can see (and hear!) a short video Robert created as he opened the coin box:

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Expressing Our Appreciation

Working as a support tech means Robert speaks directly with our customers on a daily basis. Thanks to his superb work, he receives plenty of kind words from grateful users in private, but we wanted to be sure to take the time to publicly thank him for his five years (and beyond) here at Rogue Amoeba. Since 2017, Robert has helped over 20,000 users of our products, and that list of satisfied folks grows day-by-day.

Thank you for all you’ve done and continue to do to make things better for our users, Robert! We look forward to much more great work together.