CEES Student Blog Submissions: Blog Submissions

My Coop Work Term as ShopiFolk- Kerryann Tomas

Basic Information 

I am Kerryann Tomas, a post-graduate Business Management student at Selkirk College, with anticipated graduation in December 2021. I am a registered healthcare professional and women’s rights ambassador from the Philippines. I completed my professional business and sales course in San Ramon, California at the SAP Academy. I had the pleasure of working for Shopify for two-semester work terms from June 2020 to March 2021.

Introduction 

Shopify is an e-commerce company that was established and is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Shopify provides an e-commerce platform for businesses of all sizes to help them “start, run and grow”. Due to the changes in lifestyle brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic, Shopify’s services have become a go-to for individuals who looked into starting their first online businesses.

Department and Role 

I worked as a Support Advisor at Shopify and that involved supporting all merchants’ needs by answering their technical questions via phone call, email, and chat, regarding the use of the Shopify platform. The use of the Shopify platform is not limited to the native capabilities of the solution but also includes integration with other platforms and apps to be able to reach out to customers and sell their products and services through Shopify and through other avenues like social media. 

My day-to-day duties/responsibilities include responding to phone calls, chats, and emails regarding any concerns and questions about the Shopify platform and following on technical cases which may need a referral to escalation departments like Billing, Account Integrity, Buyer Support, Plus Support, and more. 

The team at Shopify is diverse as members come from different parts of the world like Eastern and Western Canada, the Philippines, and New Zealand. They come from different educational backgrounds but all share the same passion for technology and helping entrepreneurs to succeed in their business ventures. Creative ideas to streamline the processes and build good teamwork are always welcomed, evaluated, and applied accordingly. The job is high paced and technical however the supportive environment at Shopify makes it easier for employees especially new ones to cope and adapt. 

Skills 

To be successful in the Support Advisor role at Shopify, one must have the following soft skills- strong reading, writing, and communication skills, adaptability and openness to rapid change in processes, and self-discipline. Every day, a Support Advisor has to deal with different merchant issues which are unique and may sometimes be complicated so it is important to have a good comprehension of the issue as they are verbalized by the merchant. It is crucial to be able to communicate in a way that you can dig deeper to know the root of the issue so the best solution can be given promptly. Changes in internal processes may sometimes be made quickly so you need to easily adapt to them and keep your glass half full. Also, since the work has been changed to a remote setup, self-discipline is a must so you can follow all schedules given by the team to ensure there is good coverage to cater to the merchants’ needs.

In terms of hard skills, proficiency with technology like e-commerce solutions, point-of-sale solutions, coding, website design are needed so you can better understand merchant concerns. Without knowledge of these, it can be difficult to provide the right solutions that will suit the merchants’ requirements.

From this role, I was able to assess myself and learn that my strength is in connecting with merchants and communicating with them in a way that I am able to gain their trust and confidence from the first point of contact. I learned that my weakness and an area I can improve on is attention to detail. It is critical to be detail-oriented because missing out on a small detail can prevent an advisor from solving a merchant’s concern or can lead to escalating them to the wrong team for further evaluation.

What I learned most from this role though is how to properly communicate my ideas and probe further to truly understand where the issue lies. I now know how to better position myself and convey a message so the merchant feels confident that I am really able to help and that I understood the reason why they reached out to the team.

Reflection

The role of Support Advisor at Shopify is like playing in a whole different field for me. For the past decade, I have been in leadership and sales account management roles where I was in the frontline to communicate with D and C level executives. In this role, I was in the frontline to solve technical concerns of merchants and at the same time at the backend to help them check their store for technical solutions. It has been very challenging especially at first, but with the help and support of the team, I have successfully completed two work terms.

What really stood out for me is realizing that the key to being the best version of yourself in everything you do is keeping your glass half full. Keeping yourself open to learning gives you the ability to look at yourself in a different light and recognize that there are areas you can definitely improve on and be better at. I will definitely come back and do another coop term if given the opportunity because it not only helped me practically apply what I learned in class but also appreciate how this learning will prepare me in my future plans to be a successful entrepreneur in the future.

My work-from-home setup consists of a laptop and a monitor so I can browse more resources while

connecting with merchants via email, chat, and phone calls.

Our Virtual Team Meetings are scheduled once a week so we can all catch up and assess our performances from the past week.

We have small group meetings as well so we can do peer reviews and get more detailed feedback about specific cases we have worked on.