Celebrating Our Vancouver Support Teams

I started my eBay adventure way back in 1996 as first, a community member and shortly afterward, as eBay's first customer support rep. Although my actual position and responsibilities have changed over the years, I still proudly consider myself, at heart, an eBay customer support rep. I constantly remind all of my colleagues here that no matter what our job titles might be, we are all first and foremost, support reps. From the top exec to the newly hired, every eBay employee's purpose is to serve our customers --  eBay buyers and sellers.

Every day, I receive email from buyers and sellers and I consider it an honor and a delight to respond to each and every one. And I like to know how it goes with our customer support employees; what issues they face, their take on the current needs and concerns of our sellers and buyers, etc. So when our customer support team in our Vancouver, BC office asked me to come up and help them celebrate their 5th anniversary last week, I was more than happy to oblige (and I see that my friend Julie scooped me by blogging about the celebrations first!). I love a good party (and the salmon in BC is unequaled -- I ate so much I thought I would at any moment start swimming upstream to spawn). But more importantly, I would never miss the opportunity to meet up and share stories and experiences with my fellow support reps.

I flew up to Vancouver last Tuesday night and spent two full days (and one very late night graveyard shift) meeting and chatting with all of our fellow support reps. Our BC office houses several key eBay support teams including but not limited to, our Buyer teams (the bulk of our Seller teams including PowerSeller support are housed in our Salt Lake City office), Live Help Chat, Southeast Asia and Australia Support teams, and the lion's share of our Trust and Safety department.

It was quite a visit! The dedication, talent and enthusiasm our reps show for their jobs and for you, our Community, never fails to astound and inspire me. This trip was no exception. No one has a better take on the pulse and needs of our Community like our support employees. This was continually evident with each and every rep I had the pleasure of meeting and following as they went about their daily tasks.

It was definitely a week to celebrate. In five short years the BC office has grown from a small initial group of 30 to over 1,000 with an ongoing new hire training program. During my visit, the BC team was training a group of brand new reps destined for our Australia support team (Welcome guys!) As you can see from the photos (including some that Julie shared), we had a great time. I ate only a few of the cupcakes. Yes, just a few.... The separate teams decorated their respective office areas and cubes and we had a "Best of" contest (I was one of the judges). Special mention goes to John who manned the moose mascot suit for hours at a time.

I came back to San Jose totally energized and completely amazed by the men and women who make up our support teams both in BC and around the world. No matter what their job or there location, they take their responsibilities to you extremely seriously and I want to thank them for their hospitality, generosity and dedication and give them a moment to shine here.

Thanks guys. Keep up the good work!

Regards,

Griff