Hi there! I’m Cyn Armistead, technical support expert. I’m currently seeking new opportunities, which means that you get treated to my résumé (either the cute little PDF or the longer, more complete web page), some talk about my way of providing support, and a few links.
I have 25+ years of experience delivering technical support. In 1993 I was doing chat support for AOL, and I began providing support for MindSpring Enterprises via phone, email, and Usenet (remember newsgroups?) in 1995. I’ve also supported clients in person and using various remote control tools. Throw in experience with QA and technical writing, and you get a superior support professional.
I’ve recently begun doing a little on the development side. I learned HTML back in 1995 as part of my work at MindSpring and produced my first web site a short time later (yes, I’ve owned one of my domains that long). I learned CSS when that was introduced, redesigning that site and the additional sites I’d created in the meantime. (Most of my sites have been on WordPress since 2006.) I recently added a little JavaScript. I received a scholarship from Women Who Code and RMOTR to RMOTR’s intensive Introduction to Python Programming course, so I did that in 2013. I’m still knocking around ideas for my first non-assigned programming project.
My first office job was working for my father in the service department he managed at a heating and air company, back when I was 11 years old. I did filing and data entry, helped answer the phones, and served as back-up for the dispatcher. Daddy seriously stressed customer service, and I learned from him that it’s vital to treat every person like they are the single most important individual you will speak to today. Later, I read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, and it has been highly influential on the way I treat people. Of course, I’ve read other books like Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh and Sarah Hatter’s Customer Support Handbook, but I keep coming back to Carnegie.
This site contains a bunch of older articles which I’m slowly updating — they show my writing style, but some things have definitely changed in the tech world since I first wrote them. Here are a few newer writing samples:
- My Support Philosophy: Love Everyone — 15 November 2016
- The Benefits of Maturity — 23 October 2016
- I collaborated with some other remote workers on an article for Remotive’s blog, 11 Productivity Hacks To Get The Most Of Your Remote Life — 18 October 2016
- How to Get Effective Technical Support — 16 November 2016