Vinod Arya
Cisco Subject Matter Expert
What do you do at Cisco?
I’m a high-tough technical support (HTTS) engineer in the Focused Technical Support organization, and I’m also part of TAC. I specialize in network management systems like CiscoWorks LAN Management Solution, SNMP, and Cisco Prime.
Why are you active in Cisco Support Community?
I enjoy getting to interact with customers and answer their questions. With TAC, the customers have to come to us. But with the Cisco Support Community forums, we can go the customer. If I can solve the problem, that makes my day!
Participating in the community also makes my skills sharper. If I don’t know the answer to a customer’s problem, I try out solutions in the lab and look through the documentation. To me, it’s like playing a video game. Whenever I answer a question, I unlock a more challenging level of the game.
How do you contribute?
I spend 30-60 minutes a day answering questions in the Network Management and Wireless forums. I’ve set up an email alert so that I see new questions right away. I’ve also conducted a three-part webinar and Ask the Expert session on CiscoWorks Prime LAN Management. We had participants from 65 countries, and the average rating was 5, the highest possible. Later I’d like to start posting some videos in the community.
What has participating in the community done for your career?
My managers are very supportive because they understand how important Cisco Support Community is to the Cisco brand. Some customers don’t realize that contributors are volunteers, and they get upset if they don’t get a response within an hour or two. So, the more Cisco engineers who participate, the easier it is to keep customers happy.
What does participating do for you personally?
Instead of just waiting for a case to come to my queue, I can look for customer problems to solve. Helping customers through the forums leaves them very grateful, and that feels good. It also helps to make our brand more customer-centric.
Any suggestions to make the community even better?
One idea is to integrate with other social networking sites. Another is to use hashtags to make it even easier to find questions and posts on a topic. How about a customer competition on “How CSC helped me”?