Studying IT from the age of 14 in Brazil, Karla Oliveira has also completed courses in Computer Sciences and plans to continue her studies in Australia. After 5 years working in customer service and technical support, Karla brings a detailed knowledge of web hosting, domains and IT to her role as Customer Service Team Leader for Netregistry.

1. How many are there in Netregistry’s customer service team?

KO: Currently, our Customer Service Team has 22 staff dedicated to technical support, 6 staff dedicated to online marketing solutions and another 7 dedicated to domain name administration, resellers and accounts. This number keeps growing and growing.

2. How many calls come through the call centre each day on average?

KO: We average 500 customer service enquiries per day.

3. What would be the most common enquiries you deal with?

KO: Customers usually forget their passwords when trying to login to TheConsole. Many of them also call asking for help with their email configuration and website upload.

4. How have you seen Netregistry grow and change since you’ve been here?

KO: I have seen the company change quite a bit and it is always changing and improving. For example, since last year we have developed a whole team dedicated to providing online marketing solutions for our customers. Apart from that, technical support operations changed from limited hours to providing 24x7 support; meaning we can respond to the needs of our customers at all times. After all, websites are open for business day and night.

Recently we also launched the Netregistry forum to provide another way for customers to receive advice and chat.

5. Are there common myths and misconceptions you often deal with from customers?

KO: Yes. A common mistake is that people think domain name renewals are processed automatically. Also web hosting service and Internet connectivity are 2 different things.

6. What do you enjoy most about your role?

KO: Not only helping customers with their basic enquiries about the hosting, but also being able to provide consistent solutions for our customer’s needs.

7. What are the best tips you can give our customers?

KO: Always store your passwords somewhere safe and keep your contact details up to date in TheConsole.

8. Which websites do you visit regularly?

KO: Guess which ones? Netregistry.com.au, news.com.au.

9. How do you stay up to date with online trends?

KO: I try to read a lot. Reading the newspaper technology section is the best way to find out the latest releases and internet developments. I also subscribed to a few forums, including Netregistry’s!

10. Do you need a lot of technical knowledge to run a website?

KO: No you don’t. Actually today it is possible to have a very good quality website up and running with zero technical knowledge.

11. If you were planning an online business, what steps would you take first?

KO: Firstly I would find out exactly the business I want to develop. Then I’d spend some time researching which online application would attend to my business’s needs. I would talk to our online marketing solutions team about promoting my website and work together with them on the website development.

Finding a good merchant provider supported by Netregistry and using Netregistry’s Payment gateway is also important to have my e-business up and running!

12. Netregistry has won awards for customer service. Why do you think we stand out?

KO: Yes, I am sure we do. We not only try to help our customers find solutions for any problems they might have. We also help them on developing ways to put their ideas in place. We are there to help them make their business work, their website better and their e-business profitable.

13. If a customer is having trouble reaching Netregistry by phone, what alternatives do they have to get a quick answer?

KO: They can have a look on our support pages and see if the answer to their questions can be found there. Alternatively, they can visit;

http://www.netregistry.com.au/customer-service/support/

and send an email to;

support@netregistry.com.au

Customers can also discuss their ideas on the NetRegistry forum http://www.netregistry.com.au/forum

14. What customer service result are you most proud of and why?

KO: That is a very hard question. I believe I am most proud of any situation where the customer and our customer service team work together towards one goal and are successful in achieving that goal.

15. You have control of the internet for a day. What would you change?

KO: I would create a separate private network only for kids and they could use this network to browse the internet. It would protect them from having access to adult information online. I believe the system we have in place now is faulty and something needs to be done to better protect the children. If I had control I’d create an international Internet regulation, which would standardise rules across the whole world.