How a few cheeky tweets can launch a career

THERE’S no need for a degree and the pay is great. Here’s how to get headhunted just for being your quirky self.

Dan de Sousa has built a successful career in customer experience.

THEY spend all day on social media, patiently responding to tweets and comments.

But you probably never gave them much thought. After all, you don’t see their profile pictures or even their names; they hide behind the corporate identities of their employers.

That is, until “Dan from Optus” sprang into the spotlight earlier this year. When a staffer posted a brilliant defence of its in-store Arabic language signs in response to a complaint on the telecommunication giant’s Facebook page, news.com.au identified the author of the comments as Melbourne’s Dan de Sousa.

Suddenly, the curtain was pulled back on the faceless workers known as customer experience agents.

It’s a job that has become a career path in its own right, as companies increasingly clue onto the fact that customers want a human response — rather than the robotic, cut-and-paste style comments traditionally spouted by corporate social media accounts.

And employees like Mr de Sousa, with a knack for injecting a bit of personality and warmth, are in high demand.

The post that sent Dan from Optus viral.

The New Zealand-born university dropout was poached by Silicon Valley tech start-up Slack last month, after several companies approached him in the wake of the media attention. He now works in an advisory role as a senior customer experience agent at Slack’s new Melbourne office.

Slack head recruiter Marissa Senzaki said she pursued Mr de Sousa because he displayed values that the company shared, such as empathy.

“We are big champions for diversity, and when we read the article about what was going on with Dan from Optus, we really liked the replies that we saw there,” Ms Senzaki told news.com.au.

“We thought that it was very informative but not condescending, and coming from a place of love. And so that’s what really impressed us. We like to hire for these values more than just skills that look good on a piece of paper.”

A bit of personality goes a long way.

The interactions Mr de Sousa had with customers on Optus’ Facebook page received an overwhelming amount of praise at the time, with users calling him “Australian of the Year,” calling “Dan for PM” and describing him as a “legend” who deserved a pay rise.

News.com.au spoke to Mr de Sousa this week about how he carved out a successful career without a university degree, simply by being himself.

Q: HOW DID YOU GET HERE?

DAN: I started out working in retail in 1998. It was just a natural progression into sales and then into customer experience about seven years ago. A lot of the skills are really transferable; in each of those industries, you’re dealing with humans, regardless of what product you’re selling or if you’re just a help desk assistant, something like that. You’re always going to be interacting with people, and people relate to people.

Q: WHAT QUALIFICATIONS DID YOU NEED?

DAN: I left school when I was 17 and actually started a tertiary education, but at the time had some other opportunities that came up and so I left, so I don’t have a degree. For me it’s more just about who you are as a person. If you’re passionate about life and you want to learn about all cultures worldwide, you’re gonna be really good at it.

Q: WHAT MAKES A GREAT CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AGENT?

DAN: It comes more down to who you are as a person. There’s a quote from Einstein where he says “I’m not a smart man, I’m just eternally curious”. And that’s one of the fundamental things I think everyone should have coming into customer experience is just genuine curiosity about people, genuinely be fascinated by who you’re talking to and what they’re got to say.

Q: HOW HAS THE INDUSTRY EVOLVED?

DAN: In the early days, there was a lot more rules and there were certain things that you couldn’t talk about or you weren’t allowed to say. It was like you got in there and you were told “this is how we do it, that’s the only way to do it” and you stuck to the script — which is great in theory, but it doesn’t allow for a human response. I think in general terms the public are a lot more educated now, so they can see through that kind of thing.

Q: WAS THERE A TIPPING POINT?

DAN: It’s been in the last five years that things have really started changing and I think social media’s really fuelled that. You can’t deliver a sub standard performance anymore, a sub standard answer, because the minute you do it goes on social media. So your customer experience (agents) really are the face of your business, and anything they say or do reflects on the company. So allowing them to be themselves and be helpful, playful and human is what makes for good business. It’s such a paramount thing for businesses coming into the new age.

After being unmasked as Dan from Optus, de Sousa received a string of marriage proposals.

In my current role, there’s a lot of room to be yourself and to really have a personality. In a lot of roles you’ve got to manage that persona and try and make sure you’ve got this particular voice, but here there is no script. We’re here to help people solve problems and we’re given the freedom to do that.

Q: WAS IT HARD TO ‘STICK TO THE SCRIPT’?

I definitely had various managers over the years say “hey, don’t be yourself too much here, you need to stick to this exactly how we deal with this kind of question and it’s the only way to deal with it”. Which is really restricting, and you don’t personally I don’t think get good outcomes with that kind of approach, because you’re telling people to be a flow chart, basically, and people aren’t flow charts.

Q: TELL US ABOUT THOSE OPTUS POSTS?

DAN: Most of the answers were off the cuff just because of the time constraints, we’ve got a lot of people posting really swiftly, and so we didn’t want to leave any reply too long. So it was go, go, go. Luckily it was a topic that I’m passionate about, and so I was able to speak to that really quickly. But it was a team effort and it’s the same with any company, the team pulls together and looks at “what are we going to do, how are we going to approach this?” And in that instance the company didn’t think it had done anything wrong, which I personally didn’t think they had either, and so it was just a matter of going out and saying “we didn’t do anything wrong, so here’s the reason we did it”.

Q: WHAT’S THE PAY LIKE?

DAN: I think it’s a very well remunerated career path. At the same time, it’s a very unique skill set that you have coming into it. At the end of the day, the way technology is going, customer experience is the face of your business and that should be a big investment. So while I’m not looking to buy a home anytime soon, I am remunerated well for what I do.

Q: WHAT’S THE CRAZIEST CUSTOMER QUERY YOU’VE HAD?

DAN: I had quite a few marriage proposals in January. A woman in Sydney wrote to me on Facebook about her friend in Canada who was looking for a husband.

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Originally published as How a few cheeky tweets can launch a career