Meet one of the YITH developers, always giving a 100% in support

Let us introduce you to Corrado Porzio, one of our developers based in Sicily. He has been working for YITH since 2012 and certainly has some experience when it comes to dealing with customer support.

Corrado is the author of the YITH WooCommerce Add-on plugin, YITH Composite Products for WooCommerce and YITH Product Shipping for WooCommerce amongst others. Most of his day is spent supporting the many YITH customers with problems… Oh, and guess what type of food gets Corrado motivated thinking when about it?

Asking to describe a typical day…

“My day starts around 8.00 am, I have a quick breakfast and at 8.30 am I leave the house to take my daughter to kindergarten. From 9.00 am I am in front of the PC to start working with colleagues.

In the first part of the day, I check the work email and if I have been assigned tasks on Asana, in case I try to complete them if simple.

Then I open Zendesk to start working on the tickets, usually starting from the new ones (yellow tickets).

The most interesting part of the day arrives around 11.00 when, after a good coffee, I dedicate myself (as needed) to development, to update plugins or themes, long debugging of particular problems or other important tasks.

After lunch, I continue with tickets, both mine and those of colleagues from my own support group. Usually, if I don’t have other tasks assigned or urgent problems I keep doing this for the rest of the day.

During the whole day, however, I lend a hand to the chat team to provide live support to the people who contact us for pre-sale questions.”

What is the best moment of the day?

“The best time is the first four hours of the day, after a good breakfast and a good coffee, certainly the period of greatest concentration. Especially because my daughter is in kindergarten and peace reigns in the house.

You deal with so many different customers. How would you describe the ideal one?

“The favorite customer is certainly the one who manages to correctly explain their problem. Structuring a ticket well with a detailed description of the problem is the best! This sometimes allows me to resolve a support request right from the first reply, saving time for both myself and the customer. Often customers, not knowing English well, cannot explain themselves correctly and this certainly increases the resolution time… but we still try to do our best. In addition, the favorite customer is also someone who always appreciates your help and ‘thanks’ you (even with a simple smile, good feedback, a good word, …) when you solve his problem, this reminds you that in front of you don’t have a simple and cold ticket. This makes those moments of the day positive.”

Going back to the beginning, Corrado explains that working for YITH has increased his skills in the WordPress world, in the creation of plugins and themes, in the management of problems and in the knowledge related to the community. Nothing is more important than teamwork and being able to work remotely.

Corrado graduated as an Industrial Expert in Electronics and Telecommunications in Pachino and after that, he finished with a degree in Computer Science in 2013 at the University of Catania. During his study and after graduation, he gained various work experiences as a freelancer in web and mobile app development.

How did you apply for the job?

“If I remember correctly I found the company through Linkedin, initially it was called “Your Inspiration” and was made up of 6 people. At that time I was working as a freelance and I tried to send an email and I was immediately contacted. After a short initial interview, I was recommended to study some advanced aspects of WordPress before initiating a complete interview. Unfortunately in that period, I had to undergo a small operation and therefore I had to skip the interview, being replaced by another person. However, he gave up after a few days and I was fortunately contacted again.”

Do you have a project(s) you are particularly proud of?

“I don’t have a single project that I can be proud of. Probably “YITH Product Add-ons” is the product I currently use most of my time on, it has a good number of sales and I try to improve it day after day.

In the past I have also collaborated in the development of all our ThemeForest themes, they were my first important projects on WordPress and I have a nice memory.”

What were the struggles you experienced when creating the Add-on plugin?

“The plugin has had (and still has) a few issues and looking back it usually relates to a lack of experience. Most problems have been solved, but others will have to be addressed through a complete rework of the plugin… it is normal as WordPress and WooCommerce progresses, we need to keep up”

What lessons did you learn from it and what can someone take-away from these lessons?

“The lesson I learned is most certainly that the experience and collaborating with colleagues or with more experienced people are fundamental.

Haste, failure to test and the lack of analysis will only bring future problems.”

What are your passions and hobbies?

“I love technology and sport in general (especially football and F1). I was playing both soccer and tennis, but after several injuries, I had to stop for a while.”

And the most favorite question of all: ‘What food gets you motivated and makes you hungry thinking about it?’

“What a question… pizza”

Carrado is one of the many very experienced developers that looks after some of the key plugins and also supports the many customers across the board. If you are one of our customers, there is a good chance Corrado helped you solve a problem. If you want to follow him, you can do so via Twitter using @corradoporzio. Please leave a comment if you are inspired by Corrado’s story.