# Owning the tool stack

> I led the Zendesk migration and owned our tech stack.

- Topic: How I work
- About: Andrew Dyer, customer experience and operations leader, Boston
- Canonical page: https://andyer.com/help/articles/owning-the-tool-stack

I was a people manager, and I also personally owned the team's tech stack and operations.

**What I built:** I led our migration to Zendesk. Then I added fields to track ticket topics, integrations for smoother collaboration, and customer context data that suggested proactive fixes. I also took the help center over from Marketing and wrote most of its content.

**Hands-on troubleshooting:** I used Postman to check customers' API calls, reproduced issues in Zapier, debugged JavaScript career-page embeds using browser logs, and posted incident updates.

**Technical skills:** I'm not a software engineer, but I'm comfortable in the systems. I have working-level skills in SQL, HTML/CSS, scripting, and APIs, and I'm learning Python.

**Security and compliance:** for Workable's ISO 27001 and SOC 2 work, I helped define support's recovery times, SOPs, and escalation paths. I wasn't the compliance lead. I also supported GDPR and anti-fraud compliance.

**Tools I've worked with** (an asterisk means I administered or owned it):

- **CX platforms:** Zendesk Suite\*, ChurnZero\*, Salesforce, Intercom\*, Talkdesk, HubSpot
- **AI:** Forethought\*, Ada (pilot), ChatGPT and Codex, Claude Code, Cowork, and Design
- **Insights and product:** Pendo\*, Optimizely, Savio, Beamer, SurveyMonkey, Alchemer\*, Qualtrics
- **Productivity:** Jira\*, Confluence, Slack, Google Workspace, Microsoft Office, Trello, Asana
- **CX ops:** Zapier\*, Playvox, Klaus, Upscope, SendSafely, Miro, Postman
- **BI and reporting:** Looker, Tableau, GoodData, Zendesk Explore, SQL (MySQL, PostgreSQL)
- **Training and enablement:** LearnWorlds, Loom, Wistia, Livestorm

[Read the full case study](https://andyer.com/zendesk-implementation)