A focus on Karen and her first 6 months at ChamburyLS

Richard Chambury

Apr 15, 20202 min read

Updated: Jan 27, 2021

I started at Chambury on 7th August 2019 after being in the same job for 26 years, so felt both really nervous that I was starting something totally new and different, but also really excited about the challenge ahead.

I’d only met Richard and Rebecca previously during my interview via a local recruitment agency, so it was lovely to meet the rest of our small team (minus Masum who was in Bangladesh getting married).

I quickly felt welcomed and part of the team.

My background is customer service, management and training in the food retail sector. I had used Learning Management Systems for my own and my teams training, but had no experience of Totara.

I spent my first month working through the Totara Academy courses and although I learnt a lot, it only started to make real sense when I was putting it into practice. The Academy courses are really good, I'd recommend them to anyone new to Totara who wants to get a base level of knowledge and understanding of how it works.

After I completed Academy, I spent time shadowing Muhammed looking at customer tickets on the Helpdesk. It felt quite daunting at first when I looked at the questions I’d have to answer. I thought to myself "I’ll never have a clue about any of this!" But the more tickets I looked at, I realised that through completing them is how I’d learn. As time went on, I was able to answer more tickets as they were similar to issues I’d resolved previously, this made me feel more confident.

I was really lucky to meet many of our customers on my first week at the ChamburyLS Customer Conference which made things easier as I could put a face to the person on the end of the phone. All our customers are really friendly and were understanding to the fact I was training and may not be able to answer their queries as fast as others. I think they might have been gentle with me.

Following this I have been out to see customers on development days, and am working on projects including setting up the Care Certificate for one of our customers.

I now feel totally integrated as part of the Chambury team. We enjoy regular team nights out, have our “Fat Friday” lunches together every week (which we are missing at the moment) and I feel more confident every day in my knowledge and ability.