It’s that time again to recognize another one of our amazing Community Moderators here at Zendesk! This month we want to take the time to introduce everyone to Chris Bulin. 

Chris is a lifelong resident of Michigan and currently resides in a 115 year old home with her spouse, cats, fish and plants. With a masters degree in Information Science, Chris joined ITHAKA shortly after graduation. For those of you who don’t know, ITHAKA is a not-for-profit with a mission to improve access to knowledge and education for people around the world. Chris’ expertise with Explore has been extremely helpful to our community and we want to highlight some of the amazing tips and best practices she’s shared with others:

• How to recreate the Insights CSAT dashboard in Explore
• Making Life Easier with Groups and Sets
• Utilizing a variety of calculations in an Explore Query to understand escalated tickets

Please join us in thanking Chris for all her hard work as a Zendesk Community Moderator!

Let’s get to know Chris:

How did you come to work with the Zendesk product?

I have a strong need to improve any system I work in haha. We adopted Zendesk to improve our response times in Support in 2017. I was a Support Lead and wanted to understand the system better so I could propose solutions for monotonous or tricky workflows. I was also heavily involved in onboarding and training at that time too, so I was teaching others how to use Zendesk as well. When our account owner moved to a new position in 2018, I took over and in 2019 was focused solely on the administration and growth of our instance.

What made you want to join the Community Moderator Program?

I honestly didn’t think I had the chops to join the program until Nicole reached out to me and explained more about it. It felt like a natural extension of the work I was already doing to comment on posts from other Zendesk admins in the community. The time commitment was not as large as I feared and I was also really excited about the perks (hey swag).

What do you enjoy most about the program?

I really love being able to connect in real time with the Community Engagement staff and other Zendesk Moderators. There’s a lot of knowledge in that group and we all share freely. 

Being able to connect with the Product Managers at Zendesk has also been extremely helpful. Having that peek behind the scenes has enabled me to both give input directly to the PMs while also strengthening my ability to strategize for my own Zendesk instance.

How does your community involvement help contribute to your professional career?

After becoming a manager I was definitely looking for opportunities to expand my influence, spotlight our brand, and always learn and grow. The Moderator program and the great tips and tricks I learn from the community have all helped with that. One of the first things I did when Zendesk announced they were going to be cleaning up the community threads was be sure they knew all the threads I had bookmarked for reference in my day to day work :D

What advice would you give someone who wants to level up their skills in working with Zendesk?

There is really nothing better than the Zendesk on Zendesk series in my opinion. I always go back to them when I want to think a bit more strategically about my options and the philosophy behind why we do what we do in the tool. 

I also love that the training pathways are now freely available. We have started using them for our agent training across the board. 

There are so many folks that have submitted feedback and tips that community is a great place to start when you’ve hit a wall.

Tell us about some of your favorite activities/hobbies!

I will admit that I fit a very stereotypical librarian mold in some ways haha. I’m a middle aged midwesterner that reads around 100 books each year, wears glasses and cardigans, and owns 3 cats. I love Science Fiction and Fantasy novels, but I also read very widely across genre fiction and non-fiction. 

I also play video games and particularly love MMORPGs, puzzle games, and story driven games. You’ll often find me listening to video game soundtracks while I work. 

My quarantine hobby has been to learn to take care of plants both indoors and out. I have found that my rattlesnake plant, spider plant, pothos, and my multitude of snake plants are all delightful indoor buddies. Outdoors this year I’m continuing to grow coleus and oxalis and I’m adding sweet potato vines to the mix.

I’m also well known at work for my collections of shoes and glasses!

What's your favorite TV show of all time? (optional) 

I can’t say I have a favorite TV show. Whatever I just got done watching is usually my favorite haha. I do have comfort shows though in both TV and movie format. For TV I love a good gentle cry with Queer Eye or GBBS and for movie I usually turn to The Princess Diaries; multi-generational love stories for the win :)

Any final thoughts you would like to share with other community members?

I kid about the swag. While it is great, the ability to have a voice in this community as a Zendesk Mod has been a great opportunity for me and I would encourage others who are interested in sharing their knowledge to check out the program.