JOE KUGLER

Stillwater, MN
651.430.2053

joekuglermn@gmail.com
www.linkedin.com/in/JoeKuglerMN

Over 20 years of experience in leading support services organizations with a

demonstrated track record of delivering results that delight customers while
increasing productivity, leveraging self-service, and making support services a
competitive advantage in the marketplace. My focus is helping customers
capture maximum value from their investment in enterprise-level software.
Specialties:
Building and leading global teams
Global customer support operations
Globalization of support offerings, processes, and content
Knowledge Management and KCS implementation
Design and deployment of self-service strategy
Online support communities
Service level metrics, quality measurement & control
New product introduction planning and readiness
Strategic account support program management

Professional Experience
Cadence Design Systems, Arden Hills, MN

(2000-2015)

Global Customer Support Director

Consistent track record of increasing responsibility during time as Customer
Support Director, across three different functions:
People Management: Directed a geographically distributed 3 level team of
customer technical support engineers, including a managed services team in
India. Coordinated actions with multiple business line managers, and across
organizations including R&D and Sales. Ensured high levels of customer
success. Conducted strategic planning and application of people and resources.
Managed team performance, identified problem areas, and implemented
corrective actions.
Successfully led a team of 50 through a BPO transition, while improving
multiple measures of customer success.
Implemented a team support model that provided effective follow the sun
support, leveraging Support AEs from around the world.
Hired and developed several employees who went on to leadership roles
in other organizations.
Productivity Management: Improved productivity across the worldwide
Customer Support organization through application of Lean support

2 Joe Kugler 651.430.2053

methodologies, and adoption of Knowledge Centered Support (KCS) processes,
as defined by the Consortium for Service Innovation.
Increased transparency via the implementation of operational
measurements dashboard to track KPIs
Achieved 30% reduction in costs via implementation of Lean support
methodologies, combined with application of knowledge best practices.
Increased employee productivity by defining information architecture and
content standards, making it easier to find and reuse self-help content.
Improved content quality and effectiveness by implementing content
quality measurement system incorporating content usage metrics.
Support Portal Product Ownership: Led worldwide team in design and
deployment of new customer support portal focused on search & delivery of selfhelp content, including articles, white papers, and videos. Used Agile SDLC
processes to deploy multiple releases each year.
Doubled customer self-help success rate by redefining portal use model
and tuning search engine behavior to leverage new content standards.
Increased support case deflection rates by introducing predictive queries
and automated search during case submission.
Improved AE productivity while reducing infrastructure and IT costs by
integrating internal search engines/DBs into the portal infrastructure.
Increased corporate-wide participation in the knowledge creation effort by
simplifying content authoring and publishing processes.
Led portal migration to new CRM system, improving portal reliability while
adding enhanced content publishing and case management capabilities.

Cadence Design Systems, Arden Hills, MN

Application Engineer

(1994-2000)

A wealth of experience in various Applications Engineering roles relating to

electronic design automation (EDA) software sales & support, including Sales
AE, Corporate AE, Field AE, and Support AE. Consistently exceeded quota.

Education / Training
Master of Business Administration, strategy
Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
Bachelor of Computer Science, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
Numerous internal trainings, including Mini-MBA, Behavioral Interviewing,
Management Foundations

Certifications
Certified Scrum Product Owner