Let’s connect with Mobashir Ahmed of Fred Loya Insurance. Please leave your comments and questions for Mobi below.
Watch Mobashir describe his 8x8 journey in this short video.
Tell us about your organization: Fred Loya Insurance is a Texas based, Top 500 Hispanic owned car insurance company. With over 4,000 employees, Fred Loya is one of the fastest growing Hispanic-owned companies in the United States.
Describe your role and your team's role.
As an IT Manager at Fred Loya, I am responsible for IT operations. My 30-member team, based at locations across Texas, manages the security and compliance, help desk, networking, server administration, phone systems, the repairs…. all in all, the blood flow of the company.
What is your management philosophy?
My job is to help my team. I am the janitor to keep everything clean for them!
What is one piece of advice you would give to others who are just starting out in IT? Honesty plays a big role in IT. You don't need to know all the answers; say you don't know the answer, then go find it. There is no "learn it all" when it comes to IT. Continually work toward new certifications. Coursera is a great avenue to learn new certifications. You pay a monthly membership fee and have unlimited access to their certification training.
How did you get interested in technology?
I grew up in Kolkata, India, with limited computer access. My cousin and I would go to cybercafes and pay for hourly computer access. These computers didn't have internet access, and we didn't know what to do with a computer. We would sit in front of it, open Notepad and write our names. Eventually we discovered that computers had CD drives, and we would rent movies to watch. There was a hunger to be in front of a computer early on.
What types of things interested you during the COVID pandemic lock down?
I enjoy painting with acrylics. In August 2020, an explosion in Lebanon left 300,000 homeless. One minute they were drinking their morning coffee, the next, they had no home. I wanted to help those people, so I sold my paintings to raise money for the victims. And I furthered my education. Yale University offered a free class on the Science of Well Being. I was one of 500,000 students who participated! I took a class on COVID contract tracing so if one of my team members came down with COVID, I would know how to trace the contacts. I studied machine learning, psychology….. I kept something going at all times.
If you could invent a feature or technological innovation that would help you deliver better customer experiences, what would it be and why?
An 8x8 management app. Creating or editing a new user from my cell phone is a hassle. The browser windows overlap each other. An app would make it easier to accomplish tasks remotely.
What do you like best about 8x8?
Ease of use. Things were written in stone with the legacy system we used to have. There was only one way to do things or you'd break the system. Thankfully in 8x8 we don't have that problem. If something isn't working through an auto attendant, we can route it to a ring group. If that's not working we can send the channel to 8x8 Contact Center, script it and send it back to another user. There are so many ways to configure the system.
What do you do for fun?
Playing with my boys - ages 4 months and 3 years. Watching them grow is amazing.
What question would you like to ask our community?
We are struggling with users changing their presence status to "do not disturb" either purposely to avoid calls or by mistake. Is this an issue in your organization, and if so, how are you handling it?