Good support ops makes the product better — before the next customer hits the same wall.
I'm Fred Thomas, and I bring the same instinct to consulting as to the products I build: go where the work actually is. For a decade I've built and modernized the systems behind technical support teams — four years of it inside Zendesk as a Senior Support Engineer. That's platform knowledge you only get from the inside.
I build these functions, and I step into running ones.
Both demand the same skill: translating what frontline teams experience into cleaner systems, better decisions, and more durable operating practices.
- →Zendesk platform architecture, governance, and multi-instance administrationThe operating surface, built to hold up at scale.
- →AI strategy from pilot to productionTicket deflection and Tier-1 automation, deployed without breaking what already works.
- →Event-driven incident workflowsConnecting your ticketing, incident tooling, and product telemetry into one flow.
- →Cross-functional alignmentReal coordination across Support, Product, Engineering, and DevOps.
- →Team developmentHiring, coaching, and building the systems people who own the platform.
A decade operating support — four years of it inside Zendesk.
Four years inside the platform — SSO/auth, DNS, SSL, API, Insights; product champion for authentication. Knowledge you can't get from the outside.
Multi-instance Zendesk governance across 450+ global agents and 15,000+ monthly tickets — workflows, automations, AI chatbot, cross-functional program management.
Unified support in Zendesk, tier segmentation and escalation taxonomy, and a problem-management process linking incidents to R&D resolution.
The technology is the tool. The people are the point. If you're scaling a support team, modernizing Zendesk, or trying to deploy AI without breaking what already works — that's the work I do.