Amplified IT is dedicated to enabling academic institutions to leverage the productive, communicative, and collaborative power of Google Workspace for Education. With our portfolio of products and services, our employees work to give our customers access to the best-fit solution for the challenges they are facing in their domain. Our Customer Success team takes what we do to serve customers to the next level by ensuring they have a positive experience throughout their journey with us.
Meet Melanie
To expand the successful adoption of Google Workspace for Education and Chromebooks worldwide, Amplified IT was founded in 2008 with a lean team of technical innovators who wanted to make a transformative impact on the industry. Melanie Long, the Customer Experience Lead, was one of the first employees to join the ranks but had worked alongside our co-founders, Tim Lee and Peter Henrie, for years in her previous role.
Prior to Amplified IT, Melanie served in a series of roles for a small school in southeast Virginia. She began as an office manager but then took on technical support and helped teachers troubleshoot issues within their online gradebooks or Student Information System. “What’s interesting is that I started in 2011 and the school had just gone Google,” recalled Melanie. “I experienced the initial resistance stakeholders have to change and was able to guide them through that. It was great being a resource and showing them how impactful the platform could be.” Due to her innate desire to help others, she even compiled a manual that focused on how to use Google Drive during her time there. It just so happens that Tim (Lee), CEO of Amplified IT, worked at the exact same school as the Chief Technology Officer and, periodically, Peter would travel from Scotland to assist with large projects like Chromebook deployment. When Tim decided to take Amplified IT to the masses, Melanie was asked to help launch the company. Drawn to the mission of supporting schools beyond the one she was working in, she agreed to do so.
Throughout her 8 years with Amplified IT, she has done a little bit of everything on very different teams. The Customer Success team is composed of the account managers, the Google Technical Collaborative lead, and Melanie who are all responsible for cultivating and nurturing customer relationships in their own way.
Check out the Google Technical Collaborative
In her current position as the Customer Experience Lead, she seeks to answer “how can Amplified IT deepen our relationship with customers and make their experience better?” “This is a new position,” she explained. “We’ve always really cared about our customers and put a lot of emphasis on the relationships that we have with them but we had no infrastructure as far as collecting feedback, and that’s my focus.” Her most immediate next big project is to hold us accountable to that feedback by creating a way for our company to measure customer satisfaction so we can keep improving our offerings.
When asked to describe the growth and development of Amplified IT over the years, she said it has been impactful, nimble, and passionate. “We started in Suffolk, VA with just 4 people. After we moved to Norfolk, the office grew exponentially.” she elaborated. “I’ve been humbled to be a part of a group of people who are so passionate about what they do for schools. It is so inspiring and drives me to be a better and harder working person.”
As the need for user-friendly, reliable, and secure digital tools increases so does our drive to equip our customers with the ones that will meet their strategic goals. Before ending the interview, Melanie had this to say, “In the coming years, I’d also like to see a continued focus on equity. I think the pandemic really made it obvious that students do not have the same access to technology at home. Obviously, that reaches far beyond our industry because there’s policy involved, there’s culture shift involved and a lot of other things that come into play but I think that there’s an opportunity for edtech to maybe lead the way and ensure that students are ready to be successful adults in whatever way that means for them by giving them access to the resources they need to do that.”
Melanie and the Customer Success team are eager to help you get the most out of your Google Cloud and to listen to your feedback about your experience with us. To get started with an Amplified IT product or service, contact an account manager. If you’d like to learn more about the Google Technical Collaborative, attend a session as a guest and meet the community before joining!
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Jada Dawson
Marketing Copywriter -
About the Author:
Jada joined Amplified IT in 2021 after 4 years of working as a high school English teacher in a Maryland public school system, and 7 years as a freelance copywriter, content writer, and editor. As the Marketing Copywriter, she is passionate about strategically using words to reach our clients and connect them to the benefit of our services for their classrooms and communities. When she is not writing or managing content, Jada can be found painting her next masterpiece, brushing up on her French language skills, traveling with her family, and teaching Sunday school at her church. She is an avid bubble tea drinker, and loves french fries.