Katie Duck: From Barista to Support Systems Mastery

Welcome to Escalations, a series where I’ll be sharing stories of some amazing careers that started in Customer Support. While many of these will be compiled into a book, I will also be regularly sharing stories here, too. If you like this content, please consider subscribing or sharing. 

Introduction: The Starting Point

Katie Duck’s career began in the bustling world of cafés and bartending in San Francisco, where she learned to manage high-stress environments and large volumes of customer requests. A broken wrist ultimately nudged her into tech, leading her to a front desk role at Zendesk—an experience that introduced her to the intricacies of working with diverse teams.

Early on, Katie realized her background in service—talking to all kinds of people and observing small details—would become a secret weapon in the tech world. Where others saw a shift in industries, Katie discovered a place where her ability to connect with others and solve problems could truly shine.

The Growth Path

After landing the front desk role, Katie’s natural curiosity and problem-solving skills quickly stood out. She improved package tracking systems, optimized front-desk workflows, and engaged cross-functionally with IT to streamline daily tasks. This hands-on, iterative approach carried her into technical support engineering at Zendesk, then onto Vanta, where she built out support infrastructure from the ground up.

Later, Katie explored a go-to-market position—but discovered that the thrill of empowering customers kept calling her back. She eventually moved into support operations at Vanta and took on a senior role at Mercury, where she continues to refine systems and champion customer-focused experiences.

Implementing This in Your Own Career

• Look for small process improvements in your daily work.
  

• Leverage relationships with adjacent teams to learn new skills.
  

• Pay attention to what energizes you—sometimes the “side” path is where you thrive.
  

Breaking Through: Lessons & Key Decisions

1. Cross-Functional Curiosity

Katie never confined herself to a single role or department. At Zendesk, she developed a package-tracking system in collaboration with IT, which not only solved immediate logistical headaches but also introduced her to the inner workings of other teams. She later embraced pilot programs where she could partner with product managers, gleaning insights into upcoming features. This first-hand exposure to various disciplines helped her realize that every team has different goals, and support professionals can serve as the bridge between them.

How You Can Apply It

• Ask other departments to demo their workflows or tools.
  

• Volunteer for cross-team projects, no matter how small.
  

• Notice which tasks feel effortless and which pique your curiosity.
  

2. Embrace the Complexity

Throughout her time at Zendesk, Vanta, and Mercury, Katie tackled tickets of widely varying difficulty—from swift, “one-touch” fixes to intricate issues involving multiple third-party integrations. Instead of opting for easier solves, she gravitated toward challenging problems. In doing so, she discovered that a single metric like “solve count” can obscure the real depth of support work. This insight drove her to promote layered metrics—tracking difficulty, time spent, and the expertise required.

How You Can Apply It

• Track time spent on different ticket types to show complexity.
  

• Propose new metrics or reports to highlight challenging cases.
  

• Document solutions to reduce repeated confusion in the future.
  

3. Turn Observations into Action

Katie’s knack for spotting inefficiencies led to more than just a smoother front-desk experience. By building a simple scanning solution and linking it with a headcount document, she slashed the time spent hunting for packages across multiple floors. She carried this same mindset into her support roles, where she refined ticket queues, streamlined reporting, and encouraged others to see smaller pain points as opportunities for big improvements.

How You Can Apply It

• Don’t ignore small annoyances; they can be windows for innovation.
  

• Use any tools available (like Google Sheets) to experiment with solutions.
  

• Share your ideas—even a simple fix can have big impact.
  

4. Advocate for Yourself and Your Work

A promotion once hinged on Katie’s solve count—an overly narrow gauge of her impact. Rather than quietly accepting that measure, she created a tracking system that highlighted each ticket’s complexity and extra steps (like DataDog analysis or escalations). Her data-backed approach proved that high-value, time-consuming work can’t be reduced to a single number. This principle stayed with her in subsequent roles, where she continued to champion deeper metrics and fairer recognition for support teams.

How You Can Apply It

• Keep a simple log of your toughest projects or customers.
  

• Translate “quality vs. quantity” issues into objective data.
  

• Present your findings to managers to spark constructive change.
  

Actionable Takeaways

• Build Cross-Functional Connections. Introduce yourself to teams outside support and ask about their challenges, then share yours.
  

• Highlight the Complexity of Support. Suggest deeper metrics than just “solve count” and use data to show the weight of tough tickets.
  

• Stay True to Helping People. Recognize the value of direct customer impact and celebrate small wins that solve real problems.
  

• Show, Don’t Just Tell. Collect stories of your problem-solving processes and use these examples to advocate for promotions.
  

Where They Are Now & Final Words of Advice

Today, Katie is a Senior Customer Support Systems Administrator at Mercury, overseeing complex workflows that keep support teams running smoothly. She’s living proof that you don’t need a traditional tech background to excel in support—sometimes the most valuable experience is the one you didn’t expect to leverage.

Katie’s story reminds us that there’s no single path to success in support—only a focus on learning, helping others, and speaking up when you see a better way.

Do you have a story to tell or insights to share? Consider having a conversation with me so I can share something like this about you!