Customer Support Engineer

Essential Functions

• Provide expert, front-line product technical support submitted through web or phone call by asking meaningful troubleshooting questions, providing clarification on customer questions, directing customer to useful resources, etc.
• Maintain high customer satisfaction level through timely, attentive, and polite interactions
• Maintain open communication and provide consistent case updates to customer.
• Troubleshooting customer problems over phone or remote assistance tools, reproduce reported issues and resolving or providing suitable workarounds.
• Create, update, and close cases in CRM.
• Maintain complete and coherent case notes, and ensure all relevant data is captured.
• Develop and maintain technical bulletins and knowledge base articles that are easy to understand for non-technical and technical audience both internal and external.
• Interface and coordinate with global technical support group to facilitate troubleshooting and ensure timely resolution.
• Utilize experience to create internal FAQs and share with the Technical Support Team.
• Escalate product issues to engineering and product marketing teams to solve certain topics and report product and manual bugs.
• Respond timely to requests from engineering for additional information or troubleshooting on customer setup
• Participate in required technical trainings to keep skills up to date with current technology, new products and industry standards or trends
• Drive continuous improvement of technical support processes based on employee and customer feedback.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

• Ability to guide customers in how to use Cognex products and explain the cause of trouble in an easy-to-understand manner.
• Understand when and how to react and maintain composure and professionalism when handling different types of customers.
• Understand different types of communication and when to apply them.
• Active listening skills and the ability to gain a full and accurate understanding of the customer point of view.
• Ability to demonstrate empathy and establish a good customer relationship
• Ability to de-escalate customer frustrations and maintain focus on the issue at hand.
• Understand how to set realistic customer expectations.
• General knowledge of image processing, analysis, and deep learning techniques.
• Knowledge of machine vision systems, optics, and lighting techniques for machine vision applications.
• Familiarity with all relevant Cognex products/ technology (DataMan barcode reading, In-Sight platforms, VisionPro, Deep Learning, etc.)
• Knowledge of networking and industrial communication protocols such as TCP, FTP, EIP, Devicenet, Profinet, SLMP, Modbus, etc.
• Ability to replicate setups, reproduce issues, and resolve problems efficiently.
• Understanding when you need more information from the customer and how to ask questions to get appropriate information.
• Knowledge of factory automation process, industrial controls, industrial robotic controls, and PLC ladder logic programming.
• Understanding of software programming and debugging of both script-based and object-oriented applications.
• Ability to read and interpret wire and engineering diagrams
• Ability to read programming documentation.
• Knowledge of specific programming languages in use by Cognex (Javascript, C#, C++, VB)
• Knowledge of electronics, electrical circuits, hardware, and wiring.
• Ability to discern when to escalate a case and what information is relevant to include when escalating to other departments.
• Ability to prioritize, multitask and work under pressure
• Strong note taking and organization skills and the ability to effectively hand-off cases.

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor’s or Master’s Degree in technical field or equivalent work experience.
• 2-4 years related experience in technical support in the electronics, robotics, manufacturing, automation, or IT industries.
• Prior customer service experience preferred.
• Ability to travel internationally as required.
• English language proficiency (spoken and written)
• Ability to speak on the phone for extended periods of time
• Ability to use computer equipment or work in office environment
• Strong attention to detail and communication skills and ability to work within a team