Experienced Customer Experience Manager (Technical Support and Product Management)
San Francisco Bay Area
- Current
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- Manager, Customer Success at Aptana
- President at Jewish High Tech Community
- Past
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- Manager, Community and Content at Marketo
- Principal at BriteSpring Consulting (Sole Proprietorship)
- Senior Manager, Customer Experience at RawSugar
- Product Manager (contract) at Intransa
- Product Manager at Sun Microsystems
- Technical Support Manager at Sun Microsystems
- Technical Support Manager at NetDynamics, Inc.
- Education
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- Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - Rutgers Business School
- University of Southern California
- Recommended
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7 people have recommended Bill - Connections
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178
connections
- Industry
- Computer Software
- Websites
Bill Lazar’s Summary
My experience is focused on bringing community and clarity to web-based services and software products, generally offerings targeted to what I consider the active user. That is, products that provide more interactivity than just install and use such as developer tools, have APIs, or encourage users to customize the appearance.
I've worked as a product marketing/customer services manager at search startup RawSugar, product manager and technical support manager for application server products at Sun Microsystems (which I joined through its acquisition of NetDynamics, where I was a customer escalation manager and technical writer/webmaster), as product manager at storage appliance vendor Intransa, customer service consultant for Pyra Labs prior to their acquisition by Google, and consulted for a number of companies on developing blogs and revitalizing ecommerce-oriented websites.
Previously I spent a decade as a consultant and staffer designing, developing and deploying business applications in a variety of PC languages. I also have developed web-based applications using PHP, JavaScript, MySQL and am dipping toes into Ruby on Rails.
Bill Lazar’s Experience
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Manager, Customer Success
Aptana
(Computer Software industry)
July 2008 — Present (3 months)
Customer Success is a holistic approach to engaging with our customers (and potential customers) rather than breaking things down into tech support, documentation and operations--most of the ways we interact after someone has decided to try or buy our products.
So far it's a journey, and not all the kinks have been massaged away. -
President
Jewish High Tech Community
(Non-Profit; Civic & Social Organization industry)
December 2005 — Present (2 years 10 months)
JHTC brings together Silicon Valley area technology professionals to learn from successful leaders who may be entrepreneurs, investors, corporate executives and community leaders as well as to network and connect with each other. As president I've relaunched the group, developed event programming, organized logistics, created relationships with other organizations and developed the group website.
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Manager, Community and Content
Marketo
(Marketing and Advertising industry)
December 2007 — May 2008 (6 months)
Developed the Customer Success website, provided customer support and wrote product documentation for Marketo 2.0.
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Principal
BriteSpring Consulting (Sole Proprietorship)
(Sole Proprietorship; Myself Only; Marketing and Advertising industry)
February 2007 — December 2007 (11 months)
BriteSpring is all about disrupting the conversation, using powerful web-based tools to strengthen the bond between software publishers and service providers and the people who use their offerings, be they customers, partners or suppliers. My work in this space has been with both very early stage startups and large corporations and on both consumer and enterprise products.
The BriteSpring key insight is that making these relationships interactive is a terrific method for increasing the time and emotional energy invested by people in the ecosystem around products and services as well as providing important information back to the company for improving future product and marketing plans. -
Senior Manager, Customer Experience
RawSugar
(Privately Held; Internet industry)
March 2005 — December 2006 (1 year 10 months)
RawSugar is building a new web service at the intersection of search and tagging. My contribution includes:
* collaborate with CEO on marketing materials and positioning
* write all website text including company blog, online help, and forums
* provide technical support and customer training
* develop RawSugar plugins and tools for WordPress, MovableType and Blogger
* maintain online community software (blog and forums) -
Product Manager (contract)
Intransa
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Hardware industry)
March 2004 — August 2004 (6 months)
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Product Manager
Sun Microsystems
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; sunw; Computer Software industry)
November 1999 — August 2001 (1 year 10 months)
J2EE Application Servers
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Technical Support Manager
Sun Microsystems
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; sunw; Computer Software industry)
September 1998 — November 1999 (1 year 3 months)
NetDynamics Application Server, managing a team of 12-15 support engineers, escalation engineers, and account managers.
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Technical Support Manager
NetDynamics, Inc.
(Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)
July 1998 — September 1998 (3 months)
NetDyanmics Application Server
Bill Lazar’s Education
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Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey - Rutgers Business School
MBA, Finance
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University of Southern California
BA, Journalism
Additional Information
Bill Lazar’s Websites:
Bill Lazar’s Groups:
President, Mountain View West Home Owners Assocation, 2002-2005
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SUNAlumni -
ex-iPlanet -
Jewish High Tech Community
Bill Lazar’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- career opportunities
- consulting offers
- new ventures
- expertise requests
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
