Mark Lewandowski

Mark Lewandowski is a seasoned customer service executive with over 17 years experience building and leading teams for the delivery of outstanding customer service. His expertise spans several customer operations areas including contact center implementation and management, evaluation and supervision of outsourcing partners, and process development and optimization. Mark has extensive experience working internationally and has provided technical support for software products and hardware systems in various disciplines including online learning management systems, online training delivery, telecommunications and CAE systems.

Mark has been the Vice President of Worldwide Support for Centra Software in Lexington, MA  since 1999 and when Centra was acquired by Saba Software in February of 2006, he assumed responsibility for global support for all Saba products and customers. His responsibilities here included the staffing and growth of global contact centers and implementation of CRM, automatic call distribution (ACD), and surveying systems. Mark also incorporated tiered support teams, introduced an outsourced end user support partner, and coordinated the integration of multiple support teams and systems as a result of acquisitions.

Prior to joining Centra, Mark held numerous leadership positions at Wildfire Communications (now part of France Telecom’s Orange division) which he joined as an early stage start-up. Wildfire was a pioneer in speech recognition based telecommunications systems and Mark started the customer service team and network operations center (NOC) there. He was also responsible for all implementation and onsite services, data center operations and manufacturing operations.

Mark began his career in Support at Viewlogic Systems (now part of Mentor Graphics),  a provider of advanced Electronic Design System software including behavioral modeling and simulation and logic synthesis systems. He quickly rose into leadership positions and managed Tier 2 and international support teams.

Mark’s vast experience spans a number of key areas, including:

• Call Center Management.   Mark has implemented and managed inbound call centers at Viewlogic, Wildfire, Centra and Saba. He has implemented or optimized ACD’s, VOIP systems, follow-the-sun, and 24x7 on-call support systems at all these companies. He also established new global support centers in the EMEA and APAC regions, expanding staffing and capabilities in these centers to handle increased demand from new products and acquisitions.

• Global Project Management.  Mark is well versed in global projects. He has been responsible for managing and supporting partners and customers located in EMEA and APAC.  He spent 2 years based in Paris and Reading, UK handling all European customer operations including pre- and post-sales support, implementation project management, negotiating with EMEA service delivery partners, establishing spare parts depots, and more.  

• Third Party (Outsourced Functions) Management.  Mark has been responsible for the establishment of relationships with leading equipment vendors, including Compaq and Total Tech, for building, shipping and servicing hardware systems required for Wildfire telephony systems.  He was also responsible for building out spare parts depots in North America and EMEA. He also identified and implemented an outsourcing arrangement for all end user support calls in North America.  This outsourced support arrangement was later expanded to EMEA.  In addition, Mark was responsible to integrating and managing other outsourced relationships associated with the acquisition of other companies. 

• Service Level Agreement Definition and Management.  Throughout his career, Mark has been responsible for establishing and managing SLA’s for service delivery to his customers. This included establishing service levels for internal help desk operations as well as external 3rd party vendors who delivered services.

• Contract Negotiations with 3rd party Vendors.  Mark has been involved with contract negotiations with leading equipment, telecommunications, and service provider organizations.  This included vendors for system delivery, order fulfillment, and customer support, as well as voice, data networking, and data center services.  

Mark holds a BSEE degree from Northeastern University and a JD from New England School of Law.