Those of you who are members of the partypoker UK Facebook Community forum, or its Canadian counterpart, will no doubt have crossed paths with our very own problem-solving guru Petkana Marinova. By the time you’ve finished reading this article, you’ll know a little more about Petkana and her role within bwin.party.
Petkana hails from Vidin, a city in Bulgaria that has a population of around 49,000, but she now resides in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. Petkana joined partypoker eight years ago as a regular agent in the customer services department before moving to a role in the technical supports team, and is now a Customer Services Poker Specialist.
What does a Customer Services Poker Specialist’s role entail? Petkana explains.
“It is much like customer support, but a lot more personal with the users and closer to the real action. In addition to the various forums that I frequent, I also monitor the progress of customers facing problems and assist with them in any way possible if needed.
Due to the nature of the role, every day is different for Petkana, with new challenges to face and problems to solve.
“First thing in the morning I check Facebook and see if there are any comments or queries that require my attention. Later, I’ll work on concerns and feedback from our customers, and assign tasks to other teams to work on, often as a high priority, and make sure that these tasks are completed.”
There have been some weird and wonderful queries and questions posed to Petkana and her colleagues during her eight years with partypoker, but it was a mini team building exercise involving being told off by a security guard that she remembers most fondly.
“We had a mini team building event in our office where we were chair rowing! It was great fun, but the security guard didn’t think so, and he approached us and demanded we stopped, calling it disturbing. I don’t think disturbing was the right word, but I guess it looked somewhat strange to watch on the video cameras!”
When she’s not being told off by security guards for rowing chairs around the office, Petkana is a fan of fantasy books (I love Terry Pratchet’s Discworld myself), movies and loves listening to dance and metal music, along with heading for day trips if she gets any time away from the confines of the workplace.
As we ended our chat, I asked Petkana what advice she’d give to her 18-year old self if she had the chance.
“I think the 18-year-old me could go a little slower, but then again, that’s when the fun memories mostly comes from, so maybe the 18-year-old me would advise the 30-year-old me to party more!”
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