Five years of Priya

You answered our first support ticket from your kitchen table. I remember calling you that evening to ask whether we should promise a fix by Friday. You said, 'Let's ask what they actually need first.' They needed their Monday report, not our whole roadmap. We got it to them. Five years later, I still hear you asking that question in meetings. Thank you for teaching this company to listen before it promises.

From Elena Marsh

When you gave me the Harbour account, I thought you'd made a mistake. I had my first review call written out word for word. You looked at my notes and said, 'You know them better than I do.' Then you let me lead. Afterwards, you stayed to talk through the bit I'd stumbled over, not to take the account back. That was the first time I really believed I could do this job.

From Sofia Omar

On my second week, I got an angry call and went completely blank. You pulled up a chair, listened with me, and wrote one question on a sticky note: 'What would make today easier?' It turned the whole conversation around. Your onboarding doc still says that angry customers trust us enough to tell us. I keep that sticky note inside my notebook. It has survived two desk moves and a very unfortunate coffee spill.

From Mateo Ruiz

Before the Brighton pitch, you told me to take out the slide that said we had 'excellent support'. You gave me the story of a customer whose Friday payroll export had failed, and how your team stayed with them until it worked. That's what I told in the room. They asked about the people, not the response-time chart. You reminded me that a promise sounds different when you can name who kept it.

From Ravi Menon

I was three days into the job when I sent the wrong reply to a customer. I messaged you expecting a lecture. You asked whether I'd eaten lunch, helped me write the correction, then showed me where the template was confusing. The next morning you'd changed it so nobody else would make the same mistake. I stopped being afraid to ask questions that week. That made more difference than you probably realised at the time.

From Hana Novak

You probably don't remember the Tuesday I kept apologising for being slow. We had a queue full of tickets and I was still checking every answer twice. You took three off my list, then said, 'Careful isn't the same as slow.' I hear that whenever I start rushing now. Last month I said it to a new starter, and only afterwards realised where I'd borrowed it from. Thank you for giving me that little bit of confidence.

From Liam O'Brien

You brought a customer's actual notebook to our onboarding review, with their permission. We'd been arguing about which button needed moving. Their notes showed they didn't understand why they were doing the step at all. You didn't make a speech about it. You just put the notebook on the table. We changed the explanation instead of the button. I keep thinking about that whenever we start designing for ourselves rather than the person using it.

From Emma Laurent

The afternoon the office internet went down, you organised a little support corner around my phone hotspot. Everyone was cross and I was trying three fixes at once. You brought me a sandwich and quietly told the team what was happening so I didn't have to keep explaining. We got back online by four. What I remember isn't the outage. It's that you noticed I hadn't left my desk since breakfast and did something about it.

From Ben Carter

At the team lunch last winter, you asked about the pottery class I'd mentioned once in passing. I showed you a photo of my very wonky bowl. A month later you brought biscuits to the office and asked if the bowl was available for serving duty. It still makes me laugh. Being remembered for something that has nothing to do with my ticket queue made this place feel a bit more like somewhere I belonged.

From Lucy Evans

We were walking back from the customer visit in the rain when I admitted I hadn't understood half their questions. You said you'd written three down to look up yourself. I'd spent the day trying to look like I knew everything, and there you were, five years in, completely comfortable saying you didn't. We found a café, compared notes and sent the answers together. I left feeling I could learn here without pretending first.

From Sam Patel