House image generated by GPT-4/DALL-E 3
It has been an honor and pleasure to work with Progressive Insurance's startup initiatives arm, Level20, to upgrade and build out new features for their omni-channel calling center powered by Twilio, for Castle. Castle is a white glove home maintenance service that manages repair requests from homeowners. At the time of writing this startup serves the greater Cleveland area.
I worked with Level20 as a contractor, successfully completing a contract that was extended, finishing tasks in a timely manner. This role was exciting as I'm usually I'm working within larger teams (which I do greatly enjoy), yet this time was working mostly solo-ish. It was a chance to test out my technical learnings while exploring new Twilio topics.
This role had a lot of great support from my tech lead Chris (Chris, Chris and Christian on our team made it fun) who was super helpful in teaming up on the more unusual anomalies, great tech discussions and reviewing my work. I also had a great project manager who helped break down upcoming projects and aided in my understand the "why" of everything.
While the tools I built were internal and can't really be shared here, here's a summary of completed tasks:
- Explored the code and Twilio Console in detail, documenting what does what, identifying areas to improve, delete and refactor.
- Upgraded Twilio Flex plugins and Twilio Serverless Functions to an odd mix of JavaScript and TypeScript from different eras to modern TypeScript.
- Consolidated several disjointed Flex plugins into a single Twilio app that runs as a single plugin.
- Created new Twilio Serverless and Twilio Studio Flow functionality to route customers to known agents. This also integrated Castle data to identify customers' agents.
- Built a service provider IVR directory making use of Twilio Studio subflows that accepted voice and dialed input.
- Added a CRM for agents within Flex to near-instantly view customer information as they call in so that they can connect with the customer and their needs quickly. This pulled in data from the Castle API, a co-op with my tech lead who put the needed data in place, accessed via a Twilio Serverless function I implemented that Flex accessed (for security).
- Added advanced outbound SMS sending options for agents contacting customers and service providers.
- Partially automated deployments for Twilio Flex and Serverless Functions, wrangling environment variables and lengthy deploy commands through custom prompts and handling.
- Created detailed documentation for onboarding the next developer to the project that would be hassle free for management ("Go here. Read this. Do what it says").
- Built a good dev relationship with the Twilio support team (Be nice. They work hard.), working with them to flesh out new ideas and solve chewy challenges.
- Fixed a lot of bugs.
As I trek forth, I'd be super excited to work with Progressive Insurance and Level20 again. I had fun solving Twilio mysteries and making new things happen for Castle contact center experts.
Posted: 2024-05-03
