The Support Team
The Chosen Ones The Voxx Electronics technical support department is stacked with allstar talent, including director Ed Catapano, who hand-picked his team from some of the best technical minds in the business.
WORDS BY JAMIE SORCHER
With countless mobile and personal electronics from overhead monitors to speakers, to remote starters, Voxx carries just about anything you can imagine. It is fitting that its technical support is also expansive. The department is vastly different from when Edward Catapano first joined Audiovox 20 years ago, interestingly in tech support before eventually becoming director of technical services. “The biggest change is you must be more technologically advanced today,” he said. “Back then every car was similar to one another. If you knew how to put a radio in Car A, that radio could be installed and wired into Car B. Today, every car is different. Everything works off the vehicle’s computer
40 Mobile Electronics December 2017
and every car is advanced so you really have to think about what you touch and what you’re doing. You need modules to decipher that information for you.” When the module is installed— for example, between a remote start and the car—the module does a lot of the work for you, Catapano explained, adding that it’s much more difficult to do an install nowadays. Advanced cars, tougher installs, and more complex products are precisely why Voxx has coordinated a comprehensive effort to manage issues for consumers, installers and dealers. All tech support functions funnel through Catapano’s department of 12 employees. Everyone sits around him in the call center at the corporate offices in Hauppauge, N.Y. Catapano’s hand-picked team
of techs, he said, is ready for just about anything. Catapano himself is MECP Master certified, along with three of his techs. The rest of the team is MECP Advanced. “I could bet the farm that I have one of the best teams in the business,” he said. “They can take their hat and turn it when a consumer calls and then they can turn the hat one more time when an installer calls and needs help with something. These techs have installed products all of their lives, so I have almost 300 years of experience in my department.” On any given day, there are a couple of dozen phone numbers that pump calls into the center. There is one for consumers and other numbers dedicated to dealers. “If we get a call and it’s computer related—maybe an installer