Ken Schonberg is a Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, specializing in Customer Service and Support. He partners with leaders in customer service, support, customer success, technology, and operations to build service organizations that are both customer-friendly and operationally efficient. Ken’s expertise spans organizational structure, delivery models, vision and strategy, resource management, analytics, and scalable operating practices.
He guides clients on global 24x7 support, follow-the-sun models, outsourcing, role design, escalation paths, quality assurance, and optimizing the mix of self-service, digital, and expert-led support channels. Ken helps organizations create actionable roadmaps, governance frameworks, performance metrics, and pragmatic change plans tailored to real-world constraints.
With over 30 years of experience in IT and service. including leading global support operations and navigating budget pressures, Ken equips executives to make informed decisions about investments, automation, partnerships, and executive communications. His practical, results-driven approach turns operational challenges into executable strategies that drive measurable improvements.
Before joining Gartner, Ken spent more than two decades leading enterprise software support and customer success operations, moving from hands-on technical support into global operations leadership. Most recently at Arctera, he led Customer Support Operations and Enablement after the company separated from Veritas. His work included standing up post-sales operating models, support processes, tools, analytics, education services, workforce planning, release readiness, and AI-enabled workflows for a newly independent company. He also served on the corporate AI governance council and helped define responsible-use guardrails.
Earlier at Veritas and Symantec, Ken held senior roles in Global Technical Support Operations, Support Business Intelligence, and Technical Support Management. He supported 24x7 organizations of up to 1,100+ people across the U.S., Europe, India, and east Asia. His responsibilities included budget and headcount planning, workforce management, quality assurance, business continuity, M&A integration, RFP/RFI support, process and policy design, contact center modernization, executive dashboards, vendor/customer support agreements, and escalation governance. He managed support budgets ranging from $20M to $150M while helping the organization maintain strong customer satisfaction, meet SLA expectations, reduce cost per case, shorten live-call hold times, and reduce severely aged cases.
Ken’s earlier career was grounded in NetBackup support, where he managed support engineers, served as a technical escalation leader, and helped Fortune 1000 customers through complex backup, recovery, storage, Windows, UNIX, LAN, SAN, and disaster recovery issues. He began in infrastructure, consulting, network administration, and systems administration, grounding his later work in practical IT experience.
Arctera, Sr. Director, Global Customer Service Operations, 1 years
Veritas Technologies, Sr. Director Global Customer Support Operations
Director
Sr. Manager, 10 years
Symantec Corporation, Sr. Operations Manager
Customer Support Manager, 11 years
Master of Divinity, Bethel University, St. Paul, MN
Bachelor of Business Administration, Finance, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, WA