Every company has at least one person in the mix — the life of the party and storyteller — and at Agathon Group, that’s Morgan Foster. He’s the kind of person who makes friends in line at the coffee shop, has a magnetic personality, and cares about helping people find solutions.
He’s also behind the creation of Agathon Group’s customer support robot, Marvin. When Morgan joined Agathon Group in 2007, one of his first tasks was to set up a support ticket tracking system for the company. During the process, he decided to put a creative spin on the auto-response message in the system, and build what eventually became the company’s robot mascot.
“At the time, I was pretty into Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so I thought it would be kind of funny if that same Marvin, for some reason, had the incredibly mundane job of responding to everyone who emailed in,” Morgan joked. “So, I picked that name, and made him more like a dog robot that is just happy to be involved.
“Who doesn’t love friendly robots that are not mindless killers?” Morgan added. Years later, we’ve seen that staff and clients alike love the touch the witty robot brings to Agathon Group.
This is only one example of Morgan’s outgoing and creative personality infusing his work at Agathon Group.
“Anytime I can help explain technical things to people in a creative way, that is totally my sweet spot,” Morgan said. “I really enjoy the challenge of taking a project and distilling it down to a manageable understandable plan.
“It’s certainly a challenging part of my job, and something that always feels a little overwhelming at first, but once I’m in the midst of it, I really enjoy that feeling of making something large, overwhelming, and confusing much more manageable,” he said.
Morgan’s ease with communication and desire to bridge the gap between technology and people, are natural reasons why he plays such an important role in Agathon Group’s customer support. He attributes his comfort with communication to his experience in theater and music. He double-majored in computer science and theater in college, and plays guitar and sings in an indie rock back.
“I think my experience and love for theater has given me two big things that help in my professional communication — the ability to think and communicate creatively to others, and the ability to gauge the feeling of the people I’m communicating with,” Morgan said. “Having the confidence and the poise to be 100-percent genuine in any circumstance is invaluable, and definitely something I’ve learned from fronting a band.”
In his free time, Morgan spends time with his family, performs with In Threes, a Chicago-based indie rock band, and posts videos of his new parenting adventures at www.morganfoster.com.
A couple fun links to get to know Morgan:
- Daddy Diaries video series about his new parenting adventures.
- Common Shiner “Social Mediasochist” music video.
About Hosting by Real People & for Real People Spotlight Series
Our “Hosting by Real People & for Real People Spotlight Series” is our way of introducing the people who use AGhosted or make it a reality. The AGhosted slogan, “Hosting by Real People & for Real People” reminds us that we are a group of individuals, each interested in helping and equipping each of you reach your goals. It’s about our new mission to bring us together as a community full of people who share useful information, ask questions, mentor or coach, and connect with one another.
Vanessa is responsible for coordinating conference sponsorships and creating marketing collateral to help support our team and public-facing story.
2 comments on “Hosting by Real People & for Real People with Morgan Foster”
Thank you, Morgan, for all your help.
(I think I am too old to understand the video.)
My pleasure, Danny! The video was one my band created that we basically just packed as many horror movie references as we could into. So I’m sure there’s lots of references over peoples’ heads (there’s a few even over mine :)).