What’s the biggest change Lewis Taylor witnessed in his nearly 20 years working on Audible’s customer care team? It wasn’t moving our headquarters from a small office in Wayne, New Jersey, to occupying several floors in a Newark high rise. Nor was it growing our service to include 11 countries and 180 languages worldwide. “It was when we were finally able to tell customers that we were getting the Harry Potter audiobooks,” he laughs.

For years, until Harry Potter became available on Audible in 2015, customers were calling daily, wanting to know when they could listen. “So it was a great feeling when we could finally tell them, ‘Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We’ll even help you download it,’” he says.

Lewis, who came to Newark from Liberia as a child in 1989, started at Audible as a contracted employee, then was hired on April 1, 2006. “I thought it was an April Fool’s joke,” he says. At first he supported customers who were calling for help finding and downloading books to their computers, then he transitioned to supporting customers using the chat feature on Audible’s website. After a few years developing an expertise for providing excellent care, he moved into a “search and rescue” role that provided an even more advanced, personalized and ongoing level of support.

As Audible continued to grow, Lewis’s team had a front-row seat to some game-changing technological developments, especially smartphones. Very quickly, customers were able to go from slowly downloading large audio files to computers, which could take all night, or to mp3 players, which could only hold a few hours of audio at a time, to being able to simply open the Audible app on a phone and start listening to any book in their library. Lewis had to constantly stay on top of new devices and tech so he could always help customers find and download their next favorite listen.

That’s not the only way he stayed prepared. Early on, he became a member of the customer care team’s book club, explaining, “To support our customers, you’ve got to know our content.” One of his first favorite listens was The Faithful Spy by Alex Berenson. “An amazing audiobook,” he says, “I love that character.”

Because he’s been here so long, “people have seen me as kind of an ‘Audible customer service go-to guy’ over the years,” Lewis muses. Since 2017, he’s been a lead on our workforce team, helping to support customer care agents working at our Newark headquarters and around the world. “I was really proud to help with the launch of Audible’s service for Spain,” he says, including setting up the website and customer care teams dedicated to supporting Spanish listeners.

Customer obsession is just part of his overall personality, says Lewis. “I’m a giver! I love helping people.” As a Workforce Specialist for the Customer Care team, he’s helped implement flex scheduling for employees so they can customize their schedules to better fit their lives.

In fact, his love of people is part of the reason Lewis chose to take ownership of an informal Audible Sports club that gets employees playing each other in basketball, soccer and volleyball throughout the year. It was one of his favorite early memories of Audible, when employees and leadership would file out onto the baseball diamond across the street and play softball. “It was a great way to meet people in other departments,” he says. Keeping Audible Sports going is how Lewis helps to make Audible’s now-larger headquarters feel as communal as it did in the beginning.

“I feel blessed because I’ve seen this company grow,” says Lewis, reflecting on his past two decades with us. Someone advised him early on not to be afraid to talk to leaders, which is what gave him the confidence to walk up to Audible’s Founder Don Katz one day and engage him in conversation. It was such an empowering moment that he wants to pass on that advice to others just starting out in their careers. “Raise your hand and put yourself out there,” he adds. “Get involved. A lot has changed for me since I started doing that.”