24/7 Support - A high-stakes business
How has your role as Head of Support evolved with increasing platform complexity?
The whole Support team has had a very intense journey as we’ve accompanied Comtrade Gaming’s growth—expanding our customer base, increasing the number of active individual iCore deployments, and successfully growing the business with more operators and players using our online gaming platform and services.
The increased platform complexity requires us to align our support strategy with the broader platform evolution to ensure scalability, resilience, and innovation.
We’ve developed technical oversight across the platform to gain a holistic view of interconnected systems, avoiding silos and ensuring interoperability.
We've also placed greater focus on talent development, as diverse expertise has become essential. In addition, we’ve implemented stronger governance, improved risk management, introduced metrics and KPIs, and encouraged cross-functional collaboration and effective communication to better manage dependencies and shared responsibilities.
How is Comtrade Gaming's support team structured to ensure 24/7 coverage with fast response times? How do you handle knowledge transfer and shift handovers t maintain continuity?
The Comtrade Support team operates within a matrix organization and is geographically distributed across multiple time zones to ensure 24/7 coverage. We have an initial response time SLA of 4 minutes. Fast fix times are achieved through proper incident prioritization. We implement a rotation system and organize the team across multiple tiers.
We place strong emphasis on knowledge transfer—building and acquiring knowledge initially within smaller Support Expert groups. These same groups also facilitate knowledge sharing back into the broader teams.
We’ve developed a set of multi-layered tools for shift handovers, structured in various formats to address both short- and long-term needs, ensuring effective transitions between shifts. This process begins at the start of each shift and continues throughout, including the collection of inputs before handing over responsibilities to the next team.
How does Comtrade Gaming train and retain staff to maintain such high operational standards?
An effective training strategy begins with building a strong foundation by giving team members enough time to acquire and maintain excellent product knowledge related to the systems they support. We start with structured onboarding, and regularly assign support team members to work as testers for specific periods.
We focus on role-specific skill development, provide soft skills training (e.g., empathy, communication, conflict resolution), and offer technical training tailored to the support tier (e.g., Tier 1 vs. Tier 2).
To support ongoing learning, we maintain an up-to-date internal knowledge base and rely on SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for handling common issues. We also implement shadowing and mentorship programs, pairing new hires with experienced team members and encouraging reverse shadowing—where apprentices or new hires handle cases while mentors observe and guide.
We’ve received positive feedback on our use of gamified learning, which we’ve recently started to integrate into the training process.
How do you simulate or prepare for peak loads to ensure continuous uptime? Does Comtrade Gaming use chaos engineering or resilience testing as part of your readiness strategy?
We simulate and prepare for peak loads, and ensure continuous uptime through a set of multi-layered performance tools and processes. Performance requirements are addressed early in the development of new features, and we have a dedicated performance team that simulates and measures platform performance before any new feature is released into production.
In addition, we regularly collaborate with our operators—typically through planned activities—to optimize the platform for upcoming business-critical events or anticipated business growth in the near future.
Can you share metrics on the volume of transactions being processed during peak times?
The iCore online gaming platform is a highly adaptable and versatile solution, designed for both on-premise and cloud-based deployments. It seamlessly handles thousands of bets per second. Each bet actually creates multiple transactions in the system, so the true load is probably triple that.
This level of scalability makes it suitable for a wide range of operators—from small, emerging businesses to large enterprise-level providers—all of whom require robust omni-channel gaming and product management capabilities.
As a result, transaction volumes can vary significantly during peak periods, depending on the operator’s size and activity levels.
Which key performance indicators are monitored in real-time to assess platform health?
The iCore online gaming platform includes built-in capabilities for real-time monitoring of both business and system KPIs, enabling continuous assessment of platform health.
Key indicators monitored include player logins, new registrations, gameplay activity, player bonuses, and payment transactions, among others.
A critical aspect of this monitoring is the analysis of outcomes by comparing successful and unsuccessful attempts, which provides valuable insights into both user behavior and system performance.
What type of monitoring tools and dashboards does Comtrade Gaming use for proactive incident detection?
The iCore platform leverages advanced monitoring tools and real-time dashboards to enable proactive incident detection, including the use of AI-powered predictive models.
These models analyze expected values across various key indicators and timeframes—monthly, weekly, daily, and even by time of day—and compare them against actual performance data.
Any deviations from expected patterns are automatically flagged, allowing for early detection of anomalies and potential issues before they impact operations.
What level of redundancy and failover is built into the platform to guarantee uptime?
The iCore online gaming platform is designed for high availability and operational resilience, incorporating built-in redundancy and failover mechanisms to ensure consistent uptime and uninterrupted service.
Key features include a modular and scalable architecture, flexible deployment across both cloud and on-premise environments, automated failover systems, real-time monitoring with intelligent alerts, high-availability infrastructure design, and comprehensive disaster recovery and backup solutions.
How does Comtrade Gaming detect and respond to DDoS attacks or other large-scale security threats?
DDoS attacks and other large-scale security threats are increasingly common in today’s digital gaming landscape. To protect the iCore online gaming platform, operators rely on robust internet infrastructure and security solutions such as Cloudflare, among others.
During such incidents, the iCore platform captures valuable data on the nature and specifics of each attack. We collaborate closely and promptly with operators’ security teams to analyze this data and strengthen mitigation strategies, continuously improving our defense against future threats.
Venčeslav Leskovšek, Head of Support at Comtrade Gaming
Interview published in: G3 July 25 :: 56