Skydio X10D: Ensuring Mission Success
Chris Stock is a seasoned professional in program management, systems engineering, and technology innovation. He has a proven track record of leading teams in both the Department of Defense and NASA. Currently, Chris is at the forefront of driving innovation as he leads a technology innovation team that is dedicated to exploring, developing, and experimenting with disruptive and innovative technologies that will shape the future of warfare.
As President/General Manager of Global Government at Skydio, Mark focuses on delivering autonomous aerial capabilities to national governments around the world to make them more productive, creative and safe.
Prior to joining Skydio, Mark was the SVP/GM for Scale AI's Federal team and the GM of Microsoft's National Security team. In those roles, he focused on delivering advanced technologies such as AI/ML, cloud computing and mixed reality to warfighters and analysts across the US Federal government. Prior to his time in industry, Mark served in the US Air Force for over 25 years as a combat veteran fighter pilot (F-16), commander, and staff officer at headquarters US Air Force and the Joint Staff.
Mark currently lives near Annapolis, MD where is is active in the American Legion Boys State program and several non-profit boards.
The "Skydio X10D: Ensuring Mission Success" video underscores Skydio's commitment to comprehensive customer support and training, ensuring the successful deployment and operation of their drones. Unlike other companies that merely deliver products without follow-up, Skydio emphasizes an end-to-end support approach. This includes a dedicated "mission success" team that partners with customers post-sales to guarantee their success in utilizing Skydio products.
Skydio’s approach involves personal delivery and hands-on setup assistance, demonstrating their commitment to customer appreciation and operational readiness. The company also provides robust field training globally, ensuring that customers can maximize the value of their drones even in contested or high-risk areas.
The global government team, composed of individuals with relevant backgrounds and expertise, plays a critical role in understanding and fulfilling customer needs. This team’s unique insights, having come from similar environments as their customers, enable Skydio to offer refined pre- and post-sale support. Customer feedback highlights Skydio’s strong product performance and exceptional support, distinguishing them from competitors.
In summary, Skydio’s X10D program is characterized by comprehensive support, in-depth training, and a strong emphasis on customer success, ensuring that their drones are not just products but integral parts of a fully supported drone program.
We would get products delivered, and they would just get dropped at our doorstep. There was no training involved. There was no follow-up. There was no relationship afterwards.
I've had so much experience in the past working with other companies and they just don't support their product well. And I think from day one, an imperative was that we were going to support our customers no matter what better than anybody in the world.
Here at Skydio, we've kinda taken a unique approach to really fully supporting our customers end to end, not only with great products, but with a team that comes behind those products on the back end. We have a a team which we call mission success. And really what that is, it's an entire team of post sales, support personnel that that are gonna partner with the customer to to make them successful in using Skydio products and at the end of the day, their mission.
We don't just sell drones, we we like to think of it as a drone program. So when the drones are delivered, they don't just show up on pallets and boxes with a note that says good luck. They show up with a person with a Skydio shirt on them who helps unbox those drones and those controllers.
And what this does, it's saying, hey, that we at Skydio, we care and we appreciate you guys so much that we're gonna come out in person, make sure that all of our product that was delivered is fully up and operational for you guys before we leave.
And then we have a robust training department that is deploying in the field with customers to help them understand how to get the maximum value, out of these things.
We are willing to go and travel anywhere in the world around the globe to help support our customers. Even if it is in a bit of a contested area, we still provide that training because we know how important it is.
And for a lot of our customers executing high risk missions, they wanna make sure they have a team that's on demand and ready to service their needs anytime of day, anytime they need it.
How we understand our customers, that has a lot to do with our global government team and how we're hired, not only as subject matter experts within the drone industry, but also because we came from that environment as well. And we can, in essence, speak their language. I understand the customer because I was the customer, and that really helps us refine who we are as a pre and post sale.
I think the uniqueness with Skydio and at least even direct feedback we've received from customers is that Skydio not only makes amazing products, but they stand behind those products and they support them.