Lamson believes it’s critical to not cut corners. Growth is the end result, but a quality customer experience is the means to that end.
“So often high-growth businesses will lose sight of what allowed them to become that high-growth engine in the first place, and in a rapidly evolving technology environment, become bypassed,” he says. “Your product and solutions by definition must change — and in some cases that change or that evolution will happen swiftly — but at the core of it is paying attention and listening to your customers’ needs.
“Of course, there is a laser focus on new business acquisition and customer growth that has to be there, but what I have seen happen with other solutions or other software providers is they become enamored with growth, as opposed to customer experience,” Lamson says. “And over time, inevitably, their growth will decline as a result.”
Update the product, find the right people
In order to stay close to the market, Lamson says it’s about listening to customers and making sure the product is continually updated to meet their needs.
“For example, we meet as an entire management team every single month and review our top 10 customer requests, both from customers who have been with Jazz for years — we’ve been in business since 2009 — that they would like to see and we review the requests of our prospective customers,” he says.
In addition to gathering data, Lamson says companies should proactively reach out to customers regularly to ask how they’re doing at meeting their needs.
JazzHR also spends a great deal of time practicing what it preaches on recruiting. It wants to make sure new staff are ready to be as customer focused as the company requires.
Not only does every single management team member meet potential senior hires, in some cases, the board members also meet those candidates.
“It’s so easy in this fast-paced technology environment that we live in today to have technology pass you by, and we take great care to stay close to what our customers’ needs are so that can’t happen,” Lamson says.
