Key Insights

o Hiring tips from James that I found to be really unique:

1. Good balance between senior/junior engineers (preferred ratio 2:1). Junior engineers usually turn out better than experienced folks.2

2. Don’t just look for EE/CS majors. James has successfully hired even bio/physics/maths majors who are also interested in technology 

3. Focus on hiring folks from outside the area (such folks will invest heavily in building a culture of assimilation)

o One thing that got my attention is that their attrition is 3%. TSIA says attrition in support is usually around 15% . James shared that they have taken following steps (specifically in their India support team) to control attrition: 1/ Invest in growing support engineers technically 2/ Hiring strong managers 3/ Offer slightly better than market rate.

o Split Customer Success team based on Customer ACV and their ability/interest in being advocates (this seemed a unique segmentation choice). Top bracket customers enjoy 1:10 or 1:20 (CSM/Customer) ratio. For other brackets, ratio is higher. Earlier they started with 1:50 ratio for everyone and that didn't scale.

o Tool stack: Zendesk (CRM/Knowledge Management), Ring Central (Contact Center)

o James says that NPS is the most important customer metric you can measure

o Favorite business book for James: Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh