Principle 2
There’s no sense in vetting the best candidates if you’re not prepared to keep them. This is especially true for customer service where high attrition is the norm.
At InterSystems, we credit our unusually low attrition rate to culture. We take great strides to retain incredible talent when we find it.
I remember when InterSystems was growing quickly and had reached about 150 people total. Other departments like sales engineering were snagging all the great support people to staff up their divisions.
This created its own kind of stress in customer support: on top of our commitments to customers, our staff was dealing with the stress of internal turnover. Teams were changing quickly and there was too much in flux.
I went to Terry and I said: I want to overhire support and have 20% excess headcount. That way I could keep pace with internal transfers and reduce the stress on the support team. He immediately said yes.
This is one of many ways I’ve taken this obligation to my team seriously.