Since winning the Austin Business Journal’s #1 Best Place to Work article here, everyone has been asking how did we win? What perk was it that pushed us over the top?
Want to know a secret?It wasn’t a perk. Here are the key reasons I think we won, based off our company core values:
Greatest Place to Work
I have worked in IT for over 10 years now. One of the worst parts about this industry is that it is 24×7. Even if your company closes at 6pm, somebody is always working after hours because something is not working. One of the big things our business is built around is having a life outside of work. While we do have somebody on call during the week to handle after hours issues, having to work after hours is the exception more than the rule. We know personal and family issues come up and do our best to accommodate them.
Fanatical Customer Experience
On the website it says “Our clients are people not servers”. The core metric we measure our business by is customer retention. Every month, our goal is 100% retention. With roughly 100 customers, that is not easy to do, especially since we don’t do contracts, meaning they have the option to leave each and every month. By keeping our customers happy though, it keeps our team happy. The golden rule applies here – happy customers will treat you well. Somebody calling us to yell is an almost non-existent occurrence.
Time Out
A hostile work place is one of the quickest ways to make you dread going to work each day. We have a “time out” policy here to make sure that does not happen. If at any time, for any reason, you feel uncomfortable with something, you can call a time out and the subject has to change. We started this two years ago and it has now become part of the culture – somebody draws that line, nobody crosses it.
Own It
Another big problem in IT is that nobody wants to take responsibility for things. “Oh that is your internet provider”, “call the copier company to fix that”. Nobody wants to hear that, they just want it fixed. At Technology Pointe, once a tech is working an issue, he owns it until its fixed, even if they have to bring somebody else in. It is not just about getting the issue. It is about making sure the customer is taken care of. This means communicating and making sure the job gets done right.
5:01
OK I lied earlier, there is one big perk:
The TPI Game Room
5:01 started off as a time to have a beer, now it has come to be a time to unwind. Often we’ll sit around and discuss work, such as problems we ran into that day, customer events coming up, such as office moves, along with what’s going on in our personal lives.
All of this is in conjunction with being as transparent and inclusive as possible. When talking to potential new clients, we get feedback to determine if they are a good fit or not for our company, and have walked away from plenty of new opportunities because of concerns. We share the company finances with all team members so they know how well things are going and why certain decisions are being made.
So there you go – it’s not about the perks, it’s about the culture!