“So many support teams see members come and go. It’s the stepping stone for ‘more respectable’ jobs. This can be okay in certain organizations, but most of the time it simply results in lower quality of support for the customer. High turnover means training, re-training, and undocumented processes … your customers suffer, and usually the bottom line does as well. Keeping support members who are good at the job is vital.”

(From Chris Bowler‘s blog)

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

I’m encountering this a lot while hiring at ZOZI. This is the first company I’ve worked at that is very attractive to the general public (UserVoice was more “startup cool”) and lots of folks have literally told me “I’ve been waiting for a job, any job to open at your company” while I looked on at their marketing-heavy resumes. Some of them are promising (and hey, one of my existing, awesome team members came to us that way) but most of them are the types whose first question is about the career progression track is at the company. In short, they want to know how long until they can go work in Marketing.

I’ve always been focused on keeping my staff happy but this is a great reminder that it’s not just important, but essential.

(Via Andrew Spittle)

Photo courtesy of Prescott Pym.