For this week’s Tech & Culture Blog, Emily Glass, VP of Customer Experience, explains how Datto has maintained a unique culture.
Keeping employees happy when you have a staff of 15 may be simple. When you extrapolate that to over 600 people in a short time, maintaining a positive company culture can be more of a challenge.
To make matters more complicated, Datto has four offices in the United States, in addition to offices in Australia, England and Canada.
Out of our 600+ employees, about 170 are in training and technical support, which both fall under the umbrella of Customer Experience. Our department faces some of the biggest challenges in the organization, as our products are constantly evolving and things move at such a fast pace.
Our support staff is spread across four of our offices. Therefore, communication and consistency are very important. Not only do we want our partners to have a fluid customer experience, but our employees as well. Below are some ways we have managed to grow the team while maintaining consistently great customer service and a family atmosphere.
Office Exchange program
We’ve had some great success with our office exchange program. Datto Tech Support employees travel to different offices to work with other members of the team and get a different experience than they may normally get. They put a face to the name that email all day and it helps create lasting bonds that are needed to maintain our team.
Monthly MVPs with Travel Rewards
In addition to the office exchange program, we also have monthly Support MVPs that are chosen based on metrics, project work, and customer feedback. Other departments within Datto also have the opportunity to nominate these MVPs for the hard work they’ve put in. Along with a cool swag bag, the MVPs are also eligible to go to a Datto roadshow with our Business Development team. This gives them the chance to get a break from their daily responsibilities and interact with partners at a conference or event. Although this is still ‘hard work’, the techs usually come back re-energized for support and also with a better understanding of our partners and their needs. Winning the chance to go to our yearly Datto Conference is a hotly contested prize.
Team Improvement Projects
See something broken? Go fix it. It’s in our blood as technicians, when we see something that could be better, we have to work on it. Sometimes this is work-related, or sometimes it is a bland wall that is begging for a super-hero mural, some international zombies that need to be dealt with, or invading other departments to shadow them and learn how our teams could work better together. There aren’t many boundaries to what can be done, and empowering everyone on the team to identify and then solve problems has helped us stay happy and productive as we scale up.
Each and everyone who works at Datto brings a specific and necessary talent to the company, and they are imperative to our success. These are just some of the unique ways we are growing and doing our jobs at the same time.