Growth at the Expense of Customer Experience - Senior Customer Success Manager Paycor Employee Review

I joined Paycor on their Customer Success team at the start of the pandemic, right when the company transitioned to a virtual-first environment. In my nearly 2 years with Paycor, I have come to the following conclusion: Paycor is having an identity crisis, and can't seem to stay focused on one thing internally long enough to fix all its broken processes. The organization in my two years abruptly changed it's Customer Support model to be a call-center - the ramifications of which our largest and smallest clients are still struggling through nearly 2 years later. The company then decided to go public a year later, and just sunk roughly $100 million into a 15+ year naming rights deal for the Bengals Stadium. --> This is just within the past 2 years. The company touts it as exciting growth - but at what cost? As a Customer Success Manager, our team was the sole dedicated contact for our largest and most complex clients, and we worked with nearly every team internally at Paycor (Product, Support, Implementation, Sales, Billing etc) in an effort to ultimately retain our clients. This gave us a window into every Paycor process that impacts the customer experience. Any employee at Paycor who is in a client-facing role knows what a struggle it is currently for many of our clients. If you are in Sales, Marketing etc - it's often a different story (just look at the LinkedIn posts & flashy trips for Sales). Paycor is moving 1,000 miles an hour - without slowing down to fix what's STILL broken - and is losing clients left and right. When I joined in 2020, the organization talked about its client retention %. That is no longer the case. I never ONCE heard Senior Leadership speak to our churn %, retention goals, or how many clients or revenue we're losing quarter-over-quarter. (Why are you hiding these data points?) The CEO wants to make Paycor a Billion dollar company - but at what expense? You cannot slap your name on a stadium for "instant credibility" - you have to earn it through delivering a standout customer experience year-over-year. The Customer Success team is inundated with customer escalations. We're told we "care too much" when trying to help our clients solve issues, but then those same Senior Leaders will be the first to come back when the client says they're leaving asking "What have you done?" etc. Management is continuing to build out our escalation process more and more, but what about stopping for a minute to thoroughly analyze WHY all these escalations are occurring in the first place. For complex Support issues, there aren't enough tenured Advocates in the Support Org to truly assist, so everything turns into an escalation. (This is to no fault of Support - I found the people I worked with well-meaning and wanting to help, but over-worked). This inevitably leads to burnout, and the Success and Support teams (as well as Implementation for that matter) are losing people left and right. Open Enrollment was a nightmare for most clients both years I was there, and the organization didn't stop to truly learn from experience. (2021 was even worse than 2020 - even OE Leadership recognized it). Customer Support Advocates would be expected to be on the phones at times all day long most weeks - so Cases would pile up and customers would escalate because they didn't hear back. The vicious cycle continues. Paycor hired a VP of Customer Experience to address all the issues negatively impacting Customers in 2020 - and within 6 months that individual had started working with the Sales Org. Let that sink in. Where is the focus and commitment to see process improvements through? It doesn't exist at Paycor. We can't seem to stay focused on 1 broken process long enough to see it through to completion. Paycor has WAY too many products/services (some of which are integrated, but claim to be 'all in one') to effectively support our largest clients. Payroll, Time, Benefits, HR, Recruiting, Surveys, Tax Filing, EDI Feeds etc - it's too much. The Customer Success Team fields escalation after escalation because Support can't keep tenured Advocates - so it's just a vicious cycle. Lob on top of that bi-annual price increases we hit our clients with, and you have a recipe for disaster. In my 2 years with Paycor, the CEO Raul Villar never once came to speak to the Customer Success Team, which speaks volumes. Remember - Success represents our LARGEST revenue clients - millions of $ in revenue annually, but the CEO seems to be more focused on net new Sales. The organization cares TOO much about growth - but what about actually retaining your EXISTING clients first? Client retention in SaaS is not just the job of the Success Org - it MUST be a priority form the TOP down. This is not the case at Paycor. Two of Paycor's guiding Principles are: Take Care of the Customer First; Take Care of Each Other. Sales and Marketing LOVE to tout these. But now the company is accountable to the shareholders first. These Principles seem to have fallen down in priority to what has become Paycor's TRUE guiding Principle: Become a Billion $ Company First. Benefits are pretty good - but in today's labor market Paycor is ultimately no longer competitive with other Tech Companies. PTO is more of a burden in a client-facing role (Success, Support, or Implementation) because you come back to so many escalations/ issues. As a parent, it was shocking to me that in 2022 Paycor only offered 2 weeks Paternity Leave after the birth of a child. How is that enough time to effectively support your family, especially if you have other kids? I was promoted to the Senior CSM position, but watched external employees get hired into the same role making 20-30% more. Support is dealing with the same problem. How does that make sense? If you are considering joining Paycor, PLEASE take a look at the overall employee ratings trends on Glassdoor - the only positive reviews tend to come from the Sales team, and the graph is trending down overall. Not good for a company that is hyper-focused on growth.