I’ve spent the last two decades as an entrepreneur, and I’m going to let you in on a secret: You don’t have to sacrifice customer service to scale.

As businesses grow, there is a natural push toward automation, efficiency and cost-cutting — often at the expense of a personalized, human touch. I’ve seen it firsthand. Early in my career, I was working my way up the corporate ladder at an internet service provider when our majority stakeholder decided to outsource operations to improve the bottom line. I watched the lively culture and collaborative office environment we’d built slowly dissolve, replaced by teams halfway across the world who faced language barriers, cultural disconnects and limited engagement. The new system was focused on speed over service, and both employees and customers felt the difference.

When I later launched my own SaaS company, I made a very intentional decision to build customer service into the foundation of the business from day one. We’ve deliberately kept all of our customer support in-house and accessible to our clients, rooted in personal, solution-oriented service. This gives us full control over quality, empowering us to deliver one of the best customer experiences in the industry.

As a self-funded company, we’ve had the freedom to focus on what truly matters to our customers, while I’ve seen many venture-backed startups start to prioritize profit and shareholder returns at the expense of customer experience. Today, we outperform many of our competitors in both customer satisfaction and profitability. Rentec has been recognized as a Most Customer Friendly Company every year since 2020, but to me, the real win is that we’ve scaled sustainably without ever compromising on service. After 18 years in business, we’ve maintained a 25% year-over-year revenue growth rate, and our client base has grown 20% over the past five years — all while delivering elite, high-touch support.

Here are the core strategies I’ve used as a founder and CEO to build and maintain an award-winning service at scale — an approach that has set us apart from competitors with much larger teams and budgets. It’s time to put customers back at the center of growth.

Related: How to Provide More Value to Your Customers And Scale Your Company

1. Build a service philosophy, not just a support team

Customer service shouldn’t just be a department — it should be embedded in your company’s DNA. In the SaaS industry, especially, it’s mission-critical to remember that support starts at sign-up, not when a customer hits their first roadblock. Free trials, onboarding and account setup are key touchpoints where expectations are set and loyalty starts to form. If those early interactions are unmemorable — or worse, memorable for the wrong reasons — it’s almost impossible to recover, no matter how great your product.

Empower your team to prioritize solutions over scripts and solving problems over checking boxes. This starts with hiring the right people. For example, all of our support staff have backgrounds in areas directly relevant to our clients, so they understand the context, stakes and pain points our customers face. It continues with ongoing training and education to keep your support team sharp in both service excellence and industry standards.

Insider tip: Eliminate paywalls or tiers for support services to reduce friction and establish trust from the start.

2. Make service personal and proactive

Personalized and proactive support is what transforms one-time interactions into long-term relationships — especially for tech-based businesses. In the era of AI and automation, we consistently hear from clients that they crave a real human connection on the other end of the phone, email or live chat. Where can you intentionally personalize touchpoints with your own customers?

This year, our company introduced anniversary check-in calls to strengthen relationships, support retention and boost client success by proactively surfacing any challenges or opportunities for improvement. These non-sales touchpoints have helped us show up and deepen relationships with more than 500 customers so far, sparking improvements that have enhanced the client’s experience or informed product updates.

Insider tip: Build “quiet” moments into the client journey that aren’t about upselling — just to connect, celebrate or show up. Support shouldn’t only exist when something breaks.

Related: Stop the Scripted Customer Service — Here’s Why You Should Focus on Being Human Instead

3. Use feedback as fuel for innovation

Listening to customer feedback is only the first step. What happens next — what your team does with that feedback — is what truly sets great companies apart. Plenty of businesses implement feedback loops, but long-term success comes from closing the loop with: “We heard you — and here’s what we did about it.”

Here’s a recent testimonial from one of our clients that captures this in action: “I identified a gap in user permission options that I felt needed to be addressed. I shared my concerns with the customer success team, and in less than a week, they had rolled out a new feature to address my concerns. I even heard from the founder of the company that he liked my idea.”

Support teams can do more than resolve tickets — look at them as your frontline R&D department. These are the employees closest to your customers’ real-world use cases, frustrations and feature needs. When I visit our customer service department, I’m always surprised to see how often our team knows customers by name despite tens of thousands of users on our platform. This kind of connection delivers insight far beyond what any survey or analytics can provide. Instead of treating service as a reactive function, lean on it as a strategic partner in shaping your product roadmap.

Insider tip: Create a structured internal feedback system between support and development or product teams to capture, prioritize and act on customer insights. If you use it right, feedback is your most powerful tool for innovation and growth.

4. Invest in the team behind the support

At the end of the day, your service is only as strong as the people behind it. Yes, this starts with company values and leadership, but it must trickle down through to the support team on the front lines. In my experience, customer support has been a cornerstone of our success.

Service and support professionals need universal knowledge — they should be experts in your product, but they also need to understand the industries they serve and stay current with evolving customer service best practices. At our company, our support team logs hundreds of hours each year in professional development focused on customer service training, industry compliance courses and weekly product training sessions to stay aligned with the latest product updates. Because we specialize in the rental industry, in 2023, we had our support team complete a 60-hour property management certification through our local real estate agency so they truly understand the world our clients operate in.

Insider tip: Your support team is arguably your most important product. Invest in training, tools and empowerment and you’ll see returns far beyond support tickets.

Related: Entrepreneurs Should Invest in Service, Not Just Sales — Here’s How to Build a Customer-First Business

Final thoughts

Great service is measurable, but it’s also memorable. In a crowded marketplace, your service reputation quickly becomes your brand. I challenge my fellow business leaders to ask themselves: “What would it take for us to become the most customer-friendly company in our industry?” The answer might start with support, but it should extend to your entire culture.