Groom is gaining traction by putting customers first
Customer service. Two little words that aren’t uttered enough in entrepreneurial circles. Startups fight like mad to acquire new customers in bulk but rarely approach responding to individual needs and complaints with the same vigor and forethought.
Not the case with Groom Energy. CEO and founder Jonathan Guerster has a mission to figure out exactly which energy issues are plaguing his customers and find solutions to fix them. Addressing individual customer needs has been a driving force in the company’s success.
Sometimes the company’s commitment to customer service has yielded unusual results and driven the company in unexpected directions: Groom engineers have invented new technologies and incubated new businesses all while the company continues to provide its core service – sustainability retrofits in retail spaces, parking garages, hospitals, universities, and industrial sites.
Understanding Groom’s customer service driven model is crucial to understanding how the company transitioned from startup to industry thought-leader in a little over four years.
Groom Energy was founded when Guerster’s friend David Groom of Groom Construction convinced him that there was a market for energy retrofits. All of this happened in 2005 — before concepts like clean energy and sustainability had generated all of the hype and glory that they have today. Nevertheless, Guerster began searching for execs to lead Groom Energy, quickly bringing on Fritz Troller, the company’s current vice president of marketing. Troller had the necessary engineering skills and know-how to negotiate the uncharted waters of the energy business, but Guerster was otherwise frustrated with the lack of qualified people who understood the sector. Within a year he had learned enough about the business to assume leadership of the company and left his role as a general partner at locally-based Charles River Ventures become the company’s CEO.
During the past four years, Guerster steered Groom through its startup phase, capturing an impressive list of customers that includes such industry giants as General Electric, Thompson Scientific, Bristol-Myers Squibb, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, and has generally become a recognized thought-leader in the clean tech space, which many analysts believe will be the most enduring of current growth sectors.
During that time, Groom has incubated new technologies and created a consulting arm that churns out high quality reports that companies turn to for information about topics like climate impact and carbon accounting.
Does providing all of these additional services detract from the company’s core mission? No.
As a customer service-driven organization led by a former VC, understanding client problems and incubating the hottest and most efficient new technologies to fill their needs is part of the natural evolution of the company.
One example of the many ways that close collaboration with customers enabled Guerster to forecast new markets arose in the carbon accounting space. After watching a number of clients voluntarily sign on to carbon accounting programs with the EPA — even in the absence of taxation schemes — he relealized the corporate need for carbon accounting software. When the market became too crowded, too quickly, Groom used its research on carbon accounting to evaluate products, creating a tool and reference guide for their customers.
The company’s ability to tap into customer needs and assess market opportunities also led to the creation of Digital Lumens—the cutting-edge intelligent lighting system that effectively sells darkness to industrial warehouses. Groom engineers conducted most of the product testing and development before launching out on their own as Digital Lumens. Guerster also assisted his engineers as they went through their initial VC-round with Flybridge Capital Partners and became the company’s the first partner to be an active selling agent.
The ability to listen to customers has enabled to company to thrive through a period when energy efficiency was barely emerging as an issue on the radar screen for most companies and into a time when sustainability became the center of a lot of buzz and attention. While most of Groom’s clients hire the company to cut down on energy costs and save money, Guerster is aware that a number of factors contribute to whether or not a company decides to adopt sustainability measures.
Case in point, Charles Lockwood recently published a study in the Harvard Business Review claiming green building can increase employee productivity by 15 percent. According to Lockwood, when Genzyme built its new green building in Cambridge, employees reported increased productivity and decreased sick time.
As Guerster pointed out last week at Mass High Tech’s Clean Technology Forum, some companies might adopt new technologies that don’t appear to have a direct economic benefit. Nevertheless, as he later noted, these decisions have an indirect benefit on the growth or competitive advantage of the company. For example, corporate headquarters might install solar panels because it creates a positive impact on the psychology of an organization or a retail space might create a sustainability program to attract new customers.
Paying close attention the varied needs of customers – whatever they may be – is crucial in a service industry where most business comes from returning customers.
What do you think about Groom Energy’s approach to customer service? Have you had any professional experience with Groom? Let us know in the comments.
Tags: Charles River Ventures, Company News, Company Profiles, Flybridge Capital, Genzyme, Groom
