How managers at Kruze Consulting automate and scale employee recognition to encourage their teams

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"Our Bonusly Slack channel is active with at least 40 recognition posts daily," says Scott Orn, the Chief Operating Officer of Kruze Consulting. "Reading Bonusly posts is consistently a highlight of my day."

Kruze Consulting is a leading accounting and CPA firm serving VC-backed startups with over 130 employees across the United States. Since Scott joined Kruze about seven years ago, the company has grown from a three-person operation working in the same office to a multi-country enterprise. "With such rapid scaling potential," Scott says, "we knew we could grant our employees a better working environment, greater freedom, and more flexibility by eliminating our offices."

In the midst of this major operational shift, Scott and his colleagues sought out scalable systems to help Kruze Consulting continue operating at a high level. "When working remotely, people lose opportunities for informal praise from their peers. So part of this transition," Scott remembers, "involved finding new ways for colleagues to encourage and recognize each other for great work."

"Finding the right platform to enhance and promote public recognition has been instrumental to our remote operations."

Kruze's employees loved Bonusly right away. "We experienced firsthand that public recognition could be really impactful," says Scott. "Public recognition is always great, but it’s especially critical in our line of work. Our accounting and tax team often has to address high intensity or urgent requests from clients on any given day. These requests sometimes require them to pull other employees into a project, whether it's a subject-matter expert, a state-level tax professional, or a financial modeler."

During the busy 2021 tax season, when the IRS and state tax agencies were experiencing extreme delays that impacted Kruze Consulting's clients, Scott connected Bonusly with Frame AI to automate recognition for customer wins. Frame AI is a product that analyzes customer interactions to generate actionable data about customer sentiment, customer effort, and team effort.

With Bonusly and Frame AI together, Scott says his team has "a way to publicly recognize people who jump into the fray to put out fires, meet urgent deadlines, solve specific issues, and handle behind-the-scenes work." In the midst of an increasingly frustrating situation for Kruze's clients, managers of customer success were equipped to encourage and champion their teams.

"This work often goes unnoticed, and the last thing we want is for people to feel their contributions aren't appreciated," he says.

"Our combination of tools work together to identify customers that need extra reassurance, enabling us to boost our customer response with an empathetic ear. Knowing what’s going wrong with your pipeline is extremely valuable, but identifying wins has proven more beneficial."

"Knowing what’s going wrong with your pipeline is extremely valuable, but identifying wins has proven more beneficial."

By connecting Frame AI data with Bonusly recognition, Kruze ensures that no one gets left out. "People are busy, and sometimes they forget that recognition piece," Scott says. Now, Kruze's managers of customer success can more easily replicate winning language and improve the client experience—and they can make sure everyone feels appreciated along the way.