Chris Beaumont, sales director at Octopus HR, speaks to Lucie Mitchell about success at the Software Satisfaction Awards this year, and how the business keeps its customers satisfied.

When Octopus picked up the mid-range HR software gong at the Software Satisfaction Awards in October, it was a culmination of three years’ hard work, says the company’s sales director Chris Beaumont.

“As a comparatively new HR product launched in the UK just over three years ago, capturing 26% of the total vote cast is a fantastic achievement for everyone involved in our business and is testament to our long-term partnerships with our customers,” he says.

Octopus delivers secure, online HR software solutions that provide company-wide HR information, with the aim of reducing routine administration whilst enhancing employee communication and reducing resource costs.

“We have developed an agile application which our customers genuinely love using. We are delighted that our customers have given us such a high score in this highly competitive category.”

As a business, the leadership team at Octopus has been focused on its vision to become the UK’s favourite SME HR software, says Beaumont. “The key areas in which we focus are: On-going innovation and product development; sales & marketing; delivering unrivalled levels of customer service and support; and building a strong and sustainable subscription-based reoccurring revenue stream.”

Sounds impressive, but what does Octopus do to ensure all customers are 100% satisfied? “Our core philosophy is based on a commitment to always exceed customer expectations; we work directly with our customers and always aim to provide them with software, consultancy and training that exceeds their expectations and requirements,” remarks Beaumont.

Another way to ensure customer satisfaction is to encourage feedback, he says. “Octopus is built for customers as a fully branded client application. Customers are encouraged to provide feedback to our design team on branding, so the system meets our clients’ requirements at deployment. All testing is undertaken by our experienced development team.”

So how is feedback treated and dealt with, once it has been received? “User feedback provides us with a goldmine of information which allows us to fully understand our customer’s experience. We encourage our user community to play an active role in suggesting new features and have had some great feedback from some of our customers, which have been included in our product development road map.”

In terms of the future of HR software, Beaumont stresses that self-service is the way to go. “We firmly believe that businesses are moving away from traditional costly on-premise HR software to our new software-as-a-service, hosted model. More and more companies are also identifying the huge potential and efficiency gains of employee self-service,” he concludes.