Awesome Experience

As the costs of developing web services has dropped (dramatically) a new crop of companies has started up offering what used to be called "features." Examples include Disqus (blog comments), ididwork (to do lists), Kampyle (feedback) and Startuply (job posts on the "careers" section of websites). The result (as least that’s the goal) of this focus is that what used to be done half-assed (hey it’s just a feature to Typepad) is now done with the love and attention only found in passionate entrepreneurs.

Being a user of a lot of these new services, I have to say that the customer experience is uneven. But recently I was absolutely delighted (and surprised) by an experience and I wanted to share.

About a week ago I posted a job for a Community Manager on Startuply. I only later discovered that the service was 2 weeks old at the time. Anyway, since I posted the job, I’ve received 5 really great candidates via Startuply. That’s amazing in it own right. But the real story is when a few hours ago I shot off an email to "support" at Startuply, telling them that the resumes attached to their emails were blank and that the file was named poorly. About 3 hours later I got an email saying, "thanks…just got back from a dinner meeting…will look at this."

Okay.

Then 2 hours later I got an email saying, "thanks for the feedback, we fixed everything you mentioned." What?!?

Hotjobs eat your heart out! Anyway, for kicks, here’s the actual thread:

From: Luke Groesbeck | Startuply

Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 10:56 PM

To: Furqan Nazeeri

Subject: Re: Fwd: Community Manager OK, this should be fixed. Here’s what we’ve done: -the attached resume should actually be the resume now. No more blank files (oops!).

-the attachment nomenclature is a simple "Lastname.Firstname Resume". Seem reasonable? What else can we do? Thanks again for the feedback. We’ve been live for ~3.5 weeks now, and getting this stuff fixed is huge. And, as always, please feel free to reach out anytime. On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 9:15 PM, Luke Groesbeck | Startuply wrote: Furqan, Thanks for reaching out, and sorry for the delay – just got back from a dinner meeting. We’re looking into this now! On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 5:58 PM, Furqan Nazeeri wrote: Argh! I keep getting these applications, but the attached resume is a blank file. I can see the resume online (scribd) or download the DOC file, but the one that comes attached is always blank. Also, it’d be great if you could name these files something like [last name], [first name] (resume).doc instead of just "Resume.doc" which isn’t terribly helpful. FN

There’s a lesson here. When your company depends upon doing a "feature" really, really well, you can win over converts with great service.