This has been a huge week for three of our awesome CoSupport customers, and we are so proud of them all!

Cocoabox, the makers of Penultimate and one of our very first customers, was honored to be named the #4 best-selling iPad app of all time. Of all time!! We are just so proud to have seen this unfold over the past year.

Readability launched their iOS apps and was featured smack-dab in the middle of iTunes. Amazing! And now, iCab is out for iOS, which includes Readability support baked right in.

Finally, congrats to our newest customer, TestFlight, on teaming up with Burstly. This also launches for them the awesome TestFlight Live, which we can’t wait to watch explode.

I’m a part of eight accounts myself, and two of those I’m in for 10+hours a day. I would say I’m an Assistly power user, routinely the person my customers turn to to get help and advice learning the product. I’d say they mostly come to me before going to the help section, but that’s probably because I wrote the Assistly help section.

CoSupport became an Assistly partner early last year and we were always happy as a team to advocate using it exclusively to our customers. It wasn’t because we had some money shuffling deal with them – we actually made zero money at all recommending our customers use the product. We truly, truly enjoyed using it and felt it was the best for small app teams to use for their online support. That opinion ended this week when overnight, without any warning, Assistly rebranded, redesigned and renamed themselves as Desk.com.

W.T.F.

This is some bad decision making, folks. This is probably as bad a decision as Netflix made, wanting to split their DVD and streaming services in two. Maybe you don’t see that right away, but the ramifications of this are going to tarnish Assistly/Desk.com’s reputation in the support tech industry in so many ways that could have been avoided. That’s what actually angers me about this situation: It all could have been handled so much, much better and all this frustration could have been avoided.

Here is a run down of shoulda/coulda ramifications that Assistly/Desk.com didn’t think about:

• Relaunching and rebranding a popular product without warning is amateurish. This alone clearly is the biggest issue: No one knew this was happening. People who base their workflow on patterns and systems do not enjoy having all of that crumpled up in front of them and trashed is…well…it sucks. Using a system for years and having it changed without your knowledge feels like someone changing your workflow without your consent, and it’s no way to treat loyal customers.
• Claiming 37signals, Grooveshark, Spotify and others just “love” Desk.com is a flat-out lie. Those customers loved Assistly, not Desk.com. Using testimonials of a product you used to have for a new product no one has used yet is dishonest and downright insulting.
• Not telling any partners, power users or friends of this coming change is disrespectful to customers. Yeah yeah, I’m whining because I didn’t know it first. I get that, and if I were on the Assistly team, I’d brush off all the negative reaction with that conclusion. But no, really, I was a HUGE advocate of Assistly, personally turning over and converting more than 20 of my own customers to the product. What a greater advocate I could have been – how much more excited! – had you just freaking told us all in advance.
• Claiming Desk.com has had 99.96% uptime over the last year is a lie. How could it? Now, Assistly had that uptime, that’s clear, but Desk.com launched January 31, 2012. This is patently an untruth.

I can’t, in good conscience, recommend Assistly or Desk.com to anyone – mostly because Assistly doesn’t exist anymore and Desk.com is all of 12 hours old. We’ve asked Assistly to remove all references to CoSupport on their site and are no longer an Assistly partner. To continue as one would be a bad investment for our company.

It is a huge BUMMER to me and to the rest of the CoSupport team because we all loved Assistly. So much of this could have been prevented with an email that said, “WHEN YOU WAKE UP TOMORROW THINGS WILL LOOK DIFFERENT.” I’m shouting because all day, my customers have been shouting this at me.

But the good news is, there are other helpdesk programs out there we can learn to like and have trust in, and start transitioning our customers to. And as it stands none of them are in the business of rebranding or renaming themselves without notice.

We hope?

It’s been quite a roller coaster ride this year, and the lack of posts to our dear olde blog have shown that. Luckily, thanks to our fancy new WordPress setup, we’re on the path to better blogging in 2012. We’re so excited to have made it thus far, and have such great things planned this year we’re bursting with anticipation.

With auld lang syne upon us, we did want to take a moment or two to thank some inspirational people who have been a part of keeping CoSupport humming along this year. You’ve probably heard it said that the majority of new businesses fail within their first year, and I think that’s only because they didn’t have these dear people cheering them on from the sidelines:

Our Friends:
Jenni Prokopy of Chronicbabe.com
Joe Germuska, an inspiringly calm thinking & supportive guy
Alexandra Nelson, Chief Talker-Down-Off-Ledger
Nikki Valentine of SeeTheChangeBeTheChange
Tim Schraeder, Steven Sturm and Jeanne Stevens
Willo O’Brien, our wonderful designer robot and VP of the awesome Stitch Labs
Michael Vernon, my therapist, who is responsible for 98% of my sanity this year

Our first customers, Digication, YouVersion & Wildbit.

Those who have helped us navigate the scary world of business:
Alex Bard & Matt Trifiro at Assistly
Steve Bristol & Allan Branch from LessAccounting
& Jason Fried
 

I also believe that it is absolutely crucial that – as an employer – I need to trust these guys’ opinion and back their decisions with conviction, because they are much more talented, skilled & experienced in those areas. If we didn’t hire guys that were better than the co-founders in some way, we’d stagnate pretty quickly, since the company could only grow at the speed at which we could grow as individuals. Hiring a team that is better than you though, drives the momentum of that growth / innovation forward exponentially.

Adii from WooThemes on hiring up.

We love WooThemes, and not just because they love us!

Scratch that, yes we are. We want to make a lot, a lot of money.

But not just for ourselves. CoSupport was founded in a middle-of-the-night brainstormy life-passion-fulfillment lightning spark when we realized we can take something we love and we’re really really good at and pour it into financing our other passion. Creating a world of excellence in customer support is our passion; creating a world of exuberance in community support is our heart.

At our launch party last weekend, we announced to our friends, family and some awesome customers who joined us what our vision for this company is: CoSupport exists to funnel money, experience and time into community charitable events and purposes. Think TOMS shoes, think charity:water, think yCombinator for the non-profit set. Then think: CoSupport.

We’re committed to giving back 10% of our income each quarter to a charitable cause. This summer, we’re partnering with our friends at the Kyle Korver Foundation to build a basketball court for the kids at Brown Elementary. (You may remember Brown from the toy drive we organized with 37signals last Christmas!) At our launch party, we raised $700 toward our $1,000 goal from friends, and we’d like you to help us raise the rest.

If you’re interested in being a part of CoSupport Supports, you can donate here. We’ll be posting more updates on the progress as we accept your awesome donations!

This habit started a long time ago when I used to train support folks at my previous employer. It was really a default answer when I was overloaded with questions from eager new hires; “Figure it out on your own” was the basic undertone. Eventually it became a mantra to mean, “You know the best answer, so go with your gut.”

I remember once having an employee respond almost every time I said this with, “I’m still getting used to that”. I struck me how rare it is for employers to empower their workers to think for themselves and make decisions. That is really, really sad.

In running this business, I like to get out of the way. The first thing I do is hire people I trust, believe in, and am impressed by – people I know can do the job and do it well. Once I’ve done that my work is pretty much over. It’s up to them to prove themselves and do the great work I expect. If I hover or instruct or supervise, they won’t be doing that great work for their own pride and enjoyment, they’d be doing it for mine. And if I spend a lot of time keeping a record of their wrongs and weaknesses, those are going to be manufactured by my own judgment.

Employees need room to blossom, to prove themselves, to learn their own strengths and improve on processes set long ago. They also need room to display their weaknesses naturally.

You ever try to type with someone watching over your shoulder? I bet you type a thousand words a minute flawlessly and your fingers can glide across the keyboard like fire. But put someone next to you who is going to watch you type a sentence or a webaddress and suddenly “www” turns into “WwwW” backspace backspace backspace.

It’s the same with people who work for you. You hired them, so let them go do their good work. If they ask you for advice on a refund for an irritated customer, tell them, “Use your judgment.” If they ask what’s the best practice for delivering a design package, tell them, “Use your judgement.”

If they ask you if they can take two weeks off for vacation right before the close of a huge client project, tell them, “Use your judgment.” And if they choose to go on that vacation, you’ve learned a great deal about that very judgment they have.