Satisfaction‚Ñ¢ is a new way for customers and organizations to work together to get answers, solve problems, and create new and better products & services.

For both customers and companies, customer service has never been easier (or more fun).

Take a look at this thread (via Brian) and try to think of why I may be excited about it. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

(Hint: It has nothing to do with Twitter.)

1. It’s open.
   No longer do customer service requests have to go to vague email addresses (do you know who actually reads support@ubercorp.com?). Now, your request can be out in the open. People know it has been asked. They can echo their thoughts if they have the same issue. They can offer help if the original poster was simply missing something. But it is out there. You’re not alone. Lots of people need customer support.
2. It’s on a third party playing field.
   If you posted a question on Ubercorp’s site, they maintain it. They monitor it. They can make your question go away. They can ban your account if they don’t like the question. Here, if you ask a tough question, you won’t just go away. You have a community behind you.
3. It works both ways.
   The user “goldtoe” is from Twitter. Satisfaction allows him to officially be listed as a Twitter representative. So, if this was done on a blog, the ranter could simply remove comments from the company defending itself. In this case—and this is a testament to goldtoe—there is not ranting here. This is a great dialogue. Which brings me to…
4. Conversation is stressed—not rants.
   A user is suggesting a feature. The company says they’ve been thinking about that feature, but aren’t sure which is the best way to implement it. So, get this. He asks the community. Really, who knows what users want more than… users?

Obviously, that’s not it. But I’m loving checking the site out so far. I’ve used it to peruse some iPhone conversations. Haven’t contributed yet, but I’m always slow to do that.

I hope to one day have a Satisfaction page that I need to monitor…

Update: MUCH better assessment of Satisfaction by Jeremiah.

I was hanging around mark’s blog today and read a really nice piece he had on corporate transparency. One of the many great points that mark made was that as community members, we should not be hostile or critical of companies that actually take the time to listen to us, admit fault, improve their product or service, and be open about the whole process.

The online community, media included, should be mindful that it’s responses will serve to guide the future course of corporate communications. Tolerance and moderation support dialog and transparency. If the community responds derisively, no matter the tact taken, then the conventional wisdom of saying little to nothing apears more valid than ever as the appropriate strategy. Transparency is ironically, checked by the very people demanding it.

You see, I was already in a great situation. Aptima was a great gig. I was a Team Lead. I worked on some cool projects. I kicked off our blog. In this job hunt, I was looking for a gig that was special. Specifically, I looked for a job that filled quite a few criteria:

• A small company
  Aptima is a small business. But they are over 100 people now. That’s just not small enough for me. I’m looking for small. Like, less than 10 or 15 people. Why? I like to have my hand in everything. I love the responsibility. I love having your voice not only heard, but actually be a driving force in a company. At Aptima, I was certainly heard, but with a company that size there is inevitably red tape.
• A local company
  For the past seven years, I’ve commuted ridiculous lengths to work at exciting tech jobs. Moving is not an option. I live in an idea situation—small children and very close to family support. So, at Aptima, I commuted 70 miles each way, all by car on the brutal MA Rt. 128. Mazer was also about 2:15 each way, time wise. That one was a conglomeration of drive to commuter rail, commuter rail to Boston, walk to Red Line, Red Line to Orange Line, walk through death-wish-of-a-rotary to get to building…
• A product company
  I’ve done the agency thing. Time to work on something where I don’t have to worry about securing work, filling out timesheets, or coordinating labor plans. I want to bust my ass on a product of our OWN. Something that won’t leave my hands and die.
• A flexible schedule
  I have absolutely no problem putting in tons of hours doing the work I love. I just want the ability to pick and choose what these hours are. I want to be home to play with Ella before bed. I have no problem pulling out the laptop after that, though. Chances are, I’ve got it open anyway.
• A forward-thinking company
  It was important to me to work for a company that embraces open source technologies, open standards, and a open communication through corporate blogging and other means.

Not too much to ask, huh?

So, what is this calculated informality thing? A few things.

1. Appearance

Part “forward-thinking”, part “flexible”, I looked for companies that didn’t care about—shall we say—appearance. Let’s just say, I’m not a groomer. I’m a t-shirt and jeans kind of guy… and preferably a shave-every-few-days and wait-way-too-long-to-get-a-haircut kind of guy. I made a point of making sure some of this was “on display” when I interviewed. Why would I do that? Wouldn’t that hurt my chances of getting a job?

I made the conscious decision that if a place was going to hold wearing sneakers to an interview or meeting with them sporting some stubble against me, it probably was not going to be a place I would be comfortable working.

2. Software & Skills

I also made a conscious effort to leave the proverbial software and skills list off my resume. This means that I didn’t include a list that says I know XHTML, CSS, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc., etc. Instead, I wrote about how I do “interface design” and develop with “web standards”. Those should convey that I know how to get the task done and that the tool is irrelevant.

A colleague asked me, “but that’s not a good idea because a lot of companies’ HR departments won’t accept a resume if it doesn’t have Photoshop.” Again, my response was—I don’t want to work there, then.

3. Don’t Be Generic

Every company that I took the time to pursue got their own cover letter… not of this “swap out the name” crap. I would take a good amount of time looking them up, looking them up on Technorati, seeing if they blog (if so, reading that), and seeing what types of projects they’ve done. Then I could find tidbits of why I honestly, truly wanted to work for them.

If I didn’t find those tidbits, I didn’t bother sending them anything.

Every single word of the “cover letter” (just an email, for me) was customized to that company. Every once in a while I found a few paragraphs I wrote that I could reuse (my background, for example). But other than that, I was talking directly to them and not the field as a whole—and they seemed to appreciate that.

4. Let Your Passions Be Known

I made a point to let potential employers know exactly what is important to me. By the end, I was using this paragraph fairly often:

I am completely obsessed with XHTML/CSS, semantic markup, Microformats, “designing for data”, “bulletproof web design”, “letting go of pixel precision”, cross-browser/platform/device development, simplicity, cleanliness, transparency (in information sharing, not so much the reflective Web 2.0-logo-type), social media, usability, user experience, and my two-year old daughter.

I thought this paragraph summed up pretty well what I’m all about and what I’d really need to be doing day to day in order to be happy. Plus, I got to throw the “two-year old daughter” in there to let them know that work/life balance is very important, too. Once in an interview, I could elaborate. But I at least got it on the radar.

5. Be Honest

Many people embellish on resumes and in interviews. I can’t stand that. I don’t want to lie to a potential employer and then end up screwing up. I don’t like to disappoint people. So, I set the expectations in advance, say what I do… say what I don’t, and then kick ass at those things.

Here’s an example from the very first CSS-based position I went for. I hadn’t been developing in CSS very long, but I was offered the job (I didn’t take it, though). This job was 100% CSS, and the first thing I did was say I’m not a CSS expert.

I’m not going to lie and say that I’ve been developing in web standards for years. The standards movement is a relatively new passion for me, but that’s what it is—a passion. I have been developing validated sites with CSS formatting for years, but using CSS for layout, writing semantic markup, implementing and contributing to Microformats, and studying community marketing are more recent extensions of that—and I can’t get enough of them.

Hell, I even said “I’m not going to lie.” I think they appreciate that.

6. Cutting Out the First Step

There’s no sense in wasting anybody’s time. So, I put as much about myself as I could on my blog. As I’ve written about before, The Blog is the New Resume. And I really ate my own dog food on this one.

I hate portfolios that are just screen shots. So, on my Featured Work samples, I wrote a page-long description to explain what the heck my role was. That way, potential employers know what I did. How often do you have people say that they had this huge customer… and you wonder what exactly they did? For me, quite a bit.

I directed potential employers to blog posts they may be interested in (or categories). I told them about the projects they may want to check out. If they didn’t see a match, cool. I would rather have that out of the way now than later.

Did it Work?

Absolutely. Let’s go back to the five criteria I set out and see how BatchBlue matched up.

• A small company
  Check. There’s only five more BatchBlue folks. A small good thing.
• A local company
  BatchBlue is located in Rhode Island, with the founders ranging from eight to ten miles from me. To top it off, there is no central office yet, so I’ll be working from home.
• A product company
  BatchBlue is working on developing BatchBook, their first product. More will follow.
• A flexible schedule
  There’s something in the water at BatchBlue. Everyone has little ones. They work around their family schedules. In my opinion, that’s the way it should be. Like I said—I have no problem working long hours. I just want to pick the hours.
• A forward-thinking company
  BatchBlue is a Rails shop that develops using web standards. The Blue By You User Group program really attracted me. They work hand-in-hand with users WHILE developing the software, not after development. Plus, they’re blogging and want me to be a big part of that as well.

Five out of five ain’t bad.