MinuteFix has been selected to present to the influential Harvard Business Angels in San Francisco in December. The group, which meets quarterly, brings successful entrepreneurs and professional investors together to listen to 3 early-stage companies pitch their idea. This time, more than 40 Silicon Valley startups have applied, and MinuteFix has been selected as one of the three presenting companies. A combination of a sizeable potential market and a compelling product offering has opened the door for us to Harvard.

According to the Wikipedia community Customer service (also known as Client Service) is the provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase. Seems simple enough. The basis of the phrase is serve. The act of serving is laced in the very fibers of our human history. From great servants come great leaders says the old adage. But what has happened to our society so that the term serve has taken on a negative connotation? Since when did serving someone become something bad? Sure, we can point to times in our world history where servanthood was forced on a people and great sacrifice was made to battle such injustice. But when the servant is paid well and is hired specifically for that job then the proverbial playing field should be leveled to the point where serving is as important as what is being served. That brings me to MinuteFix.

Since Diego, MinuteFix CEO, has been in Savannah we have had many conversations about the importance of customer service. In fact, I even said last night that I would rather teach computer tech skills to a top-notch customer service technician than try and teach basic etiquette to the next Bill Gates. You simply cannot put a price on good customer service. Case in point:

My good buddy Eric goes to install a new operating system on his computer two days ago. The install crashes midway. He decides to try again. This time it installs but only after wiping his hard drive completely clean. He calls the tech support and, without ever speaking with a human being, is put on hold. He is informed he is in Tier 1 of the holding network and that his wait could be up to thirty minutes. Well, an hour later he had advanced to Tier 2 and 3 but been bumped back down to Tier 1. At this point he has still NOT hear a human voice on the other end. Almost two hours into his cell phone usage time he was connected only to have the customer service person tell him there wasn’t much he could do over the phone. The agent suggested he visit the local retail store and have them take a look. Because of the product type the local retail outlet was a two hour drive. Eric did it though all the while maintaining a positive outlook. Long story short…………multiple phone calls, a day trip plus gas and several reinstalls later the computer is pretty much working. Here is the problem. All Eric can think about is the fact that he spent all that time on the phone, all those cell phone minutes and a whole day of work to get this computer serviced. He has long forgotten about the actual issue; the install failure.

Quality customer service has the ability to transform a customers experience with or without ever truly fixing the issue. We are all aware that as human beings we can’t do everything and that sometimes computers just get the best of us. However, there is never an excuse to not act with civility and courtesy to see that each experience for each customer is as fresh and as pleasant as can be.

If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends.
If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.

JEFF BEZOS

I’ve always admired leaders who come forward with honesty in times of adversity. History repeats itself, and it takes smart men and women to realize that the truth will always surface. It would seem that these simple concepts are obvious, unfortunately more often than not, they obviously aren’t. Companies have to grow aware of the power of online communications these days, and the strength of the online community. Modern companies must act quickly when things go wrong.

Crisis management has always fascinated me. I think that great leaders show their true colors in times of trouble, not in times of bliss. It takes true character to say I’m sorry; and have always admired people who are capable of a seemingly simple gesture.

Today, at MinuteFix, we partnered with the Cadillac of Managed Hosting providers. We take our technology decisions very seriously, and often times, base our selections on less ordinary characteristics. We’re like that. We like to make logical decisions without feeling the pressure of what classic startups should do. That is why our business model is so unique. We like to focus on what we do best, and hand off crucial, but non-central pieces of our technology to those who are the best at what they do. We’re proud to say that our soon-to-launch production environment is now in the hands of the great people at RackSpace.

You might have heard that RackSpace suffered a massive outage on Sunday of this week causing a large number of their customer’s servers to go offline. Why then have we chosen RackSpace as our partner, you may ask? Well, there are four simple reasons.

• First, we’ve become RackSpace customers after the outage, not before. RackSpace has been through the one-in-a-million crisis that managed hosting companies never even plan for, so now that they have been through the worst, we know we’re at an advantage.
• Secondly, we too are a customer service company. We’ve always admired the Fanatical Support promised by RackSpace (I’ve worked with them previously), and it has always been an inspiration to put communication and customer service before technology.
• Third, thanks to Xavier Resendez at RackSpace we have a solid server environment, at a killer price. Always an incentive for early-stage ventures like ours.
• And lastly, I was very impressed by how Lanham Napier, CEO of RackSpace handled their downtime crisis. It displays great character and determination; that is the type of company we want to be associated with.

I just wanted to take a moment to thank those who have believed in our team, our vision, the market potential and our product and are making this all happen. As Christmas makes its way into shopping centers, tvs and churches around the globe, it makes sense to take a moment to acknowledge that angels do indeed exist. Thanks to those who have come from above to keep the lights on and our servers running. I’d like you to know that we are very frugal with what we have, just swing by our loaner offices anytime and you will just see how.

A quick thanks is also in order to our pre-angel supporters: Visa, MasterCard and AmericanExpress.

The single most difficult decision we make here at MinuteFix is who to involve. Technology, although the basis of our company’s service, is one of the easiest parts of it all. Like funding, technology can be achieved by anyone with the right contacts and expertise. Attitudes, however, can make or break a venture. Attitude determines the personality of a company, how it interacts within its space (customers, vendors, partners), its inner workings and the direction and implementation of its ideas. I’ve never been concerned by technology. I’m not in the business of finding the cure for cancer, so any technology challenge that I have been involved in has always found a solution. However, it takes the right state of mind to build the right technology. It takes the right attitude, and a positive outlook on solving problems.

I’ve always been a believer in positive thinking. As classic self-help literature like The Secret, or Social Intelligence will promise, and while life has given some of us the good fortune of constantly seeing things on the brighter side of the fence, I know that it’s simply by thinking that it is possible that things just fall into place. I often believe that, at large, people can be put into two categories. Just like there are those who do not turn the door handle when closing a door where others are sleeping, there are those who always respond with a positive when looking for a technology solution. This has always been one of the top traits I always look for in developers. And in the past, it has proved be a strong litmus test for a successful technology workforce. It’s more about the attitude than the resume. If anything, it makes development damn fun.

We’re hiring at MinuteFix. Very specifically, we’re looking for our third full-time recruit; the person who will shape our technology moving forward, while managing our existing, killer team of part-time developers.

We’re looking for those whose first instinct isn’t to rewrite other developer’s code. We’re looking for those who believe in tight deadlines and near-to-impossible resources. We’re looking for a positive outlook on all our technology discussions. We’re looking for yeses, not noes. We’re looking for someone who shares our passion to build a product that we know will touch people’s lives. And yes, top-notch Java, Spring and Hibernate skills help too.