Today was the first in what is sure to be be many long days in the office for Assistly’s newest member of the San Francisco office. Bernoulli joins the Assistly team after a 2-year sabbatical where he spent every day walking, sleeping and playing on the beach. After the rejuvenating time off,   Bernoulli is ready to get back to work improving morale and clearing mental blocks with refreshing walks.  Bernoulli is no stranger to being an office dog, Assistly is the fourth office he has called home.

Gary and Dan made the long trip from San Diego to San Francisco with Bernoulli on Monday night (arriving in San Francisco early Tuesday morning).   After sleeping in the car, Bernoulli spent much of the night pacing, anxious to get started.  His first day in the office started with a little sniffing and lots of petting from Alex, Jeremy, Katherine, Gary and Dan. The morning culminated with a display of some of his favorite tricks (Sit, Shake, High-Five, Downward Dog, and Balancing Biscuit on the nose) and then a walk over to South Park to check out the grass and sniff the tasty smells of Mexico Au Parc.

By mid-day Bernoulli had figured out the routine and choose a bean bag to be his work space.

If you are in need of a quick pick me up, stop by the office to witness Bernoulli’s tricks, scratch his belly or play fetch.

When I was first approached about joining Assistly, I did so with little hesitation.  The job market is tight and it is difficult to find opportunities where you know you can quickly fit in, make a difference and offer valued contributions.

Since we have all worked together before, we know what to expect from each other.    The adjustment period and learning curve were short, and the pieces have quickly fallen into place.   Aggressive mutlitasking is the norm and everyone does “what it takes” to get the job done, regardless of “role” or “title”.

I believe our collective experience building enterprise level customer service software will put us in a dominant position in this space.   Been there, done that, doing it again.  This time with Social CRM.

Although the software and technologies have evolved, the same core principle will always hold true – you have to take care of your customers.  Now, more than ever, it is easier for your customers to voice their opinions.  Make them smile and they will tell people.  Upset them and they are likely to tell even more people.

As the Director of Quality Assurance and Support, I will likely be the person who answers your support emails and Tweets.  But rest assured that behind the scenes, we are ALL working hard to answer your questions, address your concerns and deliver a feature rich, high quality application.

This team is talented, dedicated and motivated with a tireless work ethic.  I consider myself lucky to be a part of it.  My expectations are high for the future.

A lot has happened over the last few months.  We announced our financing from True Ventures and Howard Lindzon’s Social Leverage we moved our main office to San Francisco and have brought on key additions to the team (if you are interested in joining click here).

It has been a great journey to date and we are excited about the opportunities and challenges ahead of us.  We are working closely with our beta partners to iterate on the product and to ensure that it is simple to use but offers rich capabilities, is fast and responsive, and scales to meet our partners requirements. We believe in continuous improvement versus delayed perfection and will continue to roll out new updates almost daily.

We have received a lot of interest in Assistly and appreciate your excitement and interest.  We are opening up the beta to more partners and will continue to do so over the coming weeks until the product is ready for public release (currently targeting June).   Helping you make your customers smile is our passion…

If you are in SF and want to grab a coffee or say hi just send us a note.  We would love to meet you.

Sticking with the theme of making sure that we are building and delivering the best possible solutions, we are very excited to announce that Dan Stern is joining Assistly as our VP of Product Management.  Throughout his career Dan has managed and delivered technology solution for small business up to Fortune 1000 enterprises.  He provides a unique blend of technology and business process knowledge to ensure product fit and value creation.

We have worked with Dan in the past at eAssist, an enterprise provider of CRM solutions and know intimately his high level of commitment, passion and work ethic.  Dan is moving from SD to SF to help us build our SF presence (more on that in the next post).  If you are in SF, please welcome him to your great city.

Dan is also a ridiculous biker – and he excels at both mountain biking and road riding.  He’s ridden from coast to coast through the jungles of Costa Rica and he’s competed in 24 hour relay races, riding solo and beating a lot of relay teams in the process.  If that’s not a sign of his stamina, passion and commitment I don’t know what is – just think about being on a bike for 24hrs and the determination it takes mentally and physically not only to do it, but to excel at it.  If you’re an avid rider in SF and looking for biking partners, Dan is your man.

Welcome to the team Sterno!

Making sure that our product runs as expected and is as bug-free as possible is one of our top priorities.  Over the last 90 days we have been lucky to have Joe Giglio working for us in a part-time capacity to keep us honest.  He has been outstanding in helping us deliver a quality product and we are so happy to announce that he will be joining us full time.

I personally have worked with Joe for the past 15 years specifically in the customer service software space.  He gets its cold and is not only an amazing QA director but also a great partner and community advocate.  If you are part of our private beta you have seen responses from Joe to some of your requests.  Others who use our platform will have the opportunity to work with him shortly.  We are fortunate to have someone like Joe join our staff.   Welcome!