If you’ve been keeping up with us over the years, you know we don’t take ourselves too seriously. For example, we have a running contest I’ll call "who can spit this (insert fruit pit/seed) the farthest". Yep, we do a lot of silly things around here. But, there are many things that we take very seriously, and one of those things is our customer support. If you’ve ever worked with our support team, you know how insanely awesome they are. If you haven’t experienced our customer support team, get ready to have your face melted off by their awesomeness. Joe, TJ, Freddie, Brian Miller, Brian Rogers, Tammy, Tim Edwards and Nathan all handle support, and together they form the mythical "Team Delight". In my humble opinion, these are some of the best support people in the world. And you know what? Our customers agree. See, we have this thing called the "Delight-O-Meter." Whenever a customer support ticket is closed out, our customers get automatically asked to let us know if they had a delightful support experience, or if they didn’t. The Delight-O-Meter keeps track of our customers’ reactions to the 100 most recently closed support tickets. Recently, there were two months in a row where the Delight-O-Meter held steady at 100%. That means that for 60 days, we delighted every…single…customer! This is a HUGE deal to us! These are the kinds of things we’re hearing from our customers — the kinds of things that make the work that we do a delight: "I was very impressed with the support I received. In fact, I was blown away as he offered to speak with me BY PHONE!" "Anyone I work with always goes above and beyond. Thank you!" "Efficient, no blabla, and quick. That’s how I like it. Thanks guys!" If you haven’t already, check out our Delight-O-Meter. We’re really proud of the work that Team Delight does — it’s amazing to see how hard they work to keep our customers happy. Doesn’t a page filled with tiny Jena smiley faces illustrate that just perfectly?!

When I was growing up, I had a friend who had a HUGE family. She was 1 of 12 brothers and sisters and I was super jealous of her. You see, I was stuck smack dab in the middle of two brothers, and having more siblings just wasn’t ever in the cards for me. Then I came to Rustici Software, where it’s essentially the workplace version of 19 Kids and Counting (I don’t actually watch this show, but it chronicles an ever-growing family). Today, I’m excited to announce that we have TWO new employees joining us! Not that this is surprising, given our previous pattern of behavior. Unfortunately, I can’t find a way to make their names rhyme. Anywho, Stephanie Fletcher and Zach Lowry are the newest additions to our family here at Rustici Software. Stephanie is bringing her business development talents to the Tin Can API team. She has also single handedly increased the percentage of females at Rustici Software to 28%! We’re really excited to have her and see what awesome things she can bring to the Tin Can API team. Zach has also joined our team, but he’ll be focused on developing cool software. Zach drives into work everyday from Manchester, TN (over an HOUR away, now that’s dedication!) and we’re looking forward to seeing him bring that dedication to our software and our culture. Think you’re ready to join our family? Let us know! We’re always on the lookout for great talent

We don’t get a lot of visitors around the office. Our family members come by, and occasionally a customer will fly in to meet us in person, but that’s about it. This is mostly due to the nature of our business. Most of our customers are looking to fix a very specific problem, and they find us on the Internet. A conversation is started, and we help where we can. Because of the "virtual" way that we do business, most people don’t ever see our office. It’s kind of a shame, because we like our office. We spent a lot of time figuring out what it should look like, and what design would suit us and our culture the best. A few weeks ago, I was having dinner with my friend Kerry Woo, and he was telling me about how he’d been taking photos of local businesses for Google, and turning them into virtual tours that get posted to Google Maps/Places. It’s like Google Street View, but for the inside of businesses. Perfect! We scheduled a time for Kerry to come over and create a virtual tour of our office. Within a few days, we were all done, and our virtual tour was online. You can learn a lot about a company by seeing their workspace, and now our customers (and potential employees) can see where we spend our days.  

I believe that we create such great products because we have an amazing company, not the other way around. We talk a lot about SCORM, the Tin Can API, and the products that we make. We know these things well, and we enjoy talking to the world about them. What we don’t talk about a lot (and this is changing) is who Rustici Software is and what it’s like to work here. We make excellent products that do a great job at solving difficult problems, but behind our products are our people and our culture. We have some of the smartest people on Earth here, and we are one of the best places to work, period. We built this new website to let the world know about what it’s like to work here. This site isn’t about our products, it’s about our company. It’s about how things are done at Rustici Software, and it’s designed to let you know what work should be like. This new site started as some of Jena’s sketches, and it ended as a brand new site. My favorite page of the new site is what I call the "Testimonials" page, where we all have a place to say why we like working here. See photos of the things we do, learn who we are, see why you want to work with us (don’t forget to check out Jenafits), and check out our company blog. I hope that you can glimpse of what life should be like on our new company homepage, RusticiSoftware.com.

You might have heard that we like to take care of our employees by offering them things that most employers wouldn’t ever consider providing, and most employees wouldn’t dream of receiving. Well, we did it again. This young man, Beau, washed and detailed all of our cars this week, courtesy of Rustici Software and Jenafits. Why this week? This is a big week for us here at Rustici Software — it’s Quell Week. Quell week happens once per quarter for us. It’s a time where the entire company gets together and decides how the last quarter went, and what will happen in the following quarter. There’s a lot of food (hence the clean plate part of the blog title), and usually, a lot of change (hence, the clean slate part of the title.) Teams might be rearranged, developers might be assigned to new projects, or new teams could coalesce to meet emerging needs. The change that Quell brings is one of the things that keeps our company fresh, on its toes, and progressing. This is definitely not a place where anyone gets stuck doing the same thing, day after day. "I fear change"…you’ve heard it before. We don’t fear it, because it’s how we keep the company on course with our ever-changing industry, and we do this better and faster than most companies (I speak from experience). Another reason not to fear change? Having a spotless and squeaky clean car is nice, for once.

Continuing with the fun of Quell Week, we spent yesterday afternoon at Sky High Sports. We bounced around on a massive trampoline, played dodge ball, and got to dive into large pits full of foam (it was just as entertaining to watch people try to get out of the foam pit as it was to watch them dive into it.) You can see photos here. What was really interesting to me was an interaction that I had with our dodge ball referee. He does this stuff for a living, so believe it or not, he’s seen his fair share of "massive trampoline" dodge ball matches. At one point during our match, he turned to me and said "I’ve never seen anything like this before." Was it the intensity of the competition? The amount of fun we were having (at a work function)? The way that we started making up our own rules to increase the difficulty (and in turn, increase the fun) of the game? I don’t know. But I do know that we get that reaction a lot …usually when someone visits our office for the first time, or when we’re out in public at a company event. "I’ve never seen anything like this" is a really good way to sum up what it’s like to see this company in action.

"Bravo. You are in the select company of America’s Fastest-Growing Companies". That’s what was written on the front of the big folder that Mike handed to me last week, the folder that Inc Magazine sent to us, letting us know that we made the INC 5,000 list this year. It’s pretty exciting — even The Tennessean thinks so. We’ve won a lot of awards, many of them we’ve won multiple years in a row, but this is our first time making the INC 5,000 list. We don’t need awards to know that we’re doing great work, but it sure feels nice to get them.

When Jeff and I sat down to interview our newest employee, Matt Lefavor, I didn’t know what to expect. You see, Matt has officially taken my title of youngest Rustici Software employee. I held that position proudly for exactly 922 days. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t help but feel a tad replaced. But once Matt started telling us about himself, my feelings were drowned out by the chorus of this Foreigner classic. I really have been waiting for a guy like Matt to come to work here at Rustici Software for so many reasons. He rocks a bowtie almost everyday, hence his nickname- Bowtie. He came to us from NASA. He writes music. He lets me call him Bowtie. And if that wasn’t enough, he’s a rapper. That’s right, people. He raps. I could barely contain my excitement. Want to sample the tracks that Matt’s laying down? Check this out. Matt’s joining our SCORM Engine team, working on everything from integrations to creating new releases, with a side of support here and there. Want to learn a bit more about him, check out his bio. I wish I could write a really awesome rap to welcome Matt to the Rustici family, but I’m lyrically and vocally challenged. Instead, I’ll just say "Welcome, Bowtie, we’re happy to have you here!"

We’re a family here at Rustici Software. We look out for each other, and we tease each other, just like brothers and sisters do. We even call Mike "Dad" and Tim "Mom" — but it wasn’t until our latest hire that we really were a "family affair." Ryan Donnelly joined us about a week ago. Does the name Donnelly ring a bell? Ryan is Joe’s younger brother! How cool is that!? …and we couldn’t be happier to have him. Ryan will be teaming up with Joe on the support side of our business. He’ll be working directly with customers to help them troubleshoot issues and help them find which of our products work best for them. If you’re curious about what else Ryan is in to, check out his bio. We’re excited to have Ryan here at Rustici Software, and we can’t wait for him to start giving up brotherly secrets about Joe. Welcome to our family, Ryan!

When I was younger, I would spend parts of my summer at my grandmama’s house in South Carolina. Every time she saw my brothers and me, she’d threaten to strap bricks to our heads to keep us from growing so quickly. I’ve reminisced on those moments several times over the past couple of weeks. You see, we’re growing like wildfire over here. It seems like every time I blink, we’ve added another person. We’re quickly running out of office space, but it’s really an awesome time for us. We’ve recently added two new family members to our roster and we couldn’t be happier! Tim Chudy also joined our Watershed sales team. Tim, also known as Chudy, is a childhood friend of Andy’s and they’ll be working closely to preach the gospel known as the Tin Can API. Chudy recently broke the record held by Jim by mocking me in exactly one day. He’s just a rule breaker like that. And last, but certainly not least, we’ve added Katie Wright. Katie is a lovely developer that’s planning on helping the guys on Dev Row make Watershed LRS even more awesome. I’ve loved Katie since our first conversation a few months back and couldn’t be happier to have another girl in the office. She’s already participated in Fancy Friday! So there you have it. At this point, I don’t even think bricks could slow down the growth spurt we’re experiencing. We might just use them to build a new office space. And somehow, I’m totally okay with that The post We’re going to need a bigger office… appeared first on Rustici Software.