My name is Andrew Kandels and I’m the lead developer of CATS. Now I’m going to tell you something that you may not know: in addition to writing software code, I’m also a sales person, a customer service representative and your billing contact — and I’m not alone. I’d like to introduce you to Sae our graphics designer, Asim, the company owner and Andy, another developer. We and a small handful of others are your customer support team, the people keeping the service up and running smoothly 24/7, and the guys and gals you talk to in Minneapolis when you call our support or sales line posted at www.catsone.com.
We don’t come from telemarketing jobs, we’ve never worked for companies fielding calls for cable television customers and we don’t work in a call center. The few of us handle every email, postal letter and telephone call that rings in for CATS — for literally thousands of customers in almost every major country from corporate HR to lone recruiters.
We have a theory. We believe that you don’t need a call center, or a smoke-filled room covered elbow-to-elbow with aggressive sales people to sell a great service; you just need a great service that sells itself and the willingness to man the front lines
When you call us, you’re not going to be listening to numerous automated messages, punching in keys describing your problem — you’re going to talk to someone that can help. You’re going to talk to someone who works within earshot of everyone else on the team, someone who understands what you’re talking about and doesn’t need to transfer you to a manager or another department. And because we field the calls, we know exactly which direction to go in developing the software. We know what you want, what you don’t like, and what to do next.
What’s the secret? How can four people man that kind of ship? How do we get anything done? The answer is simplicity. We build simple software that doesn’t require training or a manual. If it’s easy to use, there’s no reason to call us!
When you buy a new car, you might ask where the parking brake is, but do you ask the sales person to train you on how to drive it? Do you hire a full time mechanic to work in your garage to keep it fueled? Software these days is bloated and confusing, designed to meet every niche and industry’s needs while throwing simplicity out the window.
Our answer (and the reason that I attribute to our success) is because we cut out the bloat and confusion. We don’t design features that require a user’s manual. When you need something unique, we give you flexibility to create it on the fly, to drag things around on the page, to add new fields, or to plug in powerful functionality using our API — keeping the niche features to the niche users and maintaining simplicity for the rest.
There’s a reason that we’re the lowest cost Applicant Tracking System out there. We don’t have a sales team and we don’t have call centers. Just a few incredibly dedicated mutli-tasking Minnesotans that love to chat and listen to your suggestions, manning the front lines and truly doing more with less.