This post was derived from an email written by me on September 16th 2011 a few days after the initial version of Band of the Day was published into the appStore.

It has helped me understand the importance of quality in apps as they scale to millions of users, I hope it inspires others to think the same way too…

All,

I’ve been reflecting on the past few days as I fly back across this country (Airborne Toxic Event playing on my iPod) and I wanted to relay something I learnt over the past 2 days about this company. I know it’s been tough on a lot of you. I’ve definitely not made it easier on anyone.

We’ve released our biggest product to date into the market and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Most of the feedback from customers and the TechCrunch article and Scoble’s praises are extremely rare. The tone with which they speak about our company and the effect it has on them is real and not made up. Just so we’re clear about this - we were not introduced to them by Mitch or Dave or any other valley bigwig.

Our products have made an impact on them. There is no invisible hand effecting their decisions. In other words…

You did this.

When we spoke on Thursday afternoon about customer support being a critical portion of this business, I was not kidding. People have it backwards when it comes to mobile products because most people do not understand this business or the personal connection people have with mobile devices. We live and die by our customers pulse. Their sentiment is the only trend line TJ and I wish to track, everything else is noise.

It makes no business sense to support a 99c (chewing gum price) or a 9.99c purchase, but, we do it. This is in our DNA. There are no compromises. We will call the customers who have issues, do skype video calls (I’ve done many of these before - they’re fun), anything it takes to ensure that their frustrations, if any, are alleviated. When we talk to these customers - the disgruntled ones - we learn an immense amount. These are the customers that prepare us for bigger things.

I was so proud of TJ responding to the guy who thought the entire app sucked. It’s tough for us all to hear and read any criticism of this product or anything that 955 Dreams’ makes, I’m learning how to deal with these emotions and growing. But, step one is to be open to the conversation with an unknown angry person on the other end of your keyboard.

One thing I want to make clear: if there is a bug that is effecting the user and their experience of the app is being compromised in a significant way - this takes precedence over anything else in the queue. We do not always make the right decisions, and, you do have a voice thats louder than mine if you really speak from the customers point of view. No one can argue with this position.

Our interactions with our “special” customers over the past two days have really helped cement this 955 Dreams DNA - the fact that we go above and beyond and we’re the only company to do so in the mobile space is why the scobles, mg’s and om’s of the world care to cover every product we put out. It is the reason why Apple supports us the way they do. Being app of the week involves a level of sophistication that most people cannot comprehend let alone support. We’ve done this 5 times.

I don’t like to compare us to Zappos or Apple or any other company in terms of the relentless focus on the customer, because what we’re doing is unprecedented.

We’re providing customer support for chewing gum. It’s crazy.