From time to time I get a chance to actually meet in person, some of our clients. When that happens I am very eager to hear what they have to say about Sproutit, Mailroom and how they tackle the inevitable job of support. So, I sat down for a bit of fish ‘n chips with Ryan MacCarthy, co-founder of Uloop, and picked his brain.

What is Uloop?

Uloop is an online classifieds platform for colleges.

Classifieds? But, what makes you different than every city’s newspaper online classifieds?

We have created a college specific classified site that thousands of students are using to sell textbooks, find roommates, events, housing, full-time and part-time jobs, internships and even rides home. Take textbooks, for example. Not too many people using the local Herald, or Times will be needing the same biology text book.

So, what are the audiences and customers that you deal with

99% of our support comes from students. It is a mixture of feedback, suggestions, comments, and problems. We also work with employers to provide college specific job postings and housing management to provide housing listings for students.

Do the responses that you provide take on a certain tone and feel?

Absolutely. We make it a point to respond to every single email that we get. We try to be very straight up with students and respond with a casual, and youthful tone. Many of the ideas we build in, come straight from the student feedback. But, if we don’t think an idea is beneficial to more than one person, we’ll let them know what we think.

What do you think is the best feature of Mailroom? Why?

By far it is the multiple user support. This way, we don’t have to have a specific support person, but we can share the load. And, this also closes the gap between the students making requests and the team that creates new features. Less is lost in the middle and keeps our whole team more connected with our users.

Got a favorite company for support?

I like Apple. It fits they way I live.