Happy Birthday to Us … And Our Crystal Ball!
This month ModSquad is celebrating 15 years of being the best customer experience company on the planet.
(You don’t have to be humble on your birthday, right?)
That’s a decade … and a half. The time has scooted by.
Back in 2007, Facebook and Twitter hadn’t taken off yet. Instagram and TikTok didn’t exist. Virtual worlds were enjoying their initial popularity. Apple just gave us the iPhone (thanks, Steve).
Amy Pritchard was a new mom while also running a successful law partnership. In her free time, she moderated message boards for tv shows (for fun). And when that “work” was done she explored Second Life (which was really fun).
She saw user-generated content growing exponentially and knew it was going to all require moderation.
She knew the Metaverse was going to require a unique set of skills to moderate and manage.
And she knew she wanted to be home with her child, not stuck in an office. She knew lots of other parents who wanted the same thing. She realized there were lots of talented folks out there for whom the typical 9-5 lifestyle wasn’t an option.
So she started ModSquad.
She started a world-class content moderation and community management company. A company that was focused on pioneering customer experience on cutting-edge platforms like virtual worlds. A company based on a remote workforce.
Looking at where ModSquad is today, we have to ask ourselves: did Amy have a crystal ball?
(Hey, it’s our crystal anniversary — indulge us.)
UGC has accelerated and it isn’t slowing down. Everyone has come to realize what Amy knew from the start: content moderation isn’t optional — it’s the foundation of trust and safety. And even with today’s modern tools that use artificial intelligence and machine learning to make sifting through all that content more efficient, it still comes down to the same thing: you need a savvy, empathetic team making the final judgment about what is in bounds and what is out.
We’re excited to see the Metaverse back in the public eye. (We love social media, but it has been hogging the spotlight long enough.) For us, moderating and managing virtual worlds is our Super Bowl. It’s the most demanding and challenging CX environment. It’s why we started the company. It’s what we pioneered. It’s what we dream about. It’s what we love.
It isn’t just about the Metaverse – we’ve never focused on a single platform. Our passion has always been exploring the new spaces technology creates and finding the best way to create fun, flourishing, and safe communities within them. It’s how we approached kids’ virtual worlds and COPPA compliance. It’s how we look at current technologies such as blockchain and NFTs. And it is how we’ll approach the platforms of the future. (How about a peak at web5, @Jack?)
And we’ve never limited ourselves to a single set of services. We believe in delivering the best CX wherever people and organizations interact. It’s why we reinvented customer support.
But Amy’s most prescient insight and ModSquad’s biggest accomplishment?
Remote work.
Amy knew there were tons of people just like herself. People who loved being online, helping build communities, keeping things fun and safe. None of them wanted to do it in 8 hour shifts from soulless call centers while stuck in cubicles.
They wanted to be home. They wanted flexible schedules. They wanted a work/life balance.
So ModSquad gave it to them. We built the world’s best CX team from remote workers all over the globe.
And we didn’t stop there.
We developed Cubeless®: our patent-pending security platform. It secured everything from the agent, to the device, to the cloud, and back. Our security approach didn’t just offer an alternative to the operations center, it made the operations center obsolete. (Sure, we still have a few physical locations — we secure them with Cubeless.)
Today, Cubeless is more than just a security platform, it’s the secure platform on which to build any remote work company: CX or HR, marketing or finance – any type of work with a distributed team. We think Cubeless makes the brick and mortar office obsolete as well.
Whew. What a ride.
What will our online lives look like over the next 15 years? What new challenges await CX, and how will we solve them? What does the future of remote work look like?
Stick with us and find out.
(Now, where is that cake?)
P.S. If we get really ambitious we might have to put the Cubeless team on jetpacks and flying cars. Haven’t we waited long enough?