I recently sat down with Troy Malone and Daniel Marashlian of Pelotonics, a San Diego based startup taking on the likes of 37signals with their group collaboration software, to get the scoop on their product for StartupSD. They’re certainly smart guys with a pretty impressive product, but I was completely blown away by their innovative approach to real-time interactive customer service.

Malone and Marashlian, a part from being likable and incredibly hilarious (check out their Halloween costumes), are living and breathing the core of community building by making themselves entirely available to the users of their product. Their using Ustream.tv to broadcast live daily from their offices in Sorrento Valley. Got a question, problem, or just want to maximize your usage of their software? Just ping Troy during business hours on PeloTV and he’ll not only answer your question, but he’ll show you how to do it yourself using WebcamMax, a super awesome camera utility that allows you to switch to a view of your desktop (I found a neat alternative for the Mac called CamTwist), to visually walk you through the step by step process of your inquiry. It’s customer service meets community building using the best of social media, and I absolutely love it.

I was surprised to find such innovation so close to home, but it turns out that Malone and Marashlian haven’t always been so savvy. In fact, Malone’s old school marketing and PR approach led him to Marshal Kirkpatrick, a New Media Consultant and Lead Writer for ReadWriteWeb. Malone emailed a plethora of bloggers with a press release looking for web coverage only to find that his approach was fruitless and flawed. Kirkpatrick was the only blogger to respond, and Malone decided that he’d rather have Kirkpatrick’s help as consultant than a single blog post. Obviously Malone’s decision has paid off. He’s making innovative strides and thinking like a savvy web entrepreneur.

I give him huge kudos for trying something new and not being afraid of taking risks. Did I mention that in the process of switching to this “new” marketing approach they totally eliminated their marketing budget that was thousands of dollars per month? Small business owners, are you paying attention? Let’s just hope that Pelotonics can scale their customer service efforts with their growth. Good luck guys!

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