I was recently asked by a friend, “do you have a social media strategy?” I replied, “No, we actually have a relationship strategy.”

All definition discussion aside, we build relationships with customers. That simply requires going where our customers are.  And it’s why we started using things like Twitter – customers were there asking questions about our products, so we responded.

People don’t understand social media; they think it’s “new”.  The truth is, social media is just like any other channel of communications you maintain with your customers – it’s exactly like telephone, and email, it’s just that most businesses haven’t learned to see it that way yet.

To help change some minds, do you know where we do way more relationship building? It’s talking on the phone, then chatting through email, and finally exchanging cards at conferences. We even take our customers out for dinner to take the conversations offline. We monitor Twitter,  have a Linkedin and Facebook page, but all three produce comparatively less interaction with our customers. We  look at the the whole picture, not getting caught up in new technologies, buzz words or definitions.

Twitter’s most important use for us is as a barometer. Almost everyone at FreshBooks uses search on Twitter to see what customers are saying. So thank you to everyone that Tweets, it makes us smile and motivates us to continue to serve you. Twitter search does provide a great way to get a small sample of what people are saying about you on and offline, but it’s just one way to listen to your customers, don’t forget the time tested and old faithful ways to make your customers happy, like having dinner, or getting on the phone.

We always support our customers the best we can. We’re available via phone, email, in our forum, and on Twitter. We hire the right people, have enough people, and give them the freedom and tools necessary. It comes at a premium and it’s available for all customers, even the free ones.

Traditional business categorizes business groups into cost, revenue, or profit centers. What is customer service traditionally? A cost center. Why? It’s the easiest way to measure customer support is via cost – it’s “too” hard to track revenue. So it’s always being reduced to maximize profit for shareholders, investors or VCs.

What is customer service at FreshBooks? A revenue center. They’re selling the product, reducing churn and marketing the product – good customer service is hard to find so it’s a story worth telling. Customer support brings in revenue.

When the cornerstone of your company is rockstar customer support, there are always a few companies that you look to as an example for providing extraordinary experiences everyday, and Zappos is high on the list. So the FreshBooks support team took a field trip down to Las Vegas and experience first hand, how the Zappos team do what they do.

Our day started when Julie picked us up in the Zappos bus:

After a short drive down the highway, we arrived at the Zappos office and posed for a picture:

Note the common denominator in both pics: hotness.

After pictures and a lot high fives from the Zappos team, we started our tour and one-on-ones with their Training and Customer Advocacy teams. We could write an entire series of blog posts on everything we learned (not to mention a ton of fan fiction), but here are our summarized take aways:

• Zappos puts a huge focus on employee goals. Their Goals Coach, Augusta, is focused on helping their staff achieve both professional and personal goals, and they have awards and milestones for employees who reach them. It’s not full on counseling, but it’s more than a pat on the back – it’s genuine give-a-damn about employee success on and off the job. And it’s flat-out extraordinary.
• Culture and history are extremely important. Before the tour started, there’s a full history lesson from Mig Pascual on how Zappos was founded, and how the core values were developed. The 10 core values of Zappos are written on every staff member’s name tag, and while not everyone knows them all off by heart, everyone can name at least 7.
• Training is an established process with clear milestones. Next on the tour was meeting Roger from the training team and he showed us the ropes. Training at Zappos is a lot like a university degree – there are required courses, electives, classrooms, and if you fail a test (and there ARE tests) you have to repeat the course. Fail too many times and you’re in trouble. Training is all focused around the core values, so if someone is not ‘getting’ things then it’s a good indicator they may not be a great fit.
• Employees’ well being is a huge focus. During the tour from Marie and Mig, you see A LOT of the Zappos office and one thing is clear: from the goal counselling, to nap rooms, subsidized cafeterias and incredible medical benefits, Zappos takes care of its employees. We’ve even decided to implement a few ideas ourselves. The nap room and free ice cream are pretty high on our list.
• Every team is a cohesive unit. When the tour entered the HR department, they played “Eye of the Tiger” and shook Shake-Weights at us. The executive area is called “Monkey Row” and has a jungle motif. Each team feels like a family and it looks like they have a great time.

All in all Zappos was an amazing experience on two fronts. On the one hand, we learned that a lot of the support stuff we’re already doing, like having no limit for call times and encouraging our staff to go above and beyond to solve customer problems, is exactly what we should be doing. That’s a nice feeling.

On the other hand, there are definitely some new strategies we’re looking at trying out, and we got some great insight on how to scale our company culture as we grow. Zappos and FreshBooks both started as a few people in a small office, and it’s good to know that as we grow we can take our culture and experiences with us.

A little while back we took a week and cast aside our usual plans. Why? So the entire company could work on whatever the heck they thought would most help our Rockstar Support team be even more extraordinary.

And I know you’re all wondering with desperate concern WHAT HAPPENED? WHAT GOT BUILT? WHOSE LIVES WERE CHANGED FOREVER???

Well, let me tell you. Here’s a small selection of the awesome output from this week…

CALLER ID PSYCHIC

Okay, not actually psychic, but Daniel built this amazing web app that plugs into our phone system so you can check in on any currently active call, see who the customer is, get their whole history of communication with us, and all like that. It’s seriously awesome. Our customers get in the habit of talking to us, so its important for us that we can see what they’ve asked of us previously whenever they call in. With Call Psychic, we can pull all that up right there on the call.

LOLCATS SUPPORT BOARD

Casey (with a bunch of help from folks like Sellens and Sarmiento) put up a fantastic live status board that shows how many unanswered support emails we have, how many phone lines are in use, number of forum posts and everything. It keeps the Support team focused each day, and lets everyone know where they need to pitch in when the phone is ringing like a madly ringing phone. Most importantly, it randomly displays custom LOLcats with “motivational” messages to cheer the team on.

SCHEDGY

Support at FreshBooks is a rotating role. Scheduling FreshBookers into the many shifts each month is a huge pain — emails go back and forth as people forget their shifts, discover conflicts or want to change things up. So Ben Coe and Jeff Sarmiento built a drag-and-drop calendar app for scheduling support shifts at FreshBooks. You can just grab a FreshBooker, drag them to a day, and tada! Everyone gets alerted, shifts get filled, and FreshBooks phones get answered. Magic!

There were a number of other improvements, updates and exciting projects undertaken, but those are the ones having the biggest impact. Overall, FreshBooks will have saved thousands of hours this year in Support time just based on those three apps alone.

Asking our team to spend a week working on whatever they wanted to do was a bit of a gamble for FreshBooks. We weren’t sure what would happen, but we had faith in the team here and that they would jump at the chance to build solutions that really addressed key pain points for our Support team. And they did.

We’ll definitely be doing another Support Support Week down the road.

FreshBooks Rockstar Support Crew

I had a great revelation a few weeks ago doing support here at FreshBooks.

Every two weeks (roughly) we release an update to our app, and I was on support the day after a pretty heavy release. Our customers were calling in with questions about this new update to their business, and we were a bit swamped keeping up with the phone calls.

I looked at our status board, and six of six support phones were in use – then the phone rang again.

If this were almost any other company, the customer would have been put on hold, gone into some soul-destroying IVR system, or been transferred to voicemail.

But this isn’t any other company – this is FreshBooks, and my big revelation came from the way this scenario played out.

With the support team all tied up on other lines, someone from our development team picked up the call. A minute later, yet another call came in. This time, our CEO Mike McDerment picked it up.

Later that afternoon, our email support tickets were getting a bit overwhelming too. We sent out a quick SOS to the company and, within minutes, the ticket count had dropped from 55 to 12.

So what’s the difference? Aside from our core team of six Support Rockstars, everyone who works here spends their day doing support at least once every two or three weeks. If that day’s support team is unable to take a call, the phones in the entire company will ring until someone dives in to help.

No one is left behind; no ticket goes unanswered. Why? Because support at FreshBooks isn’t just a job: it’s a core part of our culture and key to the FreshBooks user experience.

As support at FreshBooks is so important, the people that we hire to be our Support Rockstars aren’t your average cubicle monkeys. We have to be fun, personable, empathetic, adept problem solvers, and – above all – willing to listen, help, and teach.

Providing Rockstar Support is only part of the job – we’re also responsible for training all the new FreshBooks hires and throwing them really wicked graduation parties when they’re done. You can see examples of our handiwork here, here and on our Tumblr feed.

You may have heard about the intensity of our hiring process. There’s a reason we screen our candidates pretty heavily for the Support Rockstar position: because it pays off.  We expect you to be able to prove that you’re top notch, with great customer service examples, and a rock-solid personality. The result is a chance to work with the most creative and amazing people, and probably the only opportunity you’ll get to sumo-wrestle on company time.

Think you have what it takes to rock this coveted gig? Let us know.

Thought I’d share a little moment of simple delight that gave me a very “FreshBooks feeling”.

Last week, I got an email from an old friend who’s a great freelancer, writer and thinker.  I’ve known Peter Wolchak for about 10 years, chiefly through my role as a communications bloke and his as a reporter and editor in the Canadian tech/biz community.

To cut a potentially long story short, I’d introduced Peter to another friend, referring a  freelance writing opportunity his way.  In thanking me for the intro, Peter said: “I hope karma sends you a pony,” which I thought was brilliant. Unable to resist the cheeky response, I fired back: “Forget the pony, where’s my lottery win?”

Well in yesterday’s snail mail, I got a surprise package from Peter. I know it’s bad for the trees, but I still love the (rare) moment of getting a hand-addressed letter in the mail – even better, one that contains something like this:

…not a karmic pony, but it might be the means to buy one.

In case you can’t make it out or you’re reading this through RSS without the images, inside the envelope was a “Cash For Life” lottery scratch card with four chances to win $1,000 a week for life.  Just that – no note required; the perfect, funny, surprising gift.

Genius.

As I said, this felt like a very FreshBooks moment, to me. I think what Peter did is exactly the kind of thing embodied in our “4E” approach (“Execute on Extraordinary Experiences Every Day”).

We work hard to exceed expectations, to do things our customers aren’t expecting in everything we do. From the way our killer-hot Support Rockstars go out of their way to over-deliver for customers, even through to the way we keep our roadmap plans close to our chests – always much better to surprise and delight a customer or a friend.

So: thanks Peter. You made my day and gave me a great reminder of the way I hope to make our customers feel every day.

Take five minutes to do something completely surprising for one of your customers, partners or friends. Right now. Karma will shower you with ponies.

*Full disclosure: Peter edits Backbone Magazine, co-creators of the PICK 20 awards.  I was a judge for the awards program two years running and voted for FreshBooks as a top Canadian innovator in both judging rounds. FreshBooks won a PICK20 two years running, coming first in 2009. That was, of course, long before I ever dreamed of actually working here one day.

Everyone knows FreshBooks means “Rockstar customer support”. You call our toll-free number and a human being answers the phone. A nice human being, maybe somebody named Grace or Mark or Kasey. You email us and likewise: a human being replies, helps you out, whatever your problem may be.

It’s what we do. And we like to think we’re pretty kickass freakin’ amazing at it.

But there’s always room for improvement…

Giant Stickies plot the future of FreshBooks support

So we’ve decided to declare May 25 – 28 “Support Support Week“.

For one week, we’ve turned the whole company loose on making our already-amazing support even better; without a plan, agenda or even a map. What we’ve decided is that FreshBookers are really really smart, and when you find yourself with a critical mass of smart people, awesome things will almost certainly happen, if you just remove the barriers to them getting things done.

So, for this week, nobody will be assigned tasks. Nobody will be answerable for how they spend their time, nobody will have to attend meetings they don’t want to attend, and everybody is going to do exactly whatever they think they ought to do in order to make FreshBooks Support even better than it already is.

I have no idea what’s going to come of this, but I’m sure excited to find out.

To kick off Support Support Week, we gathered the crew together this morning and, using giant sticky notes, put up ideas on how to make Support better. We covered a kitchen wall with these ideas — along with a raft of smaller stickies with which folks signed up to help make a given idea a reality.

We’ll keep checking in to see how various ideas are doing throughout the week, and share some of the awesomeness as it emerges into the light.

Here at FreshBooks, we’re always looking for awesome ways to provide the best customer service we can. So, we’re trying something new: In-Person Support!

Yup! FreshBooks’ own Support Rockstars will be on-site in downtown Toronto at the Dark Horse Cafe on Wednesday, November 11th 2009 to answer any questions you have about FreshBooks, provide support or just to chat.

The Details:

Where? Dark Horse Espresso Bar, 215 Spadina Ave.
When? Wednesday, November 11, 2009.
When exactly? 4 P.M. – 8 P.M.
Who? YOU (and us!)

Drop in when you can, coffee’s on FreshBooks!

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Do you like cotton candy? Ever wanted to see yourself as a caricature? Always fantasized about being tied-up with your friends?

Well, FreshBooks turned five years old this year! And we’re throwing the best birthday party a five year old could hope for—loot bags included! It wouldn’t be a party without all of you, so be sure to RSVP for a great afternoon together of games, prizes and surprises you won’t want to miss!

When
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Where
High Park, Area 15 (Map of High Park)
Toronto, Ontario

Questions? Drop Rayanne a note at rayanne at freshbooks.com. Hope to see you there and THANK YOU for your support!

As the most loving of festivities approached, we thought it was a perfect opportunity to remind you all how much we care about you. On behalf of the entire team at FreshBooks HQ, thanks so much for choosing FreshBooks. We really do love you ‘round these parts!

Check out our Valentine’s Day video dedicated to all of you, shot and produced by our very own, talented Randy.

FreshBooks 2009 Valentines Day Video from FreshBooks on Vimeo.

Happy Valentine’s Day!