FreshBooks: 5 pillars of the billing experience

July 14th, 2008 by Mitch Brisebois

When you’re in the billing business, the user experience can be seriously challenged: Tracking timesheets, preparing invoices, and tracking payments is a huge overhead. Receiving bills is never fun either. FreshBooks is one SaaS 2.0 company that has attributed its success on a compelling user experience. Last week, CEO Mike McDerment blogged about his company’s 5 pillars of customer experience:

1. User Experience: People use your products when you’re not around. Invest in great design.
2. Support Experience: When things go wrong, customers are at their most vulnerable. Be there to help, with trust and respect.
3. Marketing Experience: Be extraordinary in making a first impression.
4. Catastrophe Experience: Eventually something really bad will happen. Your customers will understand if you’re open and forthcoming. (The latest example of a terrific Catastrophe Experience is Twitter’s “Fail Whale” – Now people are selling t-shirts about it!)
5. Community Experience: Allow your customers to share their joy of using your product.

For FreshBooks fans, they’ve recently released a nifty Time Tracker widget for Mac OSX!