Steve Bujouves Reveals How Customer Support Became FreshBooks’ Strategic Weapon

In this episode, Steve Bujouves shares insights from his 14-year tenure leading FreshBooks’ customer support team, which became the company’s “not-so-secret weapon.” Steve reveals how FreshBooks built a strategic advantage through exceptional support practices, including their three-ring phone policy, empowered agents, and company-wide support immersion.

Discover how strategic support drove growth and retention even for a modestly-priced product, and learn actionable strategies for transforming your support function from a cost center into a competitive advantage that delights customers and builds lasting loyalty.

Let’s get into it:

Mark MacLeod:
I’ve got a different episode for you this week. I normally sit down with CEOs, but my good friend Steve Bujouves recently left FreshBooks. He had a 14-year tenure there, and for most of that time, he led support for FreshBooks. For many companies, support is sort of like just a box to check. It’s an afterthought. It’s important, but not strategic.

For FreshBooks, their support function was deeply strategic, their not-so-secret weapon. So this episode is a masterclass on how to make customer support strategic in your business. I hope you enjoy it.

Steve, welcome to the Startup CEO Show. It’s a true pleasure to have you here. How are you doing today?

Steve Bujouves:
Hey, Mark. Thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to be here and to see you and talk to you again.

Mark MacLeod:
For everyone watching and listening, Steve and I go way back. I think I first started advising FreshBooks in the 2010 timeframe, and you were there right up until now. And, of course, we worked together for two years when I was there full-time.

And then this is actually a first for us on the Startup CEO Show. As you might guess from the name, we have only interviewed startup CEOs, but Steve led the support team at Freshbooks for the entire time that he was there, and support was a not-so-secret weapon for FreshBooks. And I thought it’d be really interesting to just dive into that and unpack what made that so strategic.

And because a lot of companies don’t necessarily think that way about customer support. It’s like, it’s a box I need to check. They’re not really thinking about how to turn it into a strategic weapon and I think that’s a lost opportunity. So that’s the goal here, to see you again. So check in the box on that, at least virtually, and let’s unpack support.

So maybe just start off with what made it so strategic. Like, I realize you spent 14 years with FreshBooks and not with other companies, but from your vantage point, looking back, what made FreshBooks’ support approach so unique?

Steve Bujouves:
Yeah, for sure. You know, it is interesting that we all experience support interactions constantly, and it’s something that as consumers, it can get really painful. And I think that our default expectation when we deal with companies is that, like, okay, I need to call in, and I gotta brace for impact as I do this.

But then when we go to make choices for our own companies, it’s like we often just look a bit more at the numbers than the actual experience that we’re providing. So, when I joined FreshBooks, I honestly did not know what I was getting into. You join a startup, and there’s this element of excitement in that a lot of bigger companies have established this is the way that we do things, but in the startup world, there is no way of doing things, so you get to make up a lot of it.

And when I joined Freshbooks, I didn’t know what I was getting into. But I saw that the people and the energy there was really exciting. And I started I think pretty much just before you started advising. So it was early 2010. I was very young in my career. I started as a support specialist.

And I remember when I first joined, I heard that support mattered a lot at FreshBooks, but I still hadn’t really experienced it yet because I didn’t have a small business. Like, I wasn’t using the product before I joined or anything. But when I started working there, I got the vibe of what type of caliber of person they brought onto the team and what they actually meant by going above and beyond to help people.

And so you start to experience some of this stuff, and you’re like, wow, this company when they say it’s what matters, they actually really mean that it matters.

What FreshBooks is for those out there who haven’t used it, it’s an online accounting program that helps small businesses run their business. At the time, we were largely focused on the invoicing side of that, invoicing expense tracking.

So a lot of our customers used us to send out invoices, especially recurring invoices that would go up. I had this one support case very early in my career, maybe the first week that I was there, and pretty much what happened was this customer had set up their account kind of incorrectly, and all of their invoices that were set for recurring didn’t have a certain checkbox checked on their taxes, and so they had to go and update that.

So I was working with a colleague of mine whose name is Daniel Tsang, and I think he was employee number four at FreshBooks.

Mark MacLeod:
I feel like Daniel lived in the office. I remember wondering at some point, did he just live there?

Steve Bujouves:
He might not. It was definitely an office that you could have squatted at, for sure. There’s a lot going on. And I sat down with Daniel and was like, hey, this is our situation, pretty much all of these profiles, all of these templates are broken. And I asked, how do you fix this? And he said that we don’t really have a script for that yet. So you would go in and you would click on edit for each one of them and change the setting.

And I was like, okay, so we just do that? He’s like, yeah. I’m like, oh, okay. There’s, like, thousands of these. It would take us three, or four hours to go through this one account to get all these things. And then there was this pause that we had of, like, okay, I’ll get the coffee, and we’ll just start clicking away.

And this was the default behavior of just doing whatever it took to help someone through their situation. And ever since that time I knew that that was the bar, and we’re gonna meet this bar as long as we possibly can. And so that really did matter to everyone there.

Mark MacLeod:
This may not have been the case throughout all of FreshBooks’ history, particularly after introducing the payments product, because that payment is difficult to support more so than software, right? Like, if there’s a bug in my software, I tolerate it. But if you lose my money, that’s a whole other ballgame, right? But certainly when I was there, I, like everyone else, even though I was the CFO, had to spend my first month in support.

And I can tell you I was scared shitless. And I was fine answering tickets because I could take the time to think about it, but I wouldn’t pick up the phone. I wish I could remember her name, but a short Asian woman was responsible for me. And she was yelling at me, you’re gonna pick up the phone, or you’re in trouble. Like, I felt threatened, and she’s like, oh I better pick up the phone.

And I did a lot of right to make sure that I understood the product and understood the customer. It’s important that support gets the deserved respect. It’s just like a thing off in the corner. At FreshBooks, you called your team the rockstars, and you were kind of front and center, literally front and center in the office, right? How did the Rockstars name come up? Were you part of that, or did you join the team that was already called the rockstars?

Steve Bujouves:
I believe I joined, and they had already coined the term rockstars. And it seemed like rockstars were something that had high egos and were cool and stuff. But I think how we meant rockstars to be where rockstars are is you go to a rock show and you’re just so impressed by the caliber of skill that these people have, and you have this feeling of, I interacted with this thing and I feel pumped after doing that. And I think that was more the angle that the team was going for and they totally hit it.

And to your point, Mark, the expectation at FreshBooks was everyone who joined, would spend an entire month on support. And interestingly enough, I believe before 2010, the time was actually three months. So you would hire a developer, and you’d have lots of projects to do.

You hire a developer, and they’re on support for three months, just like, not doing anything else. We had this big mandate of, like, you cannot bug this person. You can’t bring them into meetings. You can’t kind of skirt the system or anything. They are a member of the support team for this amount of time until they graduate, and then you would be able to take them, and then they would go to their job.

And as you can imagine, that’s pretty impactful for a business. Very, I would say, restrictive. At the time there was no real condition of, like, when you would move over, it would just be like, oh, I think they’re ready. So we evolved that a bit. So it was a dedicated full month, so there was a start and finish, which made it a bit more predictable.

That whole stuff started with a founder mentality that support mattered. Looking back, Mike, Joe, and Levi, who are the founders of FreshBooks, it was them that believed that this was something that we stood by. And because of that, it really allowed us to. And there are a bunch of practical things that I want to talk about, but none of them would have happened or mattered if this one thing wasn’t true.

So to the CEOs and founders out there, if this isn’t checked off on your checklist, then all of the rest of investment and support is kind of a bit questionable. Do you, as founders, believe that your customers value having a good support experience and that this will matter to your business? And are you willing to stand by that when you’re tested? Because every single person will say for sure, of course, support matters. Who’s going to argue against that? And then when you’re tested on it, that’s really where it becomes like, is this true or not?

So for us, testing on it meant like, hey, would you delay launching a product by two weeks because the support experience is bad? And a lot of people at that point are like, we really need to get this launched. It’s already delayed. Or will you take a developer off of another project to make sure that this team’s support experience is good? Or would you refund a customer who messed their own thing up? Like, are you willing to make those hard choices? For us at FreshBooks, this was 100% true, where the CEO founders, Mike especially, and Levi, were totally bought in on this concept that it made our lives doable.

I believe that the story is probably better told by them, but the story that we would tell our smart people of how it came to be was FreshBooks used Rackspace originally when FreshBooks was getting started, and there was not a lot of internal skill set at the time to be able to deploy and launch an application on Rackspace. We would have to call, and then raspberries would walk us through every single button press and all of the things.

And for Rackspace, they had this concept of fanatical support, and they really lived this kind of concept too. Mike, Levi, and Joe were like, wow, this has really changed our ability to run as a company because we are so supported by our partners that we have to do this for our customers. And so it’s almost infectious where you experience something that was so game-changing for you that you want to pass it on to your customers.

I’ve talked to many FreshBooks customers over the years and because they got such a good support experience from FreshBooks would also be like, we are going to change our support mentality, and we are going to be there for our users. And it kind of spreads, which is a really cool aspect of it.

So this concept of taking a full month off of your new hires was really because of that. And to your point, when you were going through it, one of the key things was that you really got to know our customers in a way that you would never have known. When you were going through it and talking to FreshBook customers, how did that change your mentality of who they were?

Mark MacLeod:
Yeah. You know, so FreshBooks very much serves the S in SMB. You know, with some exceptions, there were web hosting companies that had huge invoice volumes. But the experience that stood out the most for me was having to help a customer figure out if they were on a Mac or a PC so I could properly advise them. They’re not an unintelligent person. They are good at whatever their craft is. And this technology stuff is intimidating.

And I literally just said, “There’s a little apple up in the top left corner if you’re on a Mac,” and I’m trying to say it without sounding condescending. So it gave me massive empathy. That’s what we’re dealing with. They’re great at their craft. Also, by the way, that completely ties into the positioning of the product.

Nobody starts a small business to spend time on back office. And accounting software historically has been built for people like me, CPAs. And the whole challenge for FreshBooks, through a combination of product and support was to make it so simple that anyone could use it.

So part of that was focus. It’s not for everyone. It’s for people who sell their time and expertise for a living. Like you said, invoicing. So no inventory, cost of goods sold, manufacturing, or complexity.

I run a business now. Like, it’s one person. It’s as simple as it gets. I still have quarterly sales tax filings. I still have end-of-year corporate tax. I have to get stuff from my accountant. I got to see my age receivables and who I got to chase down to pay. Like, there’s all this shit, right? And it’s like, this is as simple a business as it gets. So, yeah, it really gave me massive empathy for that.

Steve Bujouves:
And there was, like, such a common piece of feedback that we heard from people was that they might have even joined FreshBooks with an idea of who the customer was. It’s, yeah, accounting, I got it. And then when you’re actually talking to them, you’re like, whoa, this is different than what I thought. They’re real people. They’re going through so many different challenges in their lives.

And where we position ourselves in those conversations, they just change because of this experience. The other thing it had was people learned about the product in a way that was way different than what you would have if you just went straight to your own groups. If you ever want to know what your product is like and what it can do, just spend some time in support.

You’re going to see where people end up clicking or where they end up getting tripped up on stuff. So by spending such a long time and seeing so many different use cases of how people use us, it let that new hire get the feel of breadth and depth of what they were working with.

And so, obviously, like, this benefit is now, like, hey, you’ve spent a month in support. You’ve learned the customer. You’ve learned the product so well, then when you go join your development team or your marketing team, you’re really able to speak to, like, oh, no, I, like, talked to Susan, and she had this problem, and it makes sense why she had this problem, and I want to fix it. And I think that by doing this, we’ll get more people to go through the system easier, and so it made them much better at their roles by being able to be set up properly at the start.

There are also these other two elements that doing this time in support gave FreshBooks a huge cultural impact. And that is we would cohort groups of new hires so that when you started at FreshBooks, you would start with two to ten other people and that cohort went through this month together, and it really created this bond.

And because it was a mismatch of departments that were going through this, you created this bond that once they were done with support, they had this group of people that they could say, hey, I’ve worked with this person for a month. I know them. I’ll see them in the office, and we’ll still hang out after work together. And it created this bond across the company that became very impactful for us of just feeling like you’re part of a bigger team, which was great.

Second, it created this empathy for the support team because, to your point, supporting the industry is not the most glamorous of roles, and there’s this level of, yeah, it’s an entry-level type of thing, but when you do it, it’s hard. You gotta know your stuff. You have to be empathetic, and you have to be able to context switch so much. It’s actually a very draining profession. And you’re constantly talking to people.

Even if you’re having kind of a rough day, normally you can just put your headphones on and just crank out some work, but in support, you can’t. You just got to put that away and help these people. So by others doing it, they really gained this empathy for the support team and were like, wow, this group is great. We love them. We were in the trenches with them, and we wanted to make sure we could do whatever we could to help them. So we’ll be a bit more conscious about what we build and what we help them with because we’ve lived through it.

Mark MacLeod:
That’s such a huge point. Yeah, it’s so true.

I’m curious, when you look at yourself and you obviously hired a ton of people into that team over the years, is there a certain set of DNA that you’re looking for that makes the ideal person who can handle that and show up every day and give? Because essentially, that’s what you’re doing, right? You’re giving of yourself every day.

Steve Bujouves:
Yeah, for sure. It definitely ends up being like a pack of strays. We had such a range of, like, oh, where did you go to school? And what did you do in school? And there were math grads, there were biology grads, people in people who were in arts, people that didn’t do school at all.

Because the fundamentals of support are like, hey, are you good at problem-solving? And are you empathetic? Because you get those two things, you’re 90% of the way there, and you’ll be able to talk to somebody, want to help them, and then be able to figure out what’s going on and help them.

So where we ended up was largely around, are these people the type that want to sit, hear an issue, and are intrigued by it and want to continue to try to figure this out and help them? And those people ended up being such great support people.

And you also have this effect of, because they’re so varied in where their background was and that cornice of, like, hey, they’re great problem solvers, they work really well in a lot of other departments. So where you end up is you end up having this really awesome team within your company to promote from.

And so this was a thing that I was most proud of at FreshBooks is you would hire somebody, who might not have any experience in tech. They would work in support for a while. They know this product inside and out. They know our customers inside and out. They are great culture fits.

And then we had people in every single other department, like development, finance, human resources, QA, everywhere in FreshBooks, you would have a support person that went there and then was able to advance their careers.

And it’s cool now, like, years and years later, seeing where they are now. And a lot of them aren’t doing support anymore. There are some that stand in the craft, but there are many that are just heads of product somewhere or deep into finance. And it’s really cool to have seen where their starting point was and that support can be that for many companies out there, too.

Mark MacLeod:
Yeah, well, one of the long-standing team members and support, Taylor ended up joining my finance team, got a CPA, and now he’s got a career in finance.

Steve Bujouves:
Yeah, Taylor was a hugely impactful person and such a great, versatile hire who will do great wherever. So, they can find their paths and everything, which is nice.

Mark MacLeod:
Now, I subscribe to lots of SaaS applications, but when I need support, they’re kind of forcing me down to chat or send an email or even to some knowledge base. So it makes me not want to seek out support. And then meanwhile, FreshBooks published a number and was like, hey, give us a call.

And I remember if the phone wasn’t picked up within three rings, every phone in the office rang, which is just mental, right? Like, I think about when I have to call the airlines or call my cell phone provider to get support, and after 35, or 40 minutes, I’ve just lost it forever.

Just a wild experience. Any thoughts on that and its impact? The fact that customers were just encouraged to just pick up the phone and call us.

Steve Bujouves:
Yeah, that is what it means to make the support experience as painless as possible. Because 100% what you see is this concept of, like, I want to deflect these customers away from us because support is going to be expensive and we have to fund it. So if you can just figure this out yourself, amazing.

But the whole kind of purpose of that, especially as a growth company is you’re spending a lot of money to get these people’s attention and they want to talk to you because something’s wrong. And then it’s like, the idea of no, go away and figure it out on your own is a great way for them to also figure out another company that might solve that problem better. It’s like really deflecting your spending away from yourself.

So, yeah, the original goal of how FreshBooks was set up is that if you want to talk to us, you can talk to us. You go to our website, you see the phone number. And what we had done with it, too, and we did this for the longest time, maybe over a decade, as if you called that number, you would get greeted by a real person.

Like, phone tree, no IVR or press one for this. You would talk to a real person who would pick it up. That person is going to solve your problem, so they’re not going to pass you over to anybody. It’s like they’re trained enough that they would be able to fix this thing for you and that was so different than what the status quo is of service.

That did a lot of things for us. One was that you start this, like, generally when you have this support interaction, it’s because of something. So, like, hey, I’m trying to do something, it’s not working. So when you then reach out to get help on it, if you also have to jump through hoops or you have to do something, it’s like you build up this annoyance, and then eventually, when you talk to the support person, if they’re not good, then you’re now mad.

So it’s like, whatever you can do to bring that annoyance level to a minimum. So I call in because I’m a bit annoyed. But they answered right away, and they’re friendly and they know what I’m talking about. And so now I’m less annoyed, and I kind of like this because they were able to help me, and I’m on my way. It didn’t take very much time. It’s so different than what I experienced elsewhere. FreshBooks is great. I’m glad I’m paying for this service because they’re backing it up and taking care of me.

So that element was such a big difference. And we heard that feedback from so many people when we would talk to them outside of support is, yeah, whenever I call, it’s just so painless. Like, I can just talk to somebody and they’re so great. And that became this thing that we were able to do.

And to your point, what the system was is that the phone would ring up to four times. And then if support wasn’t able to answer it, literally every single person in the company had a phone at their desk. And because they all did support, everyone knows the product, then anyone can pick up that phone. At this point, there were a lot of people working there, right? So it’s a loud experience when every single phone is ringing.

And it didn’t happen enough that people were too used to it. So it would be like, oh, what is that? Oh, the phone is ringing, I need to get that. And then if it didn’t get answered in four more rings, then it would go to voicemail. And voicemail during office hours was devastating. It wouldn’t happen. Like, we would have like a month, then it would be once and you would be so upset about it. And that was the culture that we had.

Everyone had empathy for the team at this point, so they knew that they were busy. And if they’re busy, that means you’re up. So then you would, you would grab that call and you would work through it.

We also had this thing for a long time, too, where even after that first month of support, you would come back to support to have a refresher. And so it would be like, hey, I want to be doing support once a quarter or twice a quarter just to have that…

Mark MacLeod:
Was that discretionary or was it on a program?

Steve Bujouves:
In the very early days, it was mandatory and it was longer, like a week of support. But then it changed over time so that it was a bit more flexible, as in you could pick your days off when you would do it. It was still expected that you would do it. And then over time, it changed from there.

But when we could, and in the earlier days, it allowed people to keep their skills sharpened because you lose it over time because the product changes over time. So, this phone mentality was just so strong. And then through that, we’d also try to find time just to be like, hey, how can we make this support experience a bit better? So we tried to encourage people to help the issue as fast as they could, and if you think it’s appropriate, you’re empowered.

And also we try to inspire you to go a little bit above and beyond and make it just as special as you can make it. So there’s lots of stories around where, hey, I was talking to somebody. They want to pause their accounts because they’re in the military and they’re going to be deployed. And be like, I want to do something for them. They didn’t ask me to do anything, but I wanted something for them.

So the person would google the top things that if you’re being deployed you would want. And socks came up a lot, like, having great and plenty of nice socks. So you will have a budget, you can just go and buy something, send it to this customer as a gift, saying things like, hey, I hope everything goes well. Here’s a gift that I saw online that was like a good touch and it was just like something extra to make the experience a bit special.

And the goal wasn’t to get them to buy anything or do anything. It was just like, you’re a person, you matter to us, here’s something. And then often they would just be blown away, like, why would you do this? Thank you. It means so much to me. And then sure enough, they would tell their friends and they would say like, hey, FreshBooks is amazing. Sometimes you would get some great word of mouth out of it, which is nice, but often it just made the support team feel loved. And when you get a team that feels loved, then they want to be there longer and they want to help out more. It was just like this really cool thing that they did.

Mark MacLeod:
Yeah, that’s huge. So virtue of cycle. To your point, support in most companies, you’re just dealing with someone who’s angry. It’s not your fault. They just show up angry. So there’s only so much shit you’re going to eat before you’re like, screw this.

Steve Bujouves:
Yeah. And then you have to crank them out too. So it’s just like obvious back-to-back on these people that are just upset all the time, which really drains you. Then your lifespan as a support agent probably won’t last very long.

Mark MacLeod:
And then this is the opposite. When I call support, it’s generally to a big company. And of course, they are on a traditional paradigm of support. So first of all, it takes forever. Or I’ve pressed a bunch of buttons and then waited only to find out that the agent actually doesn’t have the authority. So now I’m on hold waiting for someone else and I have to explain it again. And it’s just a horrible experience.

Meanwhile, there was none of that at FreshBooks because agents are empowered. Your individual reps have the authority to even go and just buy something and delight the customer. And I didn’t realize that the origin of this was Rackspace. One of the Rackspace founders, Pat, was an early, massive angel in FreshBooks. I know there was a tight relationship. I had always thought the inspiration was Zappos. Did they ever come up at all as you talked about how to build the FreshBooks experience?

Steve Bujouves:
Zappos was a key figure. We even went to Zappos’ office. They had this program that was like an education program for other leaders to go and learn the Zappos way. I think we did it maybe two or three times. But Zappos was the standard of ‘wow’ support where they had this story around a 24-hour phone call where they had this big thing around.

There’s no pressure to get off the phone. You help you stay with people as long as you make people feel heard. They would celebrate those situations where most companies are sweating. They would embrace it.

And there were stories around them sending pizza to people when they had called in and stuff. So, yeah, in the early days, Zappos was a big inspiration to us in terms of what we could do for that wow side and that cultural piece.

But over time we kind of shifted a little bit and we moved away from things like the wow thing. There was this book that we read that was kind of a bit transformational for our support team that was called The Effortless Experience. I highly recommend CEOs and support leaders to go and read this book.

The core of it was around the best experiences are those that are painless for people, and maybe reduce the problems that are causing the support. Like, putting effort upfront to unblock people before they had experienced any issues was a big part of it, making it so that it’s painless to go through that experience and that people can get help quickly and effortlessly.

And so that is worth way more than a sock story. Like the socks are a cute add-on, the cherry on top of the experience, but they aren’t the experience. So it was for us to get through this mentality around, make the thing better, make it easy and that is kind of like what we’re trying to build first.

Then honestly, it allows you to open up the experience a bit more. What we did find was that there are certain experiences that you actually don’t want to call in. You just want to figure out, why is this an error. The solution is to just have better error messages so that I can fix it without having to go to the website to get the phone number.

So it was kind of like looking at the experience a bit more end to end to try to break out of like what is driving support. It also makes you a lot more scalable because you have like a reduced amount of stuff coming in.

So we ended up creating the effortless experience team within the support group, which was like a really scrutinized support experience, customer feedback, and product experience. Work directly with the product teams to remove as many of those usability issues as you can and just have a healthier ecosystem.

We would fix things, those issues would plummet because users wouldn’t experience them anymore. People were happier, less support effort on our side. So it was a very worthwhile investment to focus on support scalability as you’re growing your team too.

Mark MacLeod:
Is that just like, here are the most common tickets, let’s just solve them in the product. Is it as direct as that or are there other elements to it?

Steve Bujouves:
At the heart of it, yeah. Sometimes when you’re doing that, you end up with this series of top ten that are really hard to solve for. Like, this is the number one feature request and it would take us a year to fix. So, we would also look at it as smaller wins so we could prioritize multiple stacks and we could give them to different groups to work on.

So, if we had a team that was more focused on the expense experience, then we could give them a list of where customers are getting tripped up for their journeys. And then some of them might be feature requests that are a bit harder to solve, but a lot of them might just be little wins that you can do too. So you have this kind of healthier mix of the two, but overall, they just create a much better product experience, and because the product experience is directly connected to the support experience, you’d get a better support experience too.

Mark MacLeod:
When I was at FreshBooks, support was still very much people-driven. I remember sitting down with Mike, the founder and CEO at the time, and coming in with my traditional CFO hat and being like, hey, where can I cut costs? And of course, with my traditional paradigm, I’m like, can we dial back support? And it was like a religious topic for him, so he’d respond by saying no, for every ex-customer, we’re adding a support rep. It’s a linear relationship. And so at the time, it was a human-led thing.

So I’m curious to this point about the effortless experience. I guess the ratio between people, technology, and support has changed over time. Did you investigate AI at all? Like, how did that evolve?

Steve Bujouves:
Yeah, for sure. So what grew the effortless team as we had mapped out what we thought our support growth would look like over the next, say, five years? The biggest problem with any support team is scaling. And it’s like, hey, just the amount of cases that you’re getting, eventually you get to a point where a lot of your stuff is going to break and you just need to shift over to a different way of approaching them.

And so, I had done this talk once around the silent killer of support culture. Like, the high blood pressure of support is your support model. And so what the effortless experiment was, it was like, you map out what it looks like and it’s like, okay, you bring on ‘x’ amount of support agents, and then eventually you need to add on a team lead because your team’s a bit too big.

And then from there, you need to add on just like back-end specialists that would be able to help that team grow. And then all of a sudden your support costs are just ballooning and it becomes harder because the more people you hire, it’s harder to find quality people when you need thousands of them. So your standards drop a little bit. It’s harder to get education and training across that big of a group. So it’s really like, hey, can you prevent this growth from happening exponentially and make it a bit more scalable?

So what we had done with that was, hey, this is the model, this is like the trajectory that we’re on now. We’re going to be spending millions of dollars in five years to maintain what we’re trying to do here. But add in this effortless team and then now the growth curve is a bit flattened and every percent of support cases that we can solve before they get to us represents long-term much more savings.

So it’s like this long-term investment in making sure that you’re as scalable for as long as possible. And of course, eventually, you’re too constrained on things, so you have to make some harder decisions on stuff. But as you’re going through this growth stage, you can maintain this level for as long as possible by just being a bit more proactive in your scalability.

Mark MacLeod:
Yeah, that totally makes sense. So I want to talk about something else. You were at FreshBooks for 14 years, you look at the standard Silicon Valley startup, and it’s very common to stay for a year, vest some of your options, move somewhere else, and vest some more options. There’s no commitment.

And it was not uncommon for people to spend a lot of time with FreshBooks. I think you’re probably top of the charts, but whether from your own experience or maybe more broadly, what was it about FreshBooks that made people stick around for so long?

Steve Bujouves:
The default answer by far is always people. You stay at companies because you work with great people. I think when you’re working at a startup and it’s growing, every phase is like you’re working at a different company. It’s like the version of FreshBooks when it was a 30-person company when I joined, versus the version with 150 or 300. They just operate differently, with different problem sets, and different challenges.

They kind of only have the same name, but it’s always a new group of people you’re working with. So I think that the evolving change of problems is also something that keeps you there. But by far, the quality of people who worked at FreshBooks and the standard that Mike, Joe, and Levi had when they hired.

They would interview pretty much every person for as long as possible in the hiring phase before it got a little too out there. You had really great coworkers. My core team, I can’t say enough great things about them. Just the best people that you could work with, that were always solution-oriented. We had this concept that there are puzzles, not problems and that we can figure things out. So let’s just work as a part of a team that likes figuring out puzzles, and then you’ll have a much better time at it.

But, yeah, I would definitely say that 14 years is a very long time in the startup world, but it brings new problems and brings great people, and then you have something that makes you want to stay as long as possible.

Mark MacLeod:
That’s amazing. And you met your wife in support, so being at FreshBooks literally changed your life.

Steve Bujouves:
I’m probably an outlier in that, but yeah, I got the full experience. I started at a time in my life when I was younger, could commit a lot of time and energy, met my partner, got a family out of it, lifelong friends and everything, and was able to grow personally, my career, very much so.

Mark MacLeod:
Amazing. I’m curious, you brought up the attributes of someone who would crush it in support of FreshBooks. For people who are thinking about that, how do you evaluate that in an interview setting?

Steve Bujouves:
Yeah, for sure. Like, depending on what stage you’re at, if you’re hiring your first few support people, you really want versatility. There will be a type of support person that comes later on that is great at solving a case, and that will solve many cases for you quickly, and they’re very efficient and effective.

But with the early-day support, your load is probably not going to be too high. So you want them to be able to flex in on so many different elements of your business. You want them to be able to handle the support load coming in but also work with the team to get that feedback and understand what other cool opportunities are coming up that customers are bringing up, and be able to have time to explore some of those things.

So, having someone who shows a passion for problem-solving, but then also is the type who is willing to expand what their scope looks like for the betterment of the business is super valuable. So I would pivot in the early days on versatility versus efficiency.

Then obviously the core belief of ownership and empathy is that they just have to be the type that will see something and then want to fix it and do it. Because often what we’ll get in support is like, oh, that’s a hard one, so how can I avoid fixing this thing?

Especially in the startup world, you have a lot of integrations and partners. Maybe I can defer this to a payment partner instead of having to work on it myself. You want the ones that are like, I am going to fix this and I’m going to call the payment company and I want to work with our devs to figure out why this happened. That is all going to go into making that customer mindset of having made the right decision on their purchase. But then also, hey, you’re going to be probably fixing some underlying issues that are affecting many people that aren’t calling you, and then you’re just going to have a better kind of ecosystem to work with.

So, problem-solving, ownership, and versatility are the bread and butter of the early startup world. Then eventually you’ll have lots of time to mix those people up with the efficient people who are great at pounding out cases and who like to help people, and then you get a good mix of them to grow the team.

Mark MacLeod:
That’s great advice. Very practical. I love it.

Maybe the final question, Steve. In this conversation, we’ve covered a lot of actionable tips for people who want to make support strategic. If people want to walk out with the canonical checklist of how to make support strategic in their company, can you recap what they need to walk away with?

Steve Bujouves:
Yeah, I would say that, other than some of the things that we talked about, one is looking at your support experience a bit more end to end to figure out like, hey, as an actual user and not as someone that works at the company, and that is pretending to go through it, but as an actual user that is using the product and then has an issue that leads to the need to obtain assistance, what is the feeling of that?

Do you feel like, hey, I was able to solve my problem relatively quickly and I was able to do this in a painless way? First, understand the pain points and then try to address those things. So I would say scrutinizing what that support experience looks like is fundamental, but in a way that is not coming from just a high-level, good enough type of thing, but to understand what that looks like.

Build a team that wants to be there. So a team that has a culture of like, yeah, my voice matters. I look around, I see other people on my team, and I’m inspired by them. I think they’re great. I think that they’re crushing at their job. I want to crush it on my job because we’re all great. Having a team that has that mentality, giving them an opportunity to grow, to learn new things, and feel you’re just not putting out for the company, but the company’s also putting into you too.

And so having, having support experience, check. Having a great team that wants to be there, check. And I would also say really understanding where is the value that is coming from those interactions. As in, your customers are reaching out to you for a reason. They’re just not bored and they just want to talk to you.

And so being able to leverage, like, hey, this set of users that are new and that are signing up, how can we best make it so that they find this thing valuable? I would say around only 10% of the people who run into something are taking the time to reach out to you, while many more are going through the experience and then just abandoning you. So understanding where are the valuable points of where people are coming in and then using support as a vessel to address those, to build that better ecosystem for your company.

So it’s a cheat code if you have a great support experience. You learn so much from those interactions, you can make your business better. All of that goes into having healthier growth and then also making sure that people are sticking around because they feel taken care of their problems are getting solved and they’re going with you.

Mark MacLeod:
I love it. I can tell you from a former CFO’s perspective, what I came to appreciate as the strategic impact of FreshBooks at the time, it was a pretty cheap product. And so the traditional view would be we have to minimize the cost of support because our customers are not worth a lot. But that example you gave of you and Daniel spending hours updating thousands of records or sending socks to someone, you’re doing things that are either unscalable or are worth more than the customer’s worth.

But you are creating delight, which leads to word of mouth, which leads to organic customer acquisition, retention, and lots of magic. And the hardest thing, particularly in SMB, is distribution. It’s hard to pay to acquire a whole bunch of customers that pay $20 a month for example. You need that organic free traffic as well to make your blend of acquisition work. And certainly, in FreshBooks’ case, support was the thing that provided that.

Steve Bujouves:
Yeah, you would see it all the time in NPS feedback, CSAT feedback around support is the thing that they’re thinking about. So it definitely pays out in the long run too.

Mark MacLeod:
It’s been amazing, Steve. Thank you so much for sharing this. I’ve been part of lots of technology companies. It’s a pretty unique experience, the way FreshBooks ran support. It was great to see you again.

Steve Bujouves:
Awesome. Yeah, great. I really appreciate you having me on the show and if we can inspire more companies to be great at support, we’re all better off for it.

Hey, thanks for listening to the Startup CEO Show. If you’d like to connect with me, be sure to visit my website at markmacLeod.me, or follow me on LinkedIn at The Mark MacLeod, or X account @markmacleod_, and if you want to tune in again next week, be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you next time!