Less than 24 hours after creating a Freshbooks Account to bill for a recent consultation and presentation, I received a follow up call from Jon Spenceley. It was the best 15 minutes of my morning and I can’t say that I’ve had a better customer service experience.
The call was unexpected but completely sincere. Jon seemed genuinely interested in my work and helping me succeed with their software. I ended up asking several questions and he provided honest answers. He didn’t try to up sell me to a paid account and even shared that the paid account wouldn’t do much else for me other than allow me to have more clients in the database.
He could have easily lied about that, but he didn’t.
You see, after talking to Jon I WANTED to upgrade even though I don’t need to at this very moment.
But when I do, who do you think I’ll call? I was so impressed by Jon’s follow up email which came 10 minutes after our conversation, that I asked his permission to share it in This post. Notice how he makes it all about me and even reveals how he was listening to pretty much everything I said during the call. I mean come on, he even mentioned my book!
Here it is in its entirety:
Hi Angela!
Thank you for taking the time to talk to me about your business. It was really great to learn more about your new freelance work, and congratulations again on publishing your book! I think it’s fantastic that you’re starting out to make some money on the things you enjoy doing, and I wish you the best of business, and a whole lot of new clients coming your way!
As I said on the phone, my job here at FreshBooks is something of a work-flow consultant (boring title, awesome fun job). If you have any questions on how FreshBooks works, what features may be interesting to you, or how FreshBooks can fit with your business, please feel free to let me know. I will also be happy to give you a discount on a paid package when you reach the point that you need to upgrade, because I think people who take the time to talk to me about their business are awesome.
If you need anything, you can reach me directly at 1-866-303-6061 (ask for Jon), or by emailing me at jon-at-freshbooks-dot-com.
Thank you very much for taking the time to tell me about your business. I really appreciate you checking out FreshBooks, and I hope you have a fantastic day! Thanks again for the Tweet!
- Jon Spenceley
Isn’t Jon fabulous?
RELATED POSTS
- Are you building community through SlideShare?
- Building Community Around Neighborhood News: An interview with Tracy Record of West Seattle Blog
- Communicate like the whole world is watching
3 comments
Comments feed for this article
June 23, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Martin Reed
Yes, it’s impressive and it worked great for you. We need to remember that not everyone wants to be telephoned though – regardless of whether the motives behind the call are purely customer service oriented. Personally, I don’t like receiving calls from people after I register at their website. Sometimes I’ll even hesitate to join in the first place if I know they’ll respond by telephoning me.
Another reminder that everyone is different and that works for one, doesn’t work for all!
June 24, 2009 at 5:32 am
VandeNikhilam USA » Building Community Through Excellent Customer Service « Online …
[...] Connor on Growing Successful Online Communities. Here is the original: Building Community Through Excellent Customer Service « Online … This entry is filed under Customer Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through [...]
June 24, 2009 at 8:20 am
Angela Connor
You raise a good point, Martin.
I am not always receptive to phone calls either, but this time it worked well. It just so happens that I was interested in additional information and Jon happened to catch me at a good time when I was able to have a conversation. So, the stars were aligned for sure.