Comments on: I Have A Really Big Mouth

By: Making The Sale: Ice Cubes to Eskimos

Making The Sale: Ice Cubes to Eskimos — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 15:47:16 +0000

[...] I have a really big mouth – John O’Nolan [...]

By: Danny

Danny — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 23:00:45 +0000

Who did you decide to go with? Can you recommend an accountant who will work with you using Freeagent? I’m in the same boat and it would be good if the accountant gave a discount for the work Freeagent saves. I’ve looked through those on the Freeagent site but not convinced yet.

By: Michael Savage

Michael Savage — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:53:27 +0000

That is a sweet story! More companies should do things like this!

Wufoo is pretty good about this kinda of stuff.

By: Vultrix » Blog Archive » Make accounting work for you, not against you

Vultrix » Blog Archive » Make accounting work for you, not against you — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:01:22 +0000

[...] by this post from John O’Nolan (@johnonolan) I wanted to have my say on how I think FreeAgent has [...]

By: Phil Norton

Phil Norton — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 13:15:12 +0000

Great article John, and I’ve been saying exactly the same thing about FAC for the past few months too. They have set the standard for web apps as far as I’m concerned, and I’m including 37 Signals et al in there too: FAC are doing pretty much everything right, and when the fall down in functionality they’re only too happy to hear from users as to how to sort that out.

Luckily, my accountant has seen the value in FAC: I don’t think he’s computer literate enough to go the whole hog and recommend it to his clients, but he certainly saw the value in the use of it. And for me, it’s made me sit up and take notice of how my business is performing: as a designer, it’s far too easy to just sit back and make pretty websites and not overly worry about the accounting side of the business. And that’s where FAC comes in: it’s so easy to use that it… gulp… makes accounting almost fun (I said “almost”!!).

Now, if only they’d consider a personal accounting web app to sort out that side of my life too!!

By: Michael Savage

Michael Savage — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:50:02 +0000

Great post! Very true hopefully you can be a sneezer for me on Multiplex. :P

By: Bryan Beaudreault

Bryan Beaudreault — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:49:39 +0000

Again, nice post. Although I have not yet had to work with accountants or tracking of invoices, I plan to in the future. When that time comes I am pretty sure FreeAgent will still be at the front of my mind, because of how much you have been “sneezing” about them. :) As long as everything lives up to your recommendation I think it is safe to say that FreeAgent already got another customer in me. I’d really like to see more of this kind of company-customer interactions, because it is *really* refreshing!

By: John

John — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:42:06 +0000

Thanks Roan, I really think that you guys are one of the web-based startups doing everything right – and really innovating. This makes me happy, even if you do have a warped view of the video games industry.

PS. Did you know I was born in Scotland? We must be related.

By: John

John — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:40:25 +0000

That’s a VERY cool story Brian – I like that one a lot! :)

By: Brian

Brian — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:28:02 +0000

Nice.

I had a similar experience with FreshBooks (which I love).

They sent all of their customers a free copy of Entrepreneur Magazine when they made the cover. I received mine and inside I pleasantly found a hand-written post-it note from the CEO, Mike McDermont, thanking me for my business. He must have wrote *thousands* of them.

So I blogged about it (titled: FreshBooks, A+ Customer Satisfaction), then received 2 comments from FreshBooks staff, including 1 from Mike (CEO) and a retweet from their company account.

Companies that treat their customers like they treat their mother win.

By: Roan Lavery

Roan Lavery — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:24:52 +0000

Thanks for the great post John. You’ve pretty much nailed everything we think about the way companies should be engaging with users.

From a personal perspective I’ve made a number of friends as a result of working with users. We’ve ended up meeting at conferences and even going out for beers. The line between company and individual is becoming increasingly blurred and building good relationships with users is really just about being a decent person who takes the responsibility of providing a service seriously.

Which reminds me, I owe you a beer sometime John!

By: Luke Jones

Luke Jones — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:18:59 +0000

Great article. I’m not sure what I am though… I’d like to think I’m a sneezer but I haven’t been in this business long enough to know.