Wufoo's Secret to Customer Happiness? Googly Eyes

http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/wufoos-customer-service

by JoelSutherland • 18 years ago

60 19 18 years ago

newmediacampaigns.com

markm• 18 years ago

On a seemingly unrelated note, "Happiness is only real if shared." - Christopher McCandless

davidw• 18 years ago

Fans of Googly Eyes may also enjoy this:

http://www.welton.it/freesoftware/googly_eyed_bill

Or maybe not, it's pretty silly. You can get the source code and make your own googly eyed people (PG, anyone?).

river_styx• 18 years ago

I have officially been brainwashed... was totally expecting a Google pun here.

rokhayakebe• 18 years ago

Ok, Even tough Me was touched. Go Wufoo.

redorb• 18 years ago

<Idea> why don't more companies have sit down and write a customer day </idea>

icey• 18 years ago

This is an example of the difference between "Good" and "Great".

bprater• 18 years ago

Interesting. The real issue question may lurk here:

Did the developer do it because its in his job description or because he felt strongly that he wanted to communicate with the client in that way?

And how does that change things?

JoelSutherland• 18 years ago

His self-description was not completely accurate. Chris Campbell is a co-founder of Wufoo.

veeneck• 18 years ago

You bring up a good point. Right now, we're still small so everyone has a support day and talks to users almost daily. At this size, we all appreciate the close communication with the people using our product and we write those cards out of free will (not just a job description). Chris wrote more about it here:

http://particletree.com/notebook/the-4-12-day-workweek/

Now, as the company grows, this may have to be adjusted. The cards did not start as some marketing stunt, and we never want that message to be sent to our users. When cards from developer X don't feel personal enough, we'll have to brainstorm some more creative ways to thank our users.

floozyspeak• 18 years ago

Wufoo in general is a good simple success story. Its a story of polish. Polish in concept, site design, feature set, attention to detail, hand written thank you for using our service notes and more. They are a good envious benchmark for you want to be.

wayne• 18 years ago

My first thought: "Hmm, I could outsource note-writing to India, or automate it with Mechanical Turk."

I suppose that defeats the point though. :)

eru• 18 years ago

How about timesvr?

fallentimes• 18 years ago

Wufoo makes such ridiculous gobs of money. People barely pay attention because they're located in Tampa and don't brag about it all the time - like other subscription based revenue companies we often hear from.

What's worth noting is if a big company (99% of them anyway) tried to copy off of WuFoo they'd seem so disingenuous and fake they'd fail. Unless your AMEX, of course.

ntoshev• 18 years ago

Google has released Google Forms as part of their Apps For Your Domain offering. It feels very impersonal compared to Wufoo, of course, but let's not underestimate it.

asdflkj• 18 years ago

Can you say how much money?

When they were just starting, I remember thinking, "How narrow and trivial. Do they honestly expect to make money?". I'm looking to make this lesson even more potent.

pchristensen• 18 years ago

Seconded. We hear all kinds of things about how much companies exit for, but rarely about what they earn. Even an order-of-magnitude or a per-employee order-of-magnitude would be interesting.

mlLK• 18 years ago

usually you need substance before form, but with Wufoo 'form' is substance; great business model.

petercooper• 18 years ago

  the handwriting suggests that the author spends much
  more time with a keyboard than a pen.

Really? It looks rather neat to me. If that handwriting looks bad, the writer should visit my doctor sometime!

Wufoo's Secret to Customer Happiness? Googly Eyes

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