Archive for the ‘Ramblings’ Category

I’ve commented before that support is the one side of the business I have trouble letting go of and letting others take full responsibility for. It’s just so important that we get it right as it’s essential to encouraging those taking our free trial to become paying customers and to keep existing customers happy (and therefore continue to recommend us).

Whilst we have a procedure document detailing how support requests should be dealt with, I thought it might also be useful to distill this into to 10 golden rules. I’m publishing them here so that customers and trialists know what they have the right to expect from the support team.

Perhaps if you’re starting a business where there’s an element of support then you could take and adapt these for your own uses too.

1) Be Responsive – Keep the Customer Informed

We’re well known for being very quick to answer support emails, whatever the time of day or day of the week. We need to keep it that way. If when you first look at a support request you can’t answer it right away -perhaps because you need to do some investigation or you need to speak to someone – let the customer know. It’s not ideal that you can’t give them a solution straight away, but at least they know they’re not being ignored.

2) Be Honest

Don’t try to fob off a customer. If they’ve found a bug or we’ve cocked up, acknowledge it and deal with it. Trying to pull the wool over their eyes wont work and breaks Rule #3.

3) Show Respect

Yes, we sometimes get asked what seem like a silly question. But if we’re not making the process intuitive enough or the solution easy enough to find, that’s our fault – not the customers. So don’t patronise customers.

Occasionally we might get someone be rude or hostile on a support ticket. Help them and they’ll calm down – and usually apologise.

4) Don’t Doubt What the Customer Tells You

I know that what the customer is saying has happened is technically impossible, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have a problem. No one is going to send us a support ticket and lie for the sake of it. Don’t assume it’s a PEBCAK issue. Work with the customer to get to the root of the issue.

5) Answer ALL Questions

It’s so frustrating when you email a support desk with 3 questions and their reply answers 2 of the questions and totally ignores the 3rd.

Yes, we’re busy. But not taking the time to deal with things properly in the first place is going to make us even busier. Check and double check you’ve answered all questions asked of you before you send the reply.

6) Be Sure about the Question and the Answer

Don’t guess. If you don’t understand what you’re being asked then ask for clarification. An answer to a question they didn’t ask helps no one.

Don’t guess the answer either. If you’re not 100% sure that the information you’re giving is accurate then check with someone or test your solution.

7) Be Clear in your Response

If you’re telling someone they need to activate the laser guided missile function to resolve their problem, tell them HOW to activate it. It’s better to not assume anything and give a comprehensive answer than to be vague.

8) Keep Your Promises

If you tell a user you’ll let them know when a feature is available or that you’ll get back to them tomorrow after checking with someone – make damn sure you do it.

9) Be Human

Your mother didn’t give you the name “Support”, so don’t sign off as “Support”. Use your real name, be friendly and own the problem. People prefer to deal with real people rather than someone that sounds like a computer.

10) ?

I’m leaving 10 open for you, the reader, to suggest. Based on your experience of our support desk and other support systems, what really frustrates you? Use the comment form below to submit Rule #10.

I’ll update this post in a week or so with one of the suggestions

Frivolous blog posts are traditionally reserved for Fridays. But lets have one on a Monday for a change.

Over the weekend I moved into a new house. in a few of the rooms there was an odd device plugged in to the sockets. I had no idea what it was.

The label on the back yielded no clues. It just referenced a website that specializes in indoor water features.

So I posted a picture of it on Twitter and got some humorous responses:

Andy Barr from 10Yetis suggest it’s Mini-stig. That shouts “vrooom” when you walk past it.

HostOrca thinks the Geordie mafia (aka Sage) got to my house before I did and it’s actually a bugging device.

And PaulH says it could be a wall mounted TV for tiny people.

Excel_Expert says it’s an air freshener and the different lights are for different fragrances.

There were also a few boring “CO2 detector” (albeit one to terrify children according to getwired) and “Motion Sensor” suggestions.

My favorite was GuyGregorys suggestion that  it’s a Stormtrooper

Ed89 almost managed to convince me it was a device for monitoring your power usage, and the colored lights indicate how acceptable your current usage level is.

But the truth was discovered by GarryMumford, GlennBookingBug, GirlCheese and our very own CTO TimMcOwan – it’s actually an ultra sonic rodent repeller.

A thread on UK Business Forums caught my attention today.Kelvin White is a driving instructor and asks for accounting software recommendations for his small business. He is in fact a sole trader driving instructor.  He has no need to file VAT returns or issue invoices to his customers. As well as the usual recommendations, some people suggested that as his requirements are simple, he should just use a spreadsheet.

Forgetting for a moment the room for human error in using a spreadsheet, it is in fact a perfectly good tool for simply keeping a record of the income and expenditure for this type of business.

So, should Kelvin just use a spreadsheet? If all he wants to do is record basic accounting data, it’ll probably suffice. What those that recommend a spreadsheet seem to overlook is the fact that your accounts are much more than just the data needed for the tax man at the end of the year.

Your accounting data is the underlying information about your business and if it’s recorded in a proper accounting application like KashFlow then  you can get so much more useful information from that data.

As an example: with a spreadsheet  Kelvin would have a hard time analysing where his new driving students come from – ie, how they hear about his services. With KashFlow you simply tag each new customer with the relevant source of business from your list of sources. This means you can, in just a couple of clicks, see instantly what sources of business work for you and which don’t.

Income By Source

This is just one of the many non-accounting type reports that can be generated from your accounting data and give non-accountant types insights into their business.

Additionally, the services Kelvin sells and the business-related purchases he makes can also be tagged so that when it comes to self-assessment time, the majority of the work is already done and the numbers for most boxes on the self assessment form are calculated. Thus reducing the bill he’ll get from an accountant at then end of the year.

An accounting application will give you the tools you need to reconcile your accounting entries against your bank account to make sure everything is entered correctly.

Yes, in theory a spreadsheet can also do all of the above. But the more you want the spreadsheet to do, the more laborious data entry becomes and the more room for error.

In summary, I think it’s quite short-sighted to see accounting as just something you have to do to keep the tax man happy and therefore opt for the most basic option possible for inputting data without considering the importance of getting useful intelligence back from that data

I attended a shareholders meeting last night for a small start-up.

The marketing manager mentioned their “viral coefficient”.

I had to raise my hand and ask what a viral coefficient actually is. The embarrassment was only slightly lessened when the majority of other people in the room confessed they’d never heard of it either.

Embarrassment quickly turned to shame once it was explained to me. It’s such a simple concept and one I really should have known.

I’m operating on the assumption that some readers of this blog may not be familiar with the concept either. So to save you embarrassment , here it is:

A viral co-efficient of 1 means each of your customers in turn brings you one more customer. It’s as simple as that. So a coefficient of 0.5 means every other customer brings you a new one. 0.1 would mean one in ten customers bring you a new customer.

So the goal is to achieve as high a number as possible. I’m told Facebook has a viral coefficient of 12. So each user brings in 12 others. A nice position to be in as once you pass 1, your users/customers grow exponentially.

When I started KashFlow I thought a SaaS business would be a relatively simple affair in terms of what the costs would be and where the income would come from. Things never pan out exactly as you expect.

So here I’m going to share some numbers with your from our performance for 2009 and some of our strategy.

If you’re starting or growing a SaaS business then it might be useful for you. If you’re a customer or partner then it’ll hopefully give you an insight into what we’ve been up to and what our plans are.

The 2008 numbers for comparison

In 2008 we turned over around £250k and made a very small profit. We were based in a cheap office in Essex and there were only around 4-5 staff. A quick look at my blog from the beginning of 2009 shows we started the year with 2,500 customers.

The 2009 headline numbers

We ended 2009 with well over 5,000 customers and turned over around £500k. So essentially the business doubled in size.

Despite the extra income, we didn’t make much more of a profit. There are now nearly 17 of us in the company and we’ve ditched the office in Essex and have a lovely place in central London.

Revenue split

Only 60% of our income in 2009 came direct from end-users that pay us monthly subscriptions for using the main accounting software.

The remaining 40% came from the partners that we work with via our Partner Programme. These are mainly accountants of which we now have over 220.

A few percentage points of the revenue is from our add-on automated PayPal accounting service.

Where’s the money gone?

Of the £500k we brought in throughout 2009, close to 60% went on salaries and sales commission, about 7% on rent and the remainder is made up of lots of little expenses like hardware, desks, staff training, utility bills and coffee – lots of coffee.

Our phone bill for the year was close to £8k. We have an 0800 number so we pay for all the inbound calls, but the bulk of this was actually outbound sales calls to accountancy practices.

What surprises me is how little we spent on marketing. Far less than 10% of our total expenditure. And a sizeable chunk of that was on a single exhibition.

Growing the eco-system

A big part of our strategy is growing an eco-system around our accounting API.  This has grown a lot in 2009. We started the year with less than 10 integrated applications and now have well over 20 with many more on the way.

Really Simple Systems CRM have just started beta testing their integration and we have some cool stuff in the works with Receipt Angel.

The only hiccup we’ve had is with our FreshBooks integration. They were understandably unimpressed with the orginal version of my blog post announcing the integration because it had a sentence that pointed out one of the obvious reasons for integrating – that you could migrate entirely from FreshBooks to KashFlow if you needed a full accounting system rather than just a great invoicing app. So they decided not to list us on their site with all of the other apps that are integrated with them.

Having other applications integrated with us brings a number of benefits. We get exposure to the customer base of the integrated app, our existing customers get more benefit and KashFlow becomes a more compelling offering for potential customers.

It also helps to ensure customers stay with us. We don’t believe in vendor lock in so make it very easy for customers to leave us with all of their data  if they want to. If they’re using a number of applications that all feed accounting data back to KashFlow then it’s one less reason to leave us.

We”re continuing to add lots of new functions to our API so developers can deliver more usable products to their customers.

Our iPhone app is on the way very soon too. I promise!

White Label and Resellers

We’ve quietly launched a white-label version of KashFlow already and you’ll see a couple of well known names (including a FTSE100 firm) releasing web-based accounting software this year that is actually KashFlow under the hood. We’re also working hard on the reseller channel and getting some great (poncy buzzword alert!) synergistic partnerships up and running.

Resellers in other territories

We’re not currently planning on actively marketing in other countries – there’s still plenty  to do in the UK market. But we’ve been approached by many companies that want to resell KashFlow in all sorts of countries from Iran to UAE and the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

It’s something we originally shied away from. Localising an accounting package isn’t fun. If you’re planning a global SaaS business now go with CRM instead of accounting!

But with the necessary localisation work now done, we’re about to finalise agreements  with resellers in two foreign territories.

Needless to say, we expect great things from these partnerships.

What I expect for 2010

We have a good office and plenty of room to grow in to. The expensive hiring of experienced people is done too. So I’m not expecting our fixed cost to increase by much. Although a lot of our new costs were only brought in towards the end of the year, so expenditure will increase in 2010.

We may need to increase our infrastructure costs if our user base continues to grow as it has for the last few months. We now average over 60 trial sign ups every day and we’re working hard on converting those into paying customers at higher and higher rates.

With everything we have going on, I’ll be disappointed if we don’t more than double our turnover to significantly > £1m this year.

So given I expect to double income and keep expenses relatively flat – what to do with the excess money?

We’ll probably start by hiring more developers. It’s important that we continue to innovate and add the new features our customers are asking for.

We’re also already on the look out for an addition to our support team. The vast majority of our new customers come from word of mouth referrals, and this is largely down to the great job the support guys do. So investing in support staff brings in more business.

We really should also be spending a lot more on marketing. People I speak to are always surprised at how little money we actually spend on marketing considering our relatively high profile in the accounting software space.

So it’s exciting to think what we could achieve with a solid marketing plan with some money behind it. The goal is to become the default choice when it comes to accounting software for small business and startups.

I hope that this was useful to someone besides the competitors that seem to be multiplying like rabbits!

The thing about cults is they don’t tell you the bad news until you’ve handed over your life savings and moved into the compound. It’s not until your first night in the dorms that they tell you you’re obliged to let the leader have his wicked way with your wife.

The same is true of the Apple cult.

The iPhone is good, but it has its downsides and falls over on some pretty basic functionality. But of course the fanboys don’t talk about it until you’re lured in and deemed to be one of them, and even then it’s in hushed tones.

I’ve been a BlackBerry fan for years and I never thought anything could replace my beloved Curve. The main thing that had put me off moving to the iPhone was the keyboard. I can bash out an email pretty quickly on the curve keyboard and didn’t think I’d be able to achieve the same speed with a touch screen.

Call it a mid-life crisis (at 31), a desire to be cool, maybe the desire for a decent web browser or perhaps even just a case of app-envy – but I decided to give the iPhone a try.

Let me firstly say my concerns about the keyboard were unfounded. Once you get used to it you can be just as fast as you can be with a BlackBerry. I made the mistake of trying to use the keyboard in landscape mode thinking it’d be easier as it’s spread over more space. It doesn’t help though. Your thumbs have to travel a greater distance. If you’re coming from a Blackberry then you’ll find it easier to stick with the familiar narrow keyboard.

It’s a really nice bit of kit but here are some of the limitations I’ve found that might be useful to know if you’re considering the switch yourself.

Lack of sound settings

On a BlackBerry you’re used to being able to configure the ringtone and volume for every little thing independently. So you can have one tone and volume for messages and another for calls. Not so with the iPhone. One volume level for everything.

Lack of choice on ringtones

Being used to select any MP3 for my ringtone, I was disappointed to find I can’t do that with the iPhone. I’m aware you can mess around with a file in iTunes to get your own MP3s as ringtones. But it’s a bit of a kerfuffle.

Not a standalone device

I can’t remember the last time I had to attach my Blackberry to a computer. There was no need. Email, contacts and calendar synched over the air to our Zimbra mail server and everything else could be done on the phone itself. With the iPhone you really need to have a computer with iTunes on it to set it up and maintain it.

Single indicator and options for all mail accounts

On the Blackberry I had a product called NotifySync that hooked up to my Zimbra server for personal mail and I used the native mail client to monitor support emails. I managed to get a similar arrangement on the iPhone by setting up two email accounts. However, the indicator telling me how many emails I have is now useless as it includes new emails in all accounts. There’s not a way to have it just show the count for selected accounts. The same problem exists with the alert settings for each account – whatever you select applies to all mail accounts.

No flashing light

With the Blackberry, I could set it to have the small LED flashing if there was a new email. No such option with the iPhone. You either have to be audibly alerted to new emails or periodically pick it up and activate it.

No options for “Home” screen

The thing I miss about the BlackBerry is it’s “Today” view where you can see immediately your next couple of diary entries and unread emails aty a glance on the main screen. No such option with the iPhone. Just pretty square icons.

Accessory compatibility

I prefer to have a charger in the office and at home so I don’t have to carry one around. I had a docking station at home that charged an iPod so I foolishly assumed this would also charge the iPhone. It doesn’t. Despite having the same physical connection the iPhone complained that the “accessory” wasn’t compatible with it and couldn’t be used to charge it.

Disclaimer

I may have missed the options for some of the above – if so please do correct me using the comments section below. I’m aware some of the issues might be resolved by “jailbreaking” the phone too.

There are plenty of good things about the iPhone too – so I will be sticking with it. But the truth needs to be told!

Pass through London Bridge mainline station during any evening rush hour and you’ll see someone from one of the shops there trying to get you to take a free sample of their food. Not once have I ever seen anyone stop and take anything.

It’s hardly surprising as everyone is rushing to get to a seat on their train and get home to EastEnders/their family/the cat as quickly as possible.

I’m guessing at some point the shop will give up and decide giving out free samples (or trying to) just doesn’t work.

But how different would it be if they tried giving out free samples in the morning when people are coming off the trains and heading in to work?

I actually wrote this blog entry last night at about 8pm. But there was no point me publishing it at this time as I know it’ll get many more views if I publish it during the working day and tweet about it then rather than in the evening.

Timing really matters.

I read with interest a post on Emily Hill’s blog about Dell claiming to have made £6.5m from their Twitter activity. Well done. Dell! Twitter is very useful as a sales channel/tool, I’ve previously written about how it’s been really useful to me in growing KashFlow.

Whilst Dell seem to be doing very well from Twitter on the sales front, they’re doing considerably worse with using it for customer service or brand monitoring. It’s in the brand monitoring stakes that Twitter comes into its own. Where else can you be instantly informed about a dissatisfied customer having a moan about you?

A number of big companies have sussed this out already and are very good at looking out for unhappy customers or would-be customers and nipping the problem in the bud. Some companies even have a dedicated Twitter or social media team that are highly responsive. Whether this two-tiered approach to customer service is healthy or not it a debate for another day.

If you tweet something negative about Virgin Media, Rackspace or (dare I say it) Sage, their Twitter team will pick it up pretty much instantly and do their best to help you out.

Vodafone are a little slower (see “It’s over, Vodafone. I’m leaving you“) but still making an effort.

Dell just don’t seem to care at all.

I had a whinge on Twitter (as you do) about problems trying to place an order with them and then with actually getting an order date that didn’t move every week. Even directing messages directly to Dell didn’t illicit a response.

I’m not alone. @NetHosted has been having, and tweeting about, a whole myriad of issues in dealing with Dell and just gets ignored by them.

By sourcing sales leads from Twitter, they’re only going to make the problem worse. These new customers, by the very nature of where Dell got them in the first place, use Twitter. So if they’re not happy, you can be sure they’ll be tweeting about it.

Watch out for the Dell backlash, it’s coming.

Speak to any accountant who works with small businesses and they’ll tell you HMRC are a nightmare to deal with. Their systems, both technical and procedural, just aren’t fit for purpose

The accounting forum on UKBF is full of war stories. A company I’m involved with (not KashFlow) is owed around £4.5k as a tax rebate. So far it’s been over 3 months since it was asked for and we’re no closer to getting it.

The “accepted” procedure to claim a rebate seems to be to write to HMRC three or four times, then call them to find out why they’ve not responded. You then get told they never received your letters. Then write again another three or four times before phoning for the latest excuse. Thankfully the company can survive even with the cashflow problems this creates.

If it wasn’t such a complete waste of everyones time it’d be funny.

I say “everyones time” but invariably it’s the accountants that lose out. Our accountants don’t charge us more because of HMRCs ineptitude. HMRC don’t re-imburse the accountant for the wasted hours spent writing and chasing letters and making phone calls. So it’s the accountants loss. We all, as taxpayers, also lose out indirectly due the huge waste of resources (funded by us) at HMRC.

There are a number of bodies that represent accountants, with the ICAEW being one of the more prominent. What I don’t understand is why none of these bodies appear to be doing anything to redress this situation that has been going on for years.

I’m amazed that questions aren’t being asked in parliament about this. The overall cost to the economy must be quite significant.

Why do accountants seem resigned to unquestioningly playing their role in this farce?

Why aren’t they asking their industry bodies to use their combined clout to get something done?

After the Global Entrepreneurship Week launch event last Monday I went along to the IoD for the final of The Pitch. Think Dragons Den without the TV cameras.

It was an entertaining afternoon with 6 businesses pitching for a prize package worth £50,000, Anthony Lau, Founder of Cyclehoop was crowned the winner.

One thing that did worry me was the finalists response when asked about their marketing plan. For some of them their entire marketing plan could be summed up in one word: Google. “If you search for x we’re number one on Google”.

It’s something I see way too often. Relying on natural traffic from Google for your sales is a very precarious position to be in. Google can change it’s algorithm overnight and you can drop from page 1 to page 100 – effectively putting you out of business.

Whilst free traffic (as opposed to paid-for Adwords) is highly desirable – and we certainly do well from it ourselves – you should never rely on it as your primary source of new business.

If you’re ranking well now then great – but make sure you use the revenue generated by that traffic to implement a marketing plan so that you’re not so dependent on one source for your livelihood.

What’s almost as worrying is the  judges apparent willingness to accept “Google” as an acceptable response to “What’s your marketing plan?”.

It isn’t.