

Wufoo's Secret to Customer Happiness? Googly Eyes - JoelSutherland
http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/wufoos-customer-service

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fallentimes
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.

~~~
asdflkj
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.

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pchristensen
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.

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teej
This isn't meant to be an accurate analysis, but it gets halfway there. Have
your grain of salt ready.

Wufoo has pretty standard conversion rates of 7% signup, 15% free -> paid.
Each paid user nets about $13/mo. (<http://particletree.com/features/web-app-
autopsy/>)

Compete (500k/mo | <http://siteanalytics.compete.com/wufoo.com/>) and
Quantcast(250k/mo | <http://www.quantcast.com/wufoo.com>) have vastly
different total traffic numbers, but Quantcast suggests that only 15% of their
traffic are regular users.

MY GUESS: Their monthly active users are probably between 30k-75k. 30% of
their active users are paid users. I'd say they make about 250k/mo.

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

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

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floozyspeak
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.

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

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

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wayne
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
How about timesvr?

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bprater
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?

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veeneck
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.

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davidw
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?).

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petercooper

      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!

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

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rokhayakebe
Ok, Even tough Me was touched. Go Wufoo.

