Where FreshBooks gets its best product ideas

FreshBooks started with a lived experience. It grew by paying attention.

Over 20 years ago, co-founder Mike McDerment was a small business owner juggling SEO, marketing, and web design when he accidentally overwrote a client invoice by saving a new version in place of an older one he still needed. 

“Every time we talk to our customers, we learn new things.”

Mara Reiff, FreshBooks

It was at this moment McDerment realized there had to be a better way for the self-employed to manage and track client billing. So he started building something simpler: an invoicing solution designed around what real people actually needed. That early version became the backbone of FreshBooks.

“It’s easy for companies to say they care about customers,” said Jess Barker, Senior Director of Customer Support at FreshBooks. “But what is actually happening with that feedback, and is it being used to change a strategic direction in the business or the product roadmap?”

That approach of treating customer conversations as part of the product development process has only deepened over time—evolving from a traditional support function into a strategic input, shaping what’s built, tested, and prioritized.

More recently, it showed up in Customer Experience Week, a company-wide initiative to connect teams with real users. More than 300 global engineers, analysts, and support staff stepped away from their day-to-day work to hear directly from customers. Every employee, not just support reps, connected directly with the people using the product.

Customers have long shared that data migration felt overwhelming, time-consuming, and risky to manage alone. That feedback led to the creation of Easy Switch, a program that removes the burden by handling the migration process on their behalf.

During FreshBooks’ most recent Customer Experience Week, users said they were looking for more ongoing, personalized support. Many asked for one-on-one training and follow-up sessions to ensure they’re getting the most out of their account as their business evolves.

“Every time we talk to our customers, we learn new things,” said Mara Reiff, Chief Operating Officer at FreshBooks. “It’s always fun to learn about each customer’s unique experience and opportunity.”

FreshBooks keeps a close eye on these kinds of customer signals. Feedback comes in through direct conversations, support tickets, reviews, and user behaviour in the app. “We capture both the direct feedback and the indirect feedback that we’re receiving,” Reiff said. 

That information flows back to product and marketing teams, informing what gets built, fixed, or refined.

“We have a ‘your problem is my problem’ approach,” Reiff added. “Our support folks really take ownership of the problem. They make sure they close the loop with the customer.”

The goal isn’t to chase every piece of feedback in isolation. According to Reiff, it’s about understanding the ‘why.’ 

“What’s the problem behind the problem? What’s the question behind the question?” she said.

That mindset affects how leadership allocates resources, too. “If all we ever did was build new features, we’d never have a chance to evolve the stuff that we’ve already built,” Reiff said. “It’s a specific commitment to make sure that we are investing time and energy across the entire ecosystem of FreshBooks to do these things right.”

Internally, FreshBooks reinforces this approach from the top. Reiff said customer-centricity is reflected in how work is prioritized and how performance is measured.

“We talk about what each interaction does for our customers,” she said. “What are the questions that we’re asking? How do we make sure that we understand at every single point in time? How does it make our customers better off?”

FreshBooks also uses the 4E framework—”execute extraordinary experiences every day”—as a shared mantra across the company. 

“We really, really hold that near and dear to their hearts,” Reiff said. “We make sure that we’re instilling that behaviour in our teams from the moment that they join.”

For Barker, who started at FreshBooks nearly a decade ago as a frontline support rep, the difference between FreshBooks and her previous employers shows up in how the company sees its customers.

“Small business owners don’t have huge teams, they don’t have a lot of people to lean on,” Barker said. ”So we want to be that support to them.”

One story stuck with her. A customer once called in during a rough patch. Work wasn’t going well, and neither was life outside it. 

“The support person she talked to was so helpful and supportive and caring,” Barker said. “At that moment, nothing was going her way, and she felt like the rep was on her team. It literally changed her week, month, year, just having someone care for her at a time when she needed it.”

According to Reiff, FreshBooks is applying new tools and technologies with a single purpose: to make it easier for real people to feel seen, supported, and understood.

“For us, this is a continued commitment and investment in our customers,” Reiff said. “We’re constantly learning, changing, and adapting.”

The goal, Reiff added, is to keep improving the customer experience with the same consistency and care that shaped the product from the very beginning.

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At FreshBooks, we build by listening to our customers. Learn more about how we put feedback to work.

Feature image courtesy of Faye Pang via LinkedIn.