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  <p>
   As the second month of this indefinite quarantine draws to a close, it's
    easy to feel like time has stopped.  It seems so quaint that we once
    complained about our commutes, like all our priorities have been reset.
    But some priorities don't change, and other than diverting all the funds
    from Expensify.org to help feed families on the
   <a>
    SNAP
      program
   </a>
   (help us help them by
   <a>
    enabling
      Corporate Karma
   </a>
   , using your Expensify Card, or visiting
   <a>
    Expensify.org/donate
   </a>
   ), we've been
    laser focused on the one thing we know every customer wants:
   <strong>
    faster
      customer support via Concierge.
   </strong>
  </p>
  <p>
   I won't beat around the bush -- Concierge has been our top customer
    complaint, for years.  There are reasons, of course, the biggest being that
    most questions to Concierge aren't even about Expensify.  This means our
    team is trained not just on every detail of Expensify, but also on the
    nuanced best practices of using a dozen accounting packages across a
    hundred global jurisdictions.  But it being hard for us to scale doesn't
    change the fact that it's been unacceptably slow for years to get a
    response from Concierge.  To help visualize that, here's how many support
    requests we get per week to Concierge (the blue bars), and here's how long
    it has taken us to respond to each (the red line, in hours):
  </p>
  <img alt="chart-01" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fd2k5nsl2zxldvw.cloudfront.net%252Fimages%252Fnewsletter%252F2020-04%252Fexpensify-newsletter-chart_01.png/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZkMms1bnNsMnp4bCJ9:1kXMof:AkhLzoImG0aDdqIHgRE29-WWsIEv6MCU-o-M9kxwfhI" width="600"/>
  <p>
   As you can see, even though we're often "decent", there are way too many
      weeks where the average response took tens of hours, or even days.  And
      even if most of the time it doesn't take nearly that long, once you wait
      multiple days for a response in frustrated silence, you never forget.
      Thankfully, at long last, I'm very happy to report that for the first
      time ever, we've crossed a key threshold: response times are down to a
      half-hour on average (and much faster for most).  If we zoom in on just
      2020, it looks like this:
  </p>
  <img alt="chart-02" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fd2k5nsl2zxldvw.cloudfront.net%252Fimages%252Fnewsletter%252F2020-04%252Fexpensify-newsletter-chart_02.png/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZkMms1bnNsMnp4bCJ9:1kXMof:AkhLzoImG0aDdqIHgRE29-WWsIEv6MCU-o-M9kxwfhI" width="600"/>
  <p>
   The past few weeks have shown a massive, sustained reduction in response
      times despite consistent volumes -- somewhere near 30x faster, and
      trending toward 100x.  This isn't due to a reduction of volume (as the
      charts show), it's entirely due to very expensive hiring, process, and
      technology changes we've invested in over the past three years to create
      these results.  And we're not even close to done: going forward, response
      times will be measured in minutes, and we're well on track to get that to
      be single-digit minutes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
  </p>
  <p>
   So that's the good news.  The bad news is all this happened right as the
      worst pandemic in a century struck.  And given that our primary customer
      is the business traveler, when business travel drops by 95% -- that takes
      a toll on us.  To put that into perspective, here's how our SmartScan
      volume (ie, the number of receipts scanned per week) has trended -- down
      over 60% from the start of COVID-19, and continuing to worsen:
  </p>
  <img alt="chart-03" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fd2k5nsl2zxldvw.cloudfront.net%252Fimages%252Fnewsletter%252F2020-04%252Fexpensify-newsletter-chart_03.png/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZkMms1bnNsMnp4bCJ9:1kXMof:AkhLzoImG0aDdqIHgRE29-WWsIEv6MCU-o-M9kxwfhI" width="600"/>
  <p>
   In fact, when you combine a few different leading indicators together,
      we're staring down the barrel of a 50-70% reduction in revenue, without
      any certainty of when or if it will ever come back.  Even more alarming,
      we are anticipating a crippling reduction in revenue even though our
      support costs are higher than ever.  Basically, not many travelers are
      travelling, but all their policy admins are still asking for help just as
      much as ever (and in many cases, more).
  </p>
  <p>
   This is a pickle, to say the least, with three possible solutions:
  </p>
  <ol>
   <li>
    Do nothing, and quietly go out of business.
   </li>
   <li>
    Dial back all the work we did to get response times down to minutes and return to multi-day support times.
   </li>
   <li>
    Increase revenue per customer to keep funding high-speed customer support, at the scale that customers need it.
   </li>
  </ol>
  <p>
   Now in the spirit of full disclosure, I should mention that this problem
      wasn't created by COVID.  We've always known that increasing support
      speed was going to be difficult at our cut-rate price (the same since
      2009!), and had to do something.  Our preferred "something" was to
      convert users over to our new Expensify Card -- which is absolutely free
      for you to use.
   <a>
    No setup costs,
        no fees
   </a>
   .
  </p>
  <p>
   There are of course many reasons for that, the most important being that
      it truly is the best way to use the product.  If you aren't using the
      Expensify Card, you're just living in the past.  It's a completely
      different experience, like the first time you scanned a receipt with your
      phone.  You just can't go back.
  </p>
  <p>
   A second reason was to fund our
   <a>
    Expensify.org/hunger
   </a>
   campaign
      via the Expensify Card's built in
   <a>
    Karma
        Points
   </a>
   program, which has already reimbursed thousands of families
      (and more every day) for groceries to help get through this crisis.
  </p>
  <p>
   But I won't lie -- a third reason was simply to earn interchange off of
      each card purchase, primarily to subsidize our increased support costs
      without needing to raise prices on anyone.  We like our low price and
      want to keep it for the most people possible -- especially in these
      difficult times where tight expense management is more important than
      ever.  And things were trending great!  Until… they weren't:
  </p>
  <img alt="chart-04" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fd2k5nsl2zxldvw.cloudfront.net%252Fimages%252Fnewsletter%252F2020-04%252Fexpensify-newsletter-chart_04.png/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZkMms1bnNsMnp4bCJ9:1kXMof:AkhLzoImG0aDdqIHgRE29-WWsIEv6MCU-o-M9kxwfhI" width="600"/>
  <p>
   The long and short of it is, we can't offer super fast support and
      maintain our super low prices.  We tried to accomplish this with the
      card, but then the global pandemic hit, and the world as we knew it
      changed almost literally overnight.  As one of the increasingly rare
      profitable tech companies, we have taken great pride in our ability to
      service almost 100,000 small business customers while maintaining our
      market bottom prices, and still being able to pay our bills.  We had
      previously believed our profit margins were thick enough to keep us
      "recession proof", but it now seems we aren't "pandemic proof".
  </p>
  <p>
   So the brass tacks are as follows.  Starting on your June 1st bill:
  </p>
  <ul>
   <li>
    Anyone who uses the Expensify service as intended (which is "bundled"
        with the
    <a>
     Expensify Card
    </a>
    ) will
        continue enjoying the current rock-bottom pricing (so long as the card
        is used for at least 50% of approved spend).  At this point, using
        Expensify without the Expensify Card is as crazy as using it without
        the Expensify app.  You can do it, but it's just not ideal for anyone.
        (Note: We are working hard to bring the Expensify Card to the UK,
        Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.)
   </li>
   <li>
    If you can't or won't adopt the card, we need to add an "unbundling
        fee" to replace the interchange revenue we would otherwise use to
        subsidize the increased cost to support you at our new speeds going
        forward.
   </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
   To put those options in context, here's a breakdown of what a typical
      company spends on financial technology services:
  </p>
  <img alt="chart-05" src="https://inboxflows.com/_/image/https%253A%252F%252Fd2k5nsl2zxldvw.cloudfront.net%252Fimages%252Fnewsletter%252F2020-04%252Fexpensify-newsletter-chart_05.png/?inbox_flows_img_sig=eyJwYXRoIjoiaHR0cHMlM0ElMkYlMkZkMms1bnNsMnp4bCJ9:1kXMof:AkhLzoImG0aDdqIHgRE29-WWsIEv6MCU-o-M9kxwfhI" width="600"/>
  <p>
   So whether or not you choose to use the Expensify Card, Expensify is
      still one of the cheapest parts of your back office stack.  And if you
      use the Expensify Card as we recommend, it is the cheapest part of your
      stack, by a huge margin.
  </p>
  <p>
   Regardless, I know it's tough to hear about any price change in the
      midst of a crisis.  But it's better than hearing about us compromising on
      the quality of the service (or shutting down), which are our only
      realistic alternatives.  The full 100% unbundling fee has already gone
      into effect for all new customers, but to minimize the near-term effects
      on existing customers and to give you time to adopt the Expensify Card
      internally:
  </p>
  <ul>
   <li>
    Annually subscribed seats won't see this unbundling fee until their subscription renews.
   </li>
   <li>
    We're going to phase in the unbundling fee slowly over the course of 12 months for existing customers.
   </li>
   <li>
    Existing customers on "pay-per-use" pricing (or overage pricing for annual subscriptions) will experience this fee as it gradually increases.
   </li>
  </ul>
  <p>
   Taken together, this should hopefully give you plenty of time to either
      adopt the Expensify Card or absorb this new cost: even though it's such a
      small amount of total back office spend, we know every dollar matters.
  </p>
  <p>
   With that in mind, and in the spirit of helping the maximum number of
      people possible during this difficult time (which is as much an economic
      crisis as a health crisis), we are also
   <strong>
    increasing the free
        SmartScan limit by 5x
   </strong>
   from 5 SmartScans/mo to 25/mo for our
      Track and Submit plans (both of which are targeted to individuals).  This
      is generally more than enough scans to capture your monthly purchases for
      fine-grained personal cash flow management, which all of us are forced to
      do in these uncertain times.
  </p>
  <p>
   Thank you for reading, and thank you for choosing to use Expensify for
      your expense management needs.  We are working truly around the clock to
      earn your business every day, and I appreciate you taking the time to
      understand the full situation and trade-offs we have to make when it
      comes to providing the best service possible at the lowest possible cost.
  </p>
  <p>
   -david
   <br/>
   Founder and CEO of Expensify
  </p>
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    94103
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