Building a product, brand, and culture from the ground up

Problem

CRM products were often heavy and difficult to navigate. Sales representatives had to spend considerable time entering data and documenting interactions, making the system feel like additional work. FreeAgent had an opportunity to make managing customer relationships more intuitive and less laborious.

As the first employee and founding Head of Design, I was responsible for shaping that experience from the ground up. My scope covered the application and marketing, including design direction, look, feel, and content. Alongside building the product and brand, we needed to establish how a growing team would collaborate across countries and locations.

Process

I set the design direction around reducing the effort required to use the product. We rethought how customer information was presented, moving toward a more conversational, chat-based experience. Calls, emails, and other touchpoints could be brought together in an interface that was easier to follow, with information captured or generated automatically wherever possible.

We also used FreeAgent ourselves across our sales and customer service teams. That everyday use created a practical feedback loop: we could experience the workflows directly, see where people encountered friction, and identify what needed improvement. It helped connect product decisions to the realities of the work we were supporting.

Leading a global, cross-functional team across Mexico, Canada, and the United States meant aligning marketing and development around a shared direction. Product and brand evolved together, creating consistency from a customer’s first introduction to FreeAgent through daily use of the application. A shared design system supported that consistency as the product grew. My responsibilities later expanded to Head of Product.

Building relationships across the team required deliberate attention. We made time to meet in person, share lunches, attend events, and interact beyond immediate project demands. For the distributed team, we held virtual calls with a rotating 20-minute opportunity for someone to share about themselves. These conversations helped people get to know colleagues across countries and build stronger connections.

When FreeAgent opened a sales office in Bozeman, Montana, I relocated to help establish the office and bring our culture of trust, transparency, hard work, and fun into its everyday life.

Solution

The product centered on a conversational view of customer activity, bringing calls, emails, and other interactions into a more intuitive experience. Automation reduced the need for manual entry wherever possible, helping representatives spend less effort maintaining records and more attention on their customer relationships. That conversational approach also created a foundation well suited to AI-enabled interactions.

A unified brand and design system connected marketing with the application, while internal use by sales and customer service kept the team close to the experience we were delivering. Product direction, implementation, and feedback could inform one another as the company evolved.

The same attention to experience shaped our culture. Regular opportunities to connect, both virtually and in person, helped make a geographically distributed team feel more familiar and connected.

Outcome

FreeAgent brought a product and brand to market with ease of use at the center. The conversational interface and automated capture of customer touchpoints reduced the burden of entering information, while our own teams’ daily use helped identify improvements and guide enhancements.

Intentional investment in relationships helped strengthen bonds across locations and establish the culture in a new sales office. The work brought together product strategy, design judgment, cross-functional leadership, and culture building—connecting what we wanted customers to experience with how we worked together to deliver it.