SCOOP: After their boss emailed the company's 10 million customers saying vote Biden, Expensify employees have been under attack from fake customers and bots. But what's interesting, employees say the email has fortified their decision to work there. https://www.businessinsider.com/expensify-employees-respond-to-ceo-email-vote-biden-2020-10

This was a first for me.

I've spent the last month reporting on Coinbase, so this was an especially interesting case study in a company doing the opposite of an "apolitical" approach. Expensify CEO @dbarrett invited all employees to edit his email in Google Docs and publicly debate its contents on Slack.

And even employees who disagreed with sending the email told me they're happier than ever to work at Expensify.

The hit to the business has been minimal so far. Only a small faction of customers, 0.5%, have written into the company to talk about the email, and far fewer have gone so far as to cancel their accounts, according to employees.

The worst of the damage could still be to come as customers look for other vendors. Two Expensify competitors tell me sales leads have been up 200%+ in the seven days since Barrett's email.

My favorite nugget from reporting this story: After customer success was deluged with negative, sometimes abusive, comments, Expensify created a new triage system for complaints about the email. Senior leaders, including Barrett, are stepping in to handle those conversations.

Expensify's office is closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, so the company wasn't able to offer the usual morale boosters. Instead, employees were told to expense a nice dinner for them and a plus-one over weekend.

Are you an Expensify employee with a story to share? You can reach me at [email protected]. DM for Signal.