So over the past week or so, we were really having some issues with the service provider who hosted our blog. First it started with intermittent outages and the inability to log in. Then it escalated into hours and days where we couldn’t access our site. Then the actual blog was having issues where it would be down for hours and days at a time.
Somewhere during this crazy timeline we realized that we hadn’t backed up ANY of our posts. So during one of those windows when we could get into the site, we took a copy of everything. Yet at this time, we still weren’t dissatisfied enough to completely abandon our relationship. It was the NEXT time that the blog went down for 3 days that we said we had finally had enough.
So what lessons are to be learned from above?
1. Customer Service Does Matter Many people think that customer service is a perk that isn’t essential to a businesses success. But in today’s hyper social media charged world where you make one customer mad and 3 million people here about it in 2 minutes, you better think twice about offering bad service.
2. Customers Will Forgive You Hey, we’re all human and that means that we all make mistakes. If you’re quick to own up to your faults, then most people will give you a second chance. Face it, in America we just love the underdog and the comeback kid. But you only get a few chances to get it right before you get labeled a looser.
3. You Only Get So Much Rope If you can’t correct the root cause, own up to it, let people know what you are dealing with and let THEM make the decision to stay or go. But if you keep offering bad service, you’re going to make the decision for them. And speaking from experience, it probably will not go in your favor.
