Pet Peeve: Why I Am Ripping My Hair Out
April 10th, 2009
I can’t be the ONLY marketer who runs into this situation.
I run about 30 extremely active websites. I have another 50 or so that run with minimal supervision… and another bunch in development at any given moment.
Now this issue doesn’t crop up too often, but it happens enough that I took great pains to avoid the problem, yet here it is again.
EMAIL IS NOT A RELIABLE FORM OF COMMUNICATION!
I just got a message from someone letting me know that THEY had received a HELP DESK TICKET because the person didn’t get a reply from an email they had sent to me – and this person (for whatever reason) decided to complain to the person who referred my services.
I HAVE A SUPPORT DESK!
If I don’t receive an email, there can be many reasons for it…
Perhaps your email was deleted as SPAM by some vigilant filter.
Maybe it got lost in the hundreds of garbage emails I get every single day and it was simply overlooked.
Perhaps I am not at my main computer for a few days due to travel, and have not yet seen it.
Or a simple misspelling of an email address sent it off to Siberia.
Whatever.
Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. are NOT a good way to reach me either. I do not monitor these for important business communications – I use them for social networking and entertainment, and do not have time to spend more than a few hours a week tending to these accounts.
I set up my Support Desk because it is FAR more reliable than email. Submitting a ticket, you can’t misspell my email address, or get lost in a SPAM filter or junk folder. If I am away from my main computer for a few days, I check my Support Desk regularly to make sure anyone who needs me gets an answer right away.
Here’s my lesson for today:
If you have an important question, concern or request that you need an answer for immediately, USE MY SUPPORT DESK.
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Hi Lisa,
Why I’M ripping my hair out
This is interesting. Firstly because I have been trying to contact you about a Tweetskin I ordered on 31st March but have heard nothing about. You promote them as being ready in 3 days.
I too tried to contact you via email but heard nothing so managed to find your support desk (by coincidence) the day after you wrote this post.
So I sent a support ticket on the 11th April but heard nothing. I sent another on the 15th April and heard nothing.
Still having heard nothing I even had an email from your support desk telling me that ‘it’ had not heard from me in 72 hours and would consider the ticket closed if I didn’t respond again within 24 hours!!!
Am I doing something wrong? You mention in this post that you check your support site regularly, so I’m hoping everything’s OK with you?
On a lighter note…
I really like the idea of a support desk and think I may well set one up for my business. Which software/service do you use?
LOL!! It’s probably not the brightest idea to approve a complaint on my blog, but then again, transparency is important – and hopefully someone else learns something from this…
So here’s the scoop (which I already emailed to you):
I apparently had some email issues last week at some point, because I had several that didn’t go where they were supposed to. I merrily work away, and send download emails to my clients and guess what? They didn’t get them! Of course I thought my butt was covered in such an instance, since I was ever so brilliant and set up a cool support desk…
Well! In all my coolness, I did some more tweaking to my support desk, and I moved some stuff around… and ended up changing my group settings so that several of my domains were invisible to me! YIKES!
When I got a paypal dispute filed, I was all indignant… until I realized that I was the idiot.
So I went through every single setting, and my desk is now purring along like a jaguar. And the best part is that I can see all the tickets now!!
I have used many different support desks, but this one works for me. It’s kinda complicated and robust, so shoot me a line and tell me what your needs are and I can point you in the right direction.
Thanks!!
Worlds best graphics are had if you can corner Ms.Preston to pay you some time… Its like waiting for Santa Claus as you know the gifts will be awesome!
thanks Joe Richey