Yesterday I found out that our contact form had been broken since January 5th. No one knows why, and it doesn’t really matter. What does matter is the 968 emails that had been submitted through the form, and then trapped in a mail server, never making their way to us.
I, quite honestly, felt sick to my stomach as I read through emails from people asking for help with Actionable Workshops or making suggestions on ways we could improve the functionality, emails from authors and publishers and potential clients.
It was the repeat emails that were the worst. A few people getting more and more frustrated as their multiple, unreplied-to-emails piled up. I felt terrible.
So what do you do?
I was originally going to title this post “being human” meaning, of course, that we all make mistakes and it’s ok, so long as we learn from them. But that sounded like I was excusing myself. And that’s not my big takeaway from this experience, anyway.
The big takeaway is about being available. Particularly as a small business owner, nothing is more important than developing multiple connection points with your clients; your people. There should have been a phone number on the contact form from the get go. There was a contact number in the welcome email for workshop subscribers, but it should have been listed again in their dashboard. And finally, I should have reached out. It’s not like we have so many customers that I couldn’t call them all once a month, if I wanted to – if I made it a priority. It’s so easy to let that stuff slip by though… you get busy with attracting the next customer, with the next product upgrade. You gotta ask yourself though – what’s more important than connecting with your tribe?
Lesson learned.
