Play Video about Lamarr Edward Ferguson
Ever get screwed by a service provider so badly that it affected your clients?
Learn from my problem
Summary:
1. Have partners you can trust
2. Have a backup and a backup of the backup
3. UNDERSTAND your clients clients lifetime value
4. Be prepared to hire a new partner on the spot in order to save your business
* BE VERY WEARY OF ALL IN ONE TOOLS (you have been warned)
#throwbackthursday #serverfailure #webdesign #websitehosting #websitemanagement #wordpress #getamanager #serviceprovider #manager #queue #onhold #clientsclient #website https://business.thewebpagesite.com #business #smallbusinessowners #smallbusiness
Full Transcript
00:00
greetings everyone
00:02
have you ever been in a scenario
00:04
where one of your partners let you down
00:06
so bad
00:08
that it not only affected you
00:10
but it also affected your clients
00:14
well
00:15
for in in the spirit of throwback
00:17
thursday i'm going to talk about a
00:18
scenario that came up when i was first
00:20
starting the hosting component of my
00:22
business a few years back
00:24
and um
00:26
um it just reminded me the importance of
00:30
having backups
00:32
so while i'm telling the story feel free
00:34
to comment to time in
00:36
um and also if you have the opportunity
00:38
go ahead and to like and to subscribe to
00:41
this particular channel
00:43
okay so
00:45
when i first started my the hosting
00:47
component of my agency
00:50
i was looking for hosting and what do we
00:52
all do we you know starting a business
00:54
we work with what we have and the tools
00:56
and the means that what we have and we
00:58
trust that the partners out there are
01:01
doing what they need to do to take care
01:03
of us to make sure that we have what we
01:04
need to be successful so i went online
01:07
and i found one of the hosting companies
01:10
that did wordpress hosting and i'm like
01:12
yes they are the one and now you
01:14
probably know this company i'm not going
01:15
to mention them but it's a pretty big
01:18
company and they say yeah we'll do all
01:20
this stuff we'll we'll take care of your
01:21
environment
01:22
and they have like tons and tons of ads
01:25
so just think about going through your
01:27
your youtube feed and you see like all
01:28
these ads and and all these celebs and
01:31
and you're like yeah they're about it
01:33
they spend the money on the ads
01:35
uh and uh they're gonna do the thing
01:37
they're gonna do right by me
01:38
anyway
01:40
at some point in the relationship with
01:42
this vendor the server started having
01:45
some critical
01:46
failures and it was experiencing
01:48
instability like it was so bad that the
01:51
server i guess it hung up or something i
01:52
wasn't even getting like when the server
01:54
goes down and it's unavailable you'll
01:56
get like a 403 error like it was just
01:58
widescreen it was just nothing or
01:59
sometimes it would just try to load so
02:02
there was definitely something happening
02:03
on the server on the back end and what i
02:05
do i'm like yeah i got the team in the
02:07
back end let me contact support so i
02:09
jump in on the phone
02:11
i'm like look hey guys my phone is
02:13
blowing up like a christmas tree i'm
02:14
getting all these messages from the
02:16
server telling me that my websites are
02:18
going up and down and so you know just
02:21
some background information us and it um
02:24
especially those that have been in the
02:26
server side of the house
02:27
we're used to getting alerts when
02:28
there's an issue and we respond quickly
02:30
on those alerts because we typically
02:32
know that there's an issue so in in my
02:34
environment we have uptime on the
02:36
servers and we have uptime on the uptime
02:38
so if there's something that happens on
02:39
the back end we know that there's
02:41
something especially if it happens
02:43
across multiple clients simultaneously
02:44
so it's not just
02:46
uh one system
02:48
anyway so
02:50
contact level one support and i'm trying
02:52
to tell them look guys i work in i.t
02:54
i've been doing this stuff for for many
02:55
many years 20 plus years it's like
02:57
there's an issue with the system no no
02:59
sir we have to go through the script we
03:00
have to go through the troubleshooting
03:01
i'm like fine let's go through the
03:03
troubleshooting i'm telling you i did
03:04
this stuff already so we're going
03:06
through the list and i'm saying in the
03:07
back of my mind
03:09
this is going to be bad if my clients
03:11
websites are going down so okay
03:14
side side parking lot
03:16
if you don't understand what it means
03:18
what your product really means to your
03:20
client
03:21
i encourage you to go back and to really
03:23
understand what your clients the value
03:26
of your product is to your clients so
03:27
for me we deal with doctors dentists
03:30
lawyers accountants uh that sort of
03:32
profile
03:34
i'll just pick one so the dentist a
03:36
dentist if they get a new client guess
03:39
how much that is to them in in in their
03:41
business that is about fifteen thousand
03:44
dollars yes
03:45
one dental patient is about fifteen
03:47
thousand dollars
03:48
and
03:50
um
03:51
some of these clients that we have they
03:53
get several of these new patients a day
03:57
and so
03:58
them their website being down
04:01
it's lost some money for them like
04:03
significant loss of money now
04:06
and and that lots of money is well
04:07
beyond what you know i'm paying for this
04:09
environment so you know that behooves me
04:11
to make sure that they're taken care of
04:13
so
04:15
um
04:16
yes so understanding the lifetime value
04:18
of your clients clients is huge so make
04:21
sure you do that because that it will
04:22
give you a whole another perspective in
04:24
terms of
04:25
the service and the value of the service
04:27
that you're providing for your clients
04:29
um and those aren't my numbers the
04:31
dentist numbers those are the american
04:32
dental association numbers so if you
04:34
think i'm just pulling out the the
04:35
rabbit hat no those are actually numbers
04:37
they've done it over the years
04:39
anyway jumping back to this thing so i'm
04:40
on a phone call with this guy for like
04:42
an hour i'm like please
04:45
don't do this to me and he's like yeah i
04:48
don't think i don't think i can fix it
04:50
i'm like
04:52
yeah really sherlock i'm telling you
04:54
there's something with the server please
04:55
escalate to the back teams like well i
04:57
can't escalate it that's like well put
04:58
me in contact with the manager there's
05:00
no managers available and so at that
05:03
point
05:04
i
05:07
i asked him to escalate it to another
05:08
team so he transferred me to another
05:10
team member
05:11
it's so comical i literally sat in holes
05:14
for 25 minutes
05:16
while it transitioned to the next person
05:20
and then when i got the next person it's
05:22
like that first conversation i had an
05:24
hour and a half ago it never ever
05:27
existed i'm literally telling the
05:29
technician the same exact story i'm like
05:32
do these people not do case notes do
05:34
they not did they not have a hand over
05:36
conversation when he transferred it to
05:38
the next person what's going on here
05:40
and
05:42
at this point i'm getting anxious i'm
05:44
getting upset because i paid this money
05:46
for this environment so now
05:48
if you've ever purchased some tech
05:50
service you'll realize that a lot of the
05:52
times the the service agreements are
05:56
like one year two year three year
05:58
agreements for the environment so i'm
06:00
like uh i think at this point i'm like a
06:02
year year and a half into the agreement
06:04
so it's like you know it's a long-term
06:06
agreement another side car
06:08
one of the reasons this is one of the
06:10
reasons that one of the things that i do
06:13
not like about some agreements which is
06:15
why our maintenance agreements if you
06:17
look at our maintenance agreements they
06:18
are month to month so that way our
06:21
clients so our service and our
06:22
performance um allow us to keep our
06:25
clients so if our clients say you know
06:27
we're not happy with your service they
06:29
can leave at the end of the month and i
06:31
want them to leave if they're not happy
06:33
but i also want them to stay if they are
06:35
happy on their own volition anyway but
06:38
that's you know that's how i want to run
06:40
my business
06:41
anyway
06:43
on the phone with the second technician
06:44
at this point i'm banging please i need
06:46
to talk to a manager so we can get the
06:49
engineering team on this and the guy's
06:51
like well i can't get to a manager
06:53
because we don't have any managers
06:54
available to talk to you but uh we can
06:57
escalate this to the engineering team
06:58
but if i send it to the engineering team
07:00
it has to go in their queue and they may
07:01
not get it for an hour or two hours i'm
07:04
like what
07:05
my clients are going down and at some
07:08
point their clients are going to contact
07:09
them and they're going to call me it's
07:11
just not a good look all around
07:13
sorry sir there's nothing we can do oh i
07:15
hate that phrase there's nothing we can
07:17
do
07:18
anyway
07:19
at this point
07:21
um it's like over two hours maybe two
07:23
and a half hours going back and forth
07:25
and then they escalated to
07:27
their team and put it in the queue and
07:30
it's in their cube uh someone looks at
07:33
it
07:34
and they're unable to resolve their
07:36
issues they're like we're gonna try some
07:37
stuff send an email um they sent me an
07:40
email at this point i'm out of the queue
07:41
system and we're down to emails
07:44
and what do you think happens
07:46
and you know in that third third and
07:48
half hour the clients call me and i'm
07:51
like damn it
07:53
how did it get this bad
07:55
so at this point
07:57
knowing that the service is down knowing
08:00
the value of the service
08:02
uh that i'm providing to my clients that
08:04
i'm losing potentially losing their
08:06
money
08:08
at this point i'm like
08:10
i have to spin up a brand new
08:12
environment for my at this point i think
08:14
i have like 12 clients
08:16
i have to purchase a new environment so
08:18
i went online within a half an hour i
08:20
had a new environment purchased and at
08:22
that point
08:23
i was
08:25
in the next hour i was restoring
08:27
all 12 of my clients from backups
08:29
so all my clients were restored from
08:31
backup everything was good so um
08:34
the the moral of that story for me is
08:36
first of all
08:38
make sure you have good partners because
08:39
your partners are crap your business is
08:41
going to be crap and you know if they if
08:43
they ghost you then you're you're you're
08:45
toast
08:46
second of all
08:48
make sure you have backups of your stuff
08:50
and so those two things go into this
08:52
next part that i'm going to tell you
08:54
about so
08:55
you guys know like the trend now is the
08:57
all-in-one business suite so it's like
08:59
yeah we'll do we'll do your hr we'll do
09:01
your um your website we'll do your
09:04
project management we'll do all of these
09:06
things the number one thing that i would
09:08
encourage you to do is to make sure that
09:11
you can have access to your data and you
09:14
can export it and back up and have the
09:16
ability to restore your your data on
09:18
another environment if needed because
09:21
i promise you if their system has some
09:23
sort of outage and look it's it everyone
09:26
guarantees the nine nines but that one
09:28
percent of the time could be when you
09:29
critically need them it could be when
09:31
you're in the middle of closing it could
09:33
be when you're having
09:34
a
09:35
an outage or you're dealing something
09:37
major for the client
09:39
that one percent
09:41
is a
09:42
big
09:43
deal for you and even if they refund you
09:46
some money that money is nothing
09:48
compared to the business
09:50
the time and the credibility that you
09:52
may lose in that
09:54
time that your service is offline
