Blimey! What a week.
After my big plans to step up a gear, the wheels wobbled and then fell off. And I want to share with you what happened and why it high lights a very valid point about doing business whether online or offline.
My blog has been down for an entire week! That’s like being laid up off work without any sick leave owing. Welcome to running your own business.
There was an issue with my blog using to much space on the shared server from my host provider. And when did I discover this? Right after they suspended my account. Not what I call great customer service. To add insult to injury this suspension occurred on a Friday night and my host provider has decided in their infinite wisdom that support shall not be readily available through-out the weekend. Earlier this year they discontinued live-chat support (red flag maybe?).
The official line is support on the weekend is available via email, with a reply in 12-24 hours. It took me 3 days to get a reply after repeatedly emailing!
Once I finally got hold of them, they told me the problem, offered no solution, and proceeded to resuspend me a further 3 times in 2 days. There response time during the week averaged 12 hours.
Apparently the issue was a particular plugin (according to them), which they de-activated, and still claimed was the problem afterwards when the issue wasn’t resolved. How did they deal with it? Suspended my account again.
Helpful…Not.
You can see where this is going can’t you.
I’m not going to bitch-fest on these guys, in fact I’m sure lots of people get great service from them. I just don’t happen to be one of them.
Which brings me back to my point for this blog.
If you want to succeed, you need to ensure that your relationships are helping you move in the direction you want to go.
Every realationship from your customers through to your suppliers and even your support network, should be helping you to achieve your goals and dreams.
If any of them are not doing that, they are effectivly dead-weight and are holding you back.
It may be time to cut your losses and move on from them.
In this case the realtionship was clearly ot working for me, their communication was appalling, and the result was I was even more frustrated and my blog was still offline. In fact for a time a whole bunch of my sites were inaccessible.
Thankfully I had no campaigns set up to run at the time. It could have ended up costing me a lot more.
I have since moved my domain to another provider who offers better support. We managed to sort out the issue and a couple of transfer problems within a much shorter timeframe.
All in all, everyone is happier now, and once my get all of my domains shifted, my previous hosting will not have to deal with me again.
This issue highlights the importance of having people and services onboard that help you move your business forward, not hinder you. what is also important is to create a contingency plan, so your revenue flow does not get interrupted, because lets be honest, life happens, it’s not a perfect world out there, and you need to minimise any impact on your business.
I know I’ll be working on a risk containment strategy as I continue to evolve my business.
Stay curious
The post The Importance Of A Strategic Relationship appeared first on .
