You Are Wasting My Time. Please Leave.

Today I’m going to talk about the NOT SO FUN part of an online business:

Time Wasting Customers

Here’s the thing. I really go out of my way to help my customers. I call almost all of my customers to make sure they got their downloads okay. I spend way more time than the business experts say I should.

(If Rich Schefren was my business coach, he’d have a fit about the time I spend on non-productive tasks like customer support.)

So anyway, yesterday I got an order for a $47 product. I also got an email from the customer asking me where they could download the product. Apparently the email from my automated system hadn’t got through.

No biggie — email’s like that. So I called her up and told her I would personally send her the download link from my desktop email. I told her if she didn’t get it to let me know and I’d try sending it directly to her or figure out another way.

(In retrospect, what i should have done was read the download link to her over the phone. Next time.)

Fast forward to today. I get an email from the customer and she says the following:

You and I spoke yesterday about emailing me The Internet Marketers Little Black Book that I purchased; today is the 25th almost 9pm and I have not received it in my email. Can you please just refund me the money, I don’t think this is going to work out.

Now, this is just plain irritating to me. Maybe I’m getting cranky in my middle age. Here’s what I wrote back:

Maude (not her real name!),

I have refunded your order as you requested, but I would like to comment somewhat on this.

My system sent you an email with the download link the day you ordered. For whatever reason, you didn’t get it.

Then I again sent the download link to you (manually this time, from my desktop email client), and again you didn’t get it.

I think you need to ask your internet service provider why LEGITIMATE emails are not getting through to you.

I told you on the phone that if you didn’t get it, I’d be happy to attach the file to an email and send it to you directly. Perhaps you would have got it, and perhaps not, but you apparently decided it wasn’t worth the effort. This is very frustrating to me as a merchant who goes out of his way to help my customers.

You stated you “don’t think this is going to work out” — the only reason it didn’t work out is because you weren’t willing to give it a chance. I would have even read the download link to you over the phone had you given me the opportunity.

Had you allowed me to find some other way to get you the eBook and then decided it “wasn’t for you”, I would have been fine with that. But to just give up in this situation like you have shows a lack of respect for me and the time I have spent (and was willing to spend) in your behalf.

You have wasted my time — please do not order anything else from me unless you are willing to work with me in getting around the limitations of your email system to get the product you ordered.

Regards,

Paul

Now I have to confess, there’s a part of me that feels bad for sending this “nasty-gram” but the bigger part of me feels justified in doing so (even though I realize it’s probably counter-productive). What do you think? Did I go too far? Am I just irritable?

So what’s the lesson here? For me there are a couple:

1. I should probably start placing a download link right on the “thank you” page after people order. I resisted this for awhile, because I figured if the download link is only in the email, I guarantee that nobody will get it without a valid email address. However, I believe we’ve reached the point where the inherent unreliability of email outweighs the security risks of providing the download link right on the thank-you page.
2. I should probably let someone else handle THIS kind of customer support for me. It’s one thing to answer technical questions, but this is very basic customer support (providing a download link) and something I obviously don’t have the required “patient and long-suffering” attitude to do myself.

If you’re in a similar situation, consider these services:

http://www.workaholics4hire.com/

http://shieffservices.com/

http://www.signatureworx.com/

And since we’re on the topic of customer support, let me say one more thing . . .

I’ve been “behind the scenes” on a LOT of launches — some of the biggest in the internet marketing circles. Quite frequently the people doing the launch are unprepared for the customer support. I want you to keep this in mind — if you’re going to do 2 years worth of business volume in 7 days, you should be prepared to provide 2 years worth of customer support in the same time frame.

This means you should hire extra help — lots of it — and have them trained before the launch begins. I have yet to witness a perfect launch. (On the last launch I was involved with, we had problems with the payment processor, the BACKUP payment processor, AND the email service. Yikes!)

There’s always something that goes wrong, so make sure you have people in place to handle the huge influx of customer support emails and calls.

That’s it for now!

Paul