A very sage business coach who I trust implicitly once said to me -- "You will always find problems in a business endeavour, especially as you expand your business and you don't need to focus on the problem itself, but rather how you handle it."
We recently enjoyed a Bank Holiday in the United Kingdom and I made the decision to close down the virtual office, in order to give some of my employees time off, especially as many of them are based over there and also to give myself some time to work on developing the business.
It was just like a normal day and I started off by going onto the computer to check that everything was working as it should and that there were no pressing issues that I had to attend to.
However, lunchtime rolled around and I happened to notice that a number of my sites were offline, including the main engine of my business -- the project management system, as well as a support desk! I cannot begin to tell you how much of a disaster this was, for me. It's really fortunate that I am prepared and had anticipated such a problem and was able to get the main website going again within a CMS, in a remote location away from the server.
Just to give you a bit of background info, at the end of last year, I moved over to a Virtual Dedicated Server because my business was growing at such a rate that my shared hosting just wasn't suitable anymore and I needed something much more reliable with daily back ups - (WOW am I glad I have those daily backups). I've had to do a number of upgrades this year, expanding both the RAM and CPU and have been reasonably happy with the VDS.
When I contacted the head of my tech team to find out what had happened to the sites, we made a horrible discovery that the hosting provider's hardware had blown and it was going to be a while before it could be fixed because of vendors, delivery, installation blah blah etc...
So this has left me with no other choice and I have decided to finally go to a fully dedicated server, and I have chosen a rather pricey, but I am told reliable solution, at ThePlanet.com - this “should” avoid anything like this happening again, and will give me some piece of mind and less grey hair (hopefully). In a virtual business the server is your foundation, your online presence, your bricks and mortar - when it doesn't work it’s like having your house blown down in a storm. I decided to give my house a firmer foundation.
So, returning to the whole point of this article, I needed to tell my clients exactly what had happened. I follow 5 basic laws when I am delivering bad news to customers - it doesn't happen very often - the last time was when I was living in France and a Storm, Xynthia, left me without an Internet connection for an unknown period of time (it turned out to be 2 days). I managed to go round a friend's house to borrow her functional Internet connection to deliver the bad news. So, whether you're looking to become virtual assistant now, looking to become virtual assistant in the future, or you've already become virtual assistant, take these tips "on board," and ensure your clients' peace of mind through whatever disasters strike!
The 5 Laws Of Delivering Bad News To Customers
LAW 1 -- NOTIFY THEM
Inform your customers as soon as possible - putting it off won’t solve anything, and could make it worse.
Law #2 EXPLAIN
Explain in brief exactly what the problem is, and be honest.
Law #3 SOLVE
Come up with the options and roll out your backup plan to give alternatives.
Law #4 PREDICT
Explain what is likely to happen next, and what you are doing (if anything) to resolve the issue.
Law #5 APOLOGISE
Thank them for their patience and apologise for the inconvenience.
This is a copy of an e-mail I sent to clients when I had that disaster we were talking about:
Dear Client,
I am writing to inform you that yesterday there was a technical error on our virtual dedicated server hardware in the US, which has caused a majority of our core sites to experience downtime. This affected http://office.virtualmissfriday.com and http://support.virtualmissfriday.com.
The hosting providers tell us that they are working incessantly to make sure that the problem is fixed promptly.
While this is happening, please contact us using the alternate e-mail at office@virtualmissfriday.net, or the "contact us" option on the website at http://www.virtualmissfriday.co.uk/contact.html, until things are back to normal.
Could you please re-forward any e-mail that you might have sent to us within the last 24 hours, and also send us any urgent requests to the back-up e-mail at office@virtualmissfriday.net.
We are doing everything we can to ensure that service remains as smooth as possible during this time. We will handle all the other assigned work, as usual, outside of the virtual office. As far as design drafts are concerned, we are going to hold back for 24 hours before sending these to you, anticipating that everything will be resolved by this time.
I would like to thank you for your patience and consideration during this time, and I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.
With Warmest Regards,
Michelle Dale
