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.
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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. Fortunately, I never keep all my eggs in one basket and I did have my main website up and running still in a CMS 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.
I quickly got on the phone to the head of my technical team to find out what was going on and we found that it was a problem with the hosting provider’s hardware and it was likely to take some time to fix, due to all kinds of excuses to do with installation, delivery and outside vendors, 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). Whenever you have a virtual business, you rely totally on your server as it represents everything about you online, your bricks and mortar if you will and you will find that if it goes down, it’s just like having your house destroyed in a storm. I am ditching my straw house for a brick one.
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!
Five Laws to Remember When You Need to Deliver Bad News to Your Clients
LAW 1 — NOTIFY THEM
Tell your customers as soon as you’re able to and don’t think that putting it off will help, because it will only make it worse.
LAW TWO — EXPLAIN EVERYTHING
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
Outline everything that you are doing to fix the problem and lay out the progress ahead.
LAW FIVE — APOLOGISE
Thank them for their patience and apologise for the inconvenience.
Here is the actual email which I sent to clients regarding my very real disaster:
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 includes http://support.virtualmissfriday.com and http://office.virtualmissfriday.com
We understand from the hosting providers that they are working around the clock to have the problem fixed as soon as possible.
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. Please note if you are waiting for design drafts, we will wait 24 hours before delivering these to you in anticipation that the issue is resolved by then.
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