3 Lessons From A Business Owner

3.15pm, Tuesday 16th February 2016 – the phone rings. *ring ring*

Cloud Plus Engineer: “Good Afternoon, I.T. Service desk, how can I help?”

Anon: “Hi, is that Cloud Plus?”

Cloud Plus Engineer: “Yes, how can we help you?”

Anon: “Can I speak to Dominic please, it’s urgent…”

Now, if there’s one lesson I’ve learnt since starting out, it’s that when it comes to business I.T. – everything is urgent!

But this was different.

Our engineer transferred the call, I picked up the phone – and immediately I could hear the panic, fear, and concern in her voice.

“I need your help, this is getting completely out of hand” she said.

“It’s out of control. What I’m having to deal with here is unbelievable”.

Me: “Okay, what seems to be the problem?”

Little did I know the can of worms I’d just opened by uttering those words …

It soon became clear to me that yes, things were completely out of hand – and yes, it really was unbelievable.

In a nutshell:

    • They were being massively screwed over by their I.T. Company
    • AND…This had thrown their company into complete disarray

She was distraught, and the situation was ugly. Very ugly.

Essentially, their business had been bent over a barrel by their current I.T. support provider.

You’d be amazed out how many times I’ve heard this over the years.

But, do you know the worst bit about it?

Things had been going wrong a few months now. She knew it wasn’t going the right way, but she never acted on it.

By now, it was too late – and it had gone way too far.

Let’s take things back to 3 weeks ago, where all this trouble began…

THE PROBLEM

They were having email and database trouble, caused by their CRM system.

  • They couldn’t send out any marketing emails
  • They couldn’t deliver services that their customers had paid for
  • They weren’t receiving notifications when new customers enquired to  buy their products

Bad for business eh!

As you can imagine, this hugely affected their relationship with both their loyal customer base, and their prospects.

It was a real mess. But there’s usually a swift solution.

THE SOLUTION

Simply call up the I.T. guy, he’ll fix it in a jiffy, and it will all be grand, right!?…

WRONG!

Her I.T. guy had gone completely AWOL. They’d left message after message, email after email, all to no avail.

And as the minutes, hours and days went by – they were missing out on sales, and pi**ing off a load of customers. The ultimate combination…

Put yourself in her shoes. Can you imagine how detrimental this would be to your business if the same were to happen to you?

It’s really not on – and unfortunately for her, it didn’t end there…

It wasn’t until 6 days later the I.T. guy got in touch (unbelievable!).

I’m told that his words were “I’ve been too busy with other jobs”.

Oh so often this is where things start to go wrong.

They start to feel like they’re ‘doing you a favour’, hence why this issue didn’t get the priority it deserved.

At Cloud Plus, this issue would’ve been flagged by our support team as ‘Critical’, meaning anything that is affecting the business from operating.

It would’ve been top of our ‘to do’ list!

But sadly, this just isn’t the case with so many other I.T. support providers, and here’s where it gets even worse.

In recent weeks she had considered sourcing a new I.T. Support Provider, hence why she contacted me when this issue occurred. Smart move.

But their I.T. support company had caught a whiff of this, realised she was looking at alternatives, and this is what led to the disastrous situation their business was now in.

They didn’t care about her or her company anymore. They knew she was leaving.

They were taking her for granted, none of her jobs were taking priority, and she’d completely lost the love she had with them at the start.

And it had cost her business thousands in lost sales and lost customers.

Fortunately, this story does have a happy ending.

I’m delighted to say that we now have this customer on board, up and running on our Award Winning Support Service.

In fact, after the conversation we had over the phone, one of our engineers was able to remotely troubleshoot the problem (and fix it) soon after.

Now (finally!) she can relax, move forward and grow her business, without having to worry about her I.T. (as we’re taking care of that for her).

So what are the ‘THREE Important Lessons To Learn From This Distraught Business Owner…’?

LESSON #1: Go with your gut.

On this occasion, she knew things weren’t right and that something was off. She knew she had to change providers, but she delayed it.

Weeks went by, service levels dropped, customers were lost.

LESSON #2: Do your research.

If she knew what she knows now about her (now ex) I.T. company, she wouldn’t have bothered in the first place – and her business would’ve swapped providers years ago.

The problem is, if you’re not aware of the packages and service levels available to you, you can’t truly know whether your ‘selected’ I.T. Company is the right fit for you and your business.

LESSON #3: Act ASAP.

If you’re outgrowing your service provider, or things aren’t going as smoothly as they did at the start – act quick sharp.

Otherwise you’ll find yourself in a similar situation to this business owner. By the time action was taken, it was already too late.