wikidknickers

SHAMELESS SERVICE III – MAILFIRE

// January 5th, 2009 // 6 Comments » // geek stuff

This is going to be a full on rant, so if you are allergic to people whining then don’t read it! I am sitting at work with my hands tied by bad support and unreliable infrastructure, in both cases, thanks to Mailfire, a bulk email service provided by Web Africa. Just as it takes me a lot to pimp something on the net, it takes a hell of a lot of frustration, hair pulling and teeth gnashing to actually write an entire blog post complaining about something. In summary, all I can say about Web Africa/Mailfire is that if they wanted to set up a bulk html email* programme, some research on the matter might have saved them (and us) many tears of frustration.  Now, I don’t actually know what kind of research they did do when setting up the service and I won’t speculate, but the evidence suggests they missed some fundamentally simple things .

What I do know is that after approaching them several times about specific coding issues, I can still not send out emails set up in basic html and get them to render as they should when ground through the mailfire system, but which render perfectly when sent through another system**. In addition, their user interface is not simple, or rather, it is not intuitive.

Being an organisation that sends out a lot (and I mean a LOT) of html/electronic mail, some of which (for example weekly newsletters) HAVE to go out at at specified time on a specified day, we need a reliable service, and if something does go wrong, quick and dependable support (even over the “holiday season” peeps – not everyone stops working). The call I had to make today is typical – their server was offline / paralysed-tortoise-with-broken-leg slow, meaning that:

1.  I couldn’t open my html docs in Dreamweaver to edit them (partly DW’s fault, as it gets a nappy-rash when it can’t find image locations / download images), leaving me the option of editing in Notepad or the like (no, I’m not whining because I’m lazy, I’m whining cos I’m busy).

2. In order to send out the letter on time, I would have to relocate all 25 or 30 images to another online location and redo the entire newsletter (an exercise so time consuming that it would still go out late).

When I called “support” to complain I first got “but it works on our side..”

DOH! “That’s not the issue.. I am the customer and it DOESN’T work on my side, and NO it’s not our connectivity – the rest of the internet LOVES me and wants to show me all sorts of things”

“Please send us an email”

“Why? I’ve told you what the problem is “

“It will have to go to a higher level”

“So take it to a higher level”

“Send us an email”

“fine”

I send them the following email (not the politest ever, seeing as I have had issues of various kinds with them from DAY 1 and by now I’m well fed-up):

“I cannot access your mailfire server to send out a message (YET again). Images in our documents (hosted on your server) are thus unavailable to us. We will thus (ONCE again) not be able to send out a message on time. “

Four hours later, I receive an email back from them:

“Hi Niki. Would you mind providing me with the client code for this account.”

NO: “we’ve fixed the problem”, “we give a shit” “we understand your frustration”

MORE: “we have not made the sodding effort to find out your client code and get started on the issue.”

AAAAARRRGGHHHH!

Now perhaps it was that we simply got exceptional service from our previous provider, Striata – a no nonsense CMS/backend mail setup, and ONE liaison who KNEW the system, was friendly, efficient and if developer’s/system advice was required, would get back to me by telephone in under 20 minutes. ALWAYS. In addition at holiday times like this, there were also ALWAYS standby staff – one person handling our account with some technical knowledge.

When I requested a meeting with the Mailfire developer to sort out coding, rendering issues, I was told that the end of January was the earliest meeting I could get (he’s apparently on extended leave) …with additional time for development, etc, a working system by mid to end Feb? For a political party with an election coming up in March/April? I think NOT. I explained this and could still only get mid January as an option, rather than in December as I had requested.

But for today (and coincidentally it happens to be my first day back after a short “holiday”), Mailfire scores an EPIC FAIL from me (perhaps I should send them t-shirts?)

I have resorted to sending out our most popular newsletter using the old (less) hassle-free system, as we still have credit there (thank GOD!). I am now seriously casting around in desperation -we have limited time and need reliable service…where do we get it without riding this off-road learning curve again?

To be fair, I should add that by all accounts, Web Africa provides excellent support in the other services they offer, such as web hosting.

* Anyone who works with html email will tell you that it is an irksome beast. Each email client (and there are MANY) selectively supports html and css, in other words, what works with one won’t work with another, and one has to be very careful (and bloody patient) when designing html email to ensure standard rendering across the board. Essentially, you use very, very old-school html and keep css inline and to a minimum.

**The mailfire system seems geared towards novices, who can pick from templates and compose their emails in the WYSIWYG editor (which seems based on WordPress), which is great for them. But many/most well established companies will have their own designers/e-communications department who will want to send out the emails they compose as they have designed them to render. Mailfire does not support this approach unlike our older system, which allows us to simply paste the code into its interface, choose a list and send AS IS, meaning if we have done our own checking, testing, etc, there are no hassles (not friendly for the novice, I’ll grant). Mailfire simply does not allow a code-list-send scenario – the only option is working through the WYSIWYG editor, which adds in much unwanted code (as they do) – I’ve even seen code added in there that I know is not compatible with certain email clients (hence my query into the research these guys have done).

SHAMELESS SERVICE ii – THE CRUX

// March 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // humour

Another of my early forays into the job market in the mid 90′s, was working nights for a Shell call center, servicing service stations (and other people requiring kilolitres of highly flammable substances at short notice). Apparently it was one of the first of it’s type in the country, allowing owners of service stations to call in and place orders 24-7, receive helpful and friendly advice, report problems and the like.

I’ll never forget the job interview. It went thusly:”it’s 3am and a panicked Frikkie calls in from Blikkiesdorp, saying a petrol tanker has just careened into his forecourt taking out two petrol pumps…what do you do?”

Barring the obvious answers like “tell him not to light a cigarette”, “throw sand on it” and “call the fire brigade”, I was stumped when the team leader kept shaking his head. The correct answer was, of course, “call someone who knows what the fuck they’re talking about”.

We had a lovely office environment, made even better by the never ending supply of hot chocolate and coffee from the Nestle dispenser in the corner (nickname “Fred: the angel of deliverance”) and the really big couch cushions which afforded us lovely nesting material for the wee hours.

The take home part of that job was that we got a two day seminar on customer service, and got to practice it on a daily (nightly, actually) basis. It’s stayed with me to this day.

I will always have fond memories of those 5am phone calls from farmers in the middle of boerewors territory. Men who got up and did 300 press ups before going to wake the family rooster. Men who had only ever heard rumors of a language called English. Hard men. Men who, when they calmly asked for 2000 litres of diesel by 7am, expected to be obeyed, all the while hinting that if they were not, some very long and firmly spoken Afrikaans words would follow.

For me, service delivery can be summed up in one line – the customer is a customer…you work for him, you’re not there to do him favours, you WORK for him..treat him as you would your boss…show some respect.

ALSO:

1. The customer IS always right.

2. Even when the customer is wrong, he’s still always right (I use he, because women are obviously never wrong)

3. No matter how much of an arsehole he is, he’s still still always right.

4. Deal with it.

5. Suck it up, breathe, put your ego in your back pocket and smile..and people can tell if you’re smiling over the phone.

6. If that doesn’t work, try Valium.

SHAMELESS SERVICE

// March 3rd, 2008 // No Comments » // humour

So this is going to be a total rant, but I’m wondering if there is actually a ranking by country on the quality of service delivery in that country, and which of the last 5 places this country occupies. And which countries occupy the first five places, so I can start getting my visa’s organised.

I have just been through a series of incidents which have really left me shocked at the mutt-dumbness of people in business who do not understand this really simple and fundamental principle: customers don’t complain to your face, they just don’t come back….and they DO complain to their friends, family, babysitters, pool-guys, tennis partners, vet-shop assistants, etc..you get the picture…word of mouth can just as easily destroy a business as it can make one.

I really find it quite sad that we all seem to have so much to rant about on this subject. I also find it disturbingly wrong that instead of demanding and expecting good service, I am pleasantly surprised when I actually receive it.

Possibly my annoyance stems from the fact that I’ve had that “service with a smile” etiquette shoved down my throat from work-experience day 1, so I simply come to expect it in others. Like many other naive, vulnerable unfortunates finding themselves much in need of a little extra dosh once that wellspring of pocket money ran dry after school, I ended up in that sheer gut wrenching horror that is waitressing (or waitronning? they’re all PC now).

So, like many other foolish mortals, I chose to work at the Spur. Where that’s concerned, let me simply say that I don’t eat there. Ever. I have my reasons.

But I digress…service delivery: if at 18, you want to go to the loony hippy “summer of love” party in red hill (ticket price R200) where Bob, the really cute guy from your BIO 101 class will almost certainly be (or so his friend Ted says), you very quickly learn to suck up to Mrs Jones, her snotty nosed birthday boy, and his 32 snotty-nosed screaming little friends. For 6 hours. No cigarette break. 4 types of fizzy drink spilled down the new uniform (which you have to buy yourself). Lungs bursting from inhaling helium and squeaking like mickey mouse to entertain the kids.

And all the while, a happy beaming face, which beams even more once the old girl totters out leaving you the “xx Spur record tip of that year”.

So..good service pays off…and even if the old bat had left a miserable R20 tip, there will always be people who don’t appreciate good service when they get it.

I think they spoil it for the rest of us actually.

I think it’s a hard and fast fact that none of these people ever worked as waiters.. You could probably put money on it. If you show someone true appreciation for doing the job they’re damn well meant to be doing, well, the more likely they are to continue doing it well.

So, suck-uppery is a vital tool in business..I think small businesses are much more acutely aware of this and tend to get it right a lot of the time, because they are in a sink-or-swim scenario. It’s actually when big-business and corporate chains or whatever they’re called get sloppy and stop caring that I get most pissed off – they should know better. Also, they make more money. They should be able to pay more people to suck up…or people more to suck up…whatever. It exhausts me just thinking about it.

TBC…