How Many Chances?
How many chances do you give something you're trying?
Last weekend, someone signed up for our EverySeller Research tool. He had a problem logging back in after signing up, and it turned out we needed to purge some old data. So it wasn't down, but it was admittedly quite slow, which we've since remedied. :)
He had emailed me saying he couldn't log in, and I had emailed back saying I would have our programmer look into it.
Before my programmer got the chance to look at it, the guy called me. He expected me to know who he was. I had no idea who this guy was calling me until he explained that he was the person who had been emailing me about not being able to log back into ESR. OK. He basically called to chew me out.
He was telling me how horrible my customer service was, and how he knows about these things because he starts and runs a lot of companies, and I really need to do something about the service. I told him we were working on fixing his problem, like I said in the email, and I'm not sure what else we can do until I hear back from my programmer. I told him that the problem were resolved, I'd personally call him to see if I can address anything else. That wasn't good enough. He kept chewing me out. There was nothing I could do to make him happy, and he was still barking at me. OK, thanks.
I sent him a follow-up email apologising again for his experience, explaining the core of what my company does, and hoping that we can help him. Despite how he treated me, I wanted to be nothing but nice, interested, and helpful because that's me. :)
I woke up the next morning to an email from him wanting to cancel a service he hadn't seen yet, and an email from my programmer explaining the slow performance and how that was fixed via an overnight database purge. The cancellation email had a jab or two in it, so I guess this guy wasn't done.
And it made me think.
How many chances do you give something or someone? One? Do you judge something or someone by the one worst thing you've experienced with them? Do you give something a few tries? If you're in a free trial period, are you likely to give something more chances because it's not costing you anything yet? If someone emailed you that they were working on your problem, would you call them up to chew them out and tell them how much better you are than they are?
I tend to give things a few chances. I've been known to give too many chances. But I know that I wouldn't want to be judged by someone who saw me on my worst day. I would want the chance to be seen again when I'm having a better day. So I extend the same courtesy to other people.
Think about how many chances you give and how many you get. I bet many of us get fewer chances than we give, and some of us may want to give more chances. I sure hope I meet my new penpal at an eBay event. :)
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