Customer Care
As an investigative consumer journalist I spent many years watching just how badly so many companies treat their customers and I vowed, when at 60 I started my own company, that I would value my customers and look after them as well as I possibly could.
The lovely thing is that I adore talking to them, helping them, sorting out any problems they have with autodotbiography and I have to admit that this does have a selfish side to it. After years working in big, buzzy, television production offices I find myself working on my own. To be honest I miss the buzz and so when one of my customers rings I enjoy the conversation. But more than that, selfishly I also get to listen to their experiences on my system first hand and hear about the way they are tackling their life story.
Since the launch in February 2011 there have been a few mysteries to investigate, some methods of using the system that I never dreamed of and some incredibly useful comments. Everyone has been so pleasant. Of course that may change but I think perhaps I have struck both a generation and an idea that attracts nice people.
My first heart stopping moment came when Mr A a delightful gentleman in his late 80s rang to say that he couldn't get into his autodotbiography but seemed to have got into my pages. My heart leapt into my mouth. Security is of the highest order on the system and I couldn't imagine how he could have hacked into mine accidentally. It just couldn't happen. But he swore that he could see my name on the welcome page. I was completely flummoxed. This was my worst nightmare. I took down all the details I could from him. He had no idea which operating system or browseer he was using, in fact he didn't really know what a browser was. We'd had conversations before about finding the 'Home' page and that had been sorted out satisfactorily, but this was a BIG problem. I prepared to ring the webmaster, a genius and delightful man who can solve any problem I throw at him and who I knew would be as devastated as I was about Mr A's ability to get into my autodotbiography.
And as I made one or two last checks with Mr A about what he was doing and where he was on the site I had a blinding flash of revelation. " Look at the very top of the book image, on the left. Do you see the three tabs, 'Home', 'Book Builder' and 'Help and Advice'?" Mr A said "Yes". Is "Book Builder" the biggest one, the one selected, or is it "Help and Advice?"
Mr A took a few moments to understand what I was saying and then announced he was in 'Help and Advice". WHAT A RELIEF. I suddenly knew what was going on. He was on a page in the 'Help and Advice" section that gave advice on how to use the system, and on that page there was an illustration using my 'Welcome" page with my name on it. Nightmare over and I hadn't bothered the webmaster.
Lesson learned: I need to make the illustrations border even bigger so they cannot be confused with an actual page.