Wooden pens

I spoke to a homestead customer the other day who makes beautiful "turned" heirloom wooden pens and bowls.  The customer had some gripes which he emailed me about, so I called him back.  I can't stress enough how important and beneficial it is to engage customers who have complaints or issues with your service or product.  Think of each customer who reaches out to you as a gift--worth much more than whatever cost you incur to speak with them, resolve their issue, and/or refund their money.   

I try to personally respond to every customer who emails me (sometimes over 100 per week, so I can get behind!) but I typically call ones who have complaints--as long as they are reasonable and constructive.  This is where I learn the most, not only in the many ways we could be better serving our customers, but also in improving my understanding of work our employees do on the "front line."  This latter point can be crucial, as our failure to empower them with the proper tools/products/policies handcuffs their ability to delight our customers.  And it's very easy to lose touch as your company grows and you're busy "at the top."

But back to wooden pens.  One thing that struck me as I was talking with the wooden pen maker was this: he wasn't going to be happy, no matter how great his website was (it was actually pretty great), until it actually started delivering him real revenue.  And his definition of real revenue was pretty significant.  He wanted to know why he wasn't first in the Google search for "wooden pens," why he couldn't easily create back links, why his SearchLight campaign had "salad bowls" as a word when he didn't make salad bowls, etc.  Reasonable but challenging demands.

The "aha" moment for me was that no matter how hard we try to be the best "DIY website" company out there, what our customers actually need is for us to be a "DIY online business success" company.  Now, there is no way we can single-handedly make small businesses successful online--they need quality products, business sense, a marketing plan, and a lot of entrepreneurial drive.  But there is so much more we could be helping them with, above and beyond building a website.  So I'll promise right here and now that we will dedicate much of our product resources over the coming years to helping our customers not just build websites, but build successful businesses.  And I think I'll start with our customer who makes such beautiful wooden pens: click here to check out his work.

--jsk 

Comments

[susanmj]

I would like to invite the 'wooden pen' customer to join the free Homestead Connection Forum. The Forum is for users of Homestead's programs. He does have a lovely site, but it isn't very well optimized for the search engines and perhaps the Forum can give him some insight on how to improve that aspect of his site.

While Homestead gives us the tools to build great web sites there is a certain amount we must do ourselves in order to make them successful. You covered the biggies Justin of what it takes to make a site successful, but there some other factors involved as well. A web site needs to be visually appealing, easy to navigate, uncluttered and present a professional appearance in order to give the prospective customer the sense that the site is legit. Then there are behind the scenes issues like using java script navigations that search engines can't read and are thus unable to follow to index all pages. Using the "apply to all" option for metas - each page should have unique content and unique meta tags rather than 'one size fits all'. These are just a few of the items that we ourselves must take responsibility for in designing our sites.

It will be interesting to see what tools Homestead comes up with in the preceding months to help Homesteaders build successful businesses.

Keep on webbing!

Regards,
Susan

[Dale Sherman]

I'm the "wooden pen" guy! My heart sunk when I started to read your comments, Justin, but as I read on, much of what you said rang true. But as with ALL communications, we sometimes hear only what we want to hear, myself included. To set the public record straight, my unhappiness really stemmed from certain people on your staff that would not or could not do what they said they would do without dropping the ball, forcing me to follow up with them. But that's all water under the bridge.

You did use a pretty liberal interpretation when you said I wondered why I wasn't first on Google. I mentioned that McKinney Pens is almost always first but if I was in the first 30 minutes of someone's search when I was signed up with Searchlight I would have been thrilled. I wasn't...even close.

And I never mentioned a word in our conversation of what "real revenue" I expected. ANY revenue would be really cool right now, after well over a year of money going out and efforting to get this put together. And not because I need the money, because I don't. It's so I can justify making more and more stuff, and paying ANYTHING for your hosting service! For the record, I'm going through something right now where I get HUGE numbers of abandoned carts. I mean, sometimes 80 per day, accounting for over 5K in sales! I talked to one of your guys the other day (last Monday I think, Rob was his name-he was GREAT!) who said it may be the spiders checking my site out and testing it or some such things. I've had people run products through to the end and it works fine.

This is NOT to throw wood on the fire, it's just so you understand what and why precipitated my complaints. Everything else you said above about tools to help us succeed is right on the money. And Susan's comments about the Homestead Connection Forum is wonderful. When I signed up for this I really thought this was a "one stop shop" deal as I don't have the knowledge to put it all together by myself. I guess I'm still a bit confused as to why I would need Homestead at all if I was an Internet Guru who COULD do it all, as I would just have done it all myself, but that's another question for another time. At this point, I just DO need to optimize it and get traffic that doesn't abandon carts and become the best woodturning artist I can become.

Justin, I'll say it again. I've had my problems with Homestead and I'm positive I could always handle myself better in these frustrating situations. But I was so terribly impressed with your phone call, and look forward to more tools to help me make this a success, even if I have to pay for it-so long as it is reasonably effective.

Is this Connection Forum on the Homestead building site, or unto itself somewhere? I am all ears when it comes to learning what more I can do to make this work and be successful.

Dale Sherman,
The "wooden pen" guy! Thanks for the plug, Justin!!!

[David Brown]

Some simple lines in a the robots.txt file would keep spiders from crawling shopping carts and creating abandoned carts. I'm kinda shocked to see that something like this wasn't suggested or automatically put into place.

[hamed]

Hello.I'm Hamed from Iran.I wanna have a website in Homestead but I haven't money to create my website can u help me?Thank you.

[Charlotte]

10 years. Oh my. I joined Homestead in 1998. I now have 2 websites, the first one I created for my high school class. The other for Weight Loss Surgery information is almost finished. I'm not selling anything or trying to make money from it but I will say that Homestead has been an anchor for me through some pretty rough times. Thanks for that. I am just now learning how to navigate and get more benefit from all this. While my little sites might not be award winning or even very innovative, or creative, I am still proud of the accomplishment. Thank you Homestead for helping me help others.
Charlie in Florida

[Charlotte]

OK OK...I posted on the wrong blog page....sorry. Happy 10th anyway...
Charlie

[Lynn Perrier]

I don't know how else to get in touch with you except through this blog to advise you that your emails are not being delivered. I tried three times in the last 2 days to email you something I feel is extremely important and received this message each time:

>>>>"I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
:209.157.71.22 failed after I sent the message.
Remote host said: 452 Unable to accept message because the server is out of disk space.
I'm not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too long<<<<

Would you be so kind as to contact me or let me know if there is another email address which will reach you.

[Lynn]

Sorry for some reason the entire message was not copied and I wanted you to see that it does refer to your email address (ceo@homestead.com)

Hi. This is the qmail-send program at yahoo.com.
I'm afraid I wasn't able to deliver your message to the following
addresses.
This is a permanent error; I've given up. Sorry it didn't work out.
:
209.157.71.22 failed after I sent the message.
Remote host said: 452 Unable to accept message because the server is
out of disk space.
I'm not going to try again; this message has been in the queue too
long.

[Lynn]

I give up!

[Unhappy customer]

Hey there CEO.

I am not happy with your company or their services.

Somehow, my little $5/month service has snowballed into a whopping $70/month charge.
I've been trying to cancel it to no avail, as I have to call some number during business hours, that are completely opposite to mine ( I live on the other end of the country), and tonight I find out that I am on the hook for yet another $50 this is after I sent an email cancelling my service. I didn't receive an email back, but some sort of goofy help ticket thing, which isn't helpful at all.
I have to go and check it out on my site.

This is absolutely crazy. I want to at least not have to pay the $50 for next month, and get my money back for last month. I would also like to know how my bill all of a sudden got to $70/month. All I wanted was to add the searchlight feature. I did not want the Platinum service. My workday is busy enough without having to second guess all my service providers. I should not have to look over your shoulder to ensure I am not being taken advantage off.

Sincerely,

A very unhappy customer ( contact me at my email address)

[David McCoy]

It's funny that your blog is called CEO Unplugged, because as a prospect interested in your product, I have found no way to contact your company online.

Last week I filled out a form to sign up for a demo. At the point where you asked for a credit card I abandoned, as probably many people do.

The same day I received an email from John Williams
Director, Customer Support. John took notice that I abandoned and sent me a follow-up sales pitch letter.

I replied back, explaining that I wanted a demo, but that I wasn't interested in submitting a credit card. I informed him that if there was a way around viewing a demo without entering credit card info, to let me know.

I have since received 2 additional sales emails, signed by John Williams Director, Customer Support.

John hasn't emailed me back with more information. John seems to be a triggered response mechanism who wants my cash.

Whats' funny is that the return address on John's email is reply@homesteademail.com. You'd think with an address like that, I would get personalized reply from your customer service. Instead I continue to get bombarded with these cold templated email blasts that don't address my request.

I have found no way to contact your customer service online. In fact, I don't know if you even have customer service. I noticed in the help section that you have a way to contact csutomer service online if you are a paying customer. How about a way for people who are interested in your product to contact you online with questions?

The only way to contact you online is to provide a credit card.

[susanmj]

Homestead's customer service number is 1-800-710-1998

[leo]

I agree, as a company based in Europe, we have the same problem. I just got this message from an e-mail that I sent.

Failed Recipient: ceo@homestead.com
Reason: Remote host said: 452 Unable to accept message because the server is out of disk space.

[Sherry]

All I can say is I've been with Homestead for 3+ years and have built over a dozen websites, am making a full-time income online and have never, and I mean never, had an issue with the product or the customer service. I never had the impression that they were there to build my online business for me, just to provide the platform for creating the actual sites and if I chose, to let them help with online search traffic. There's way more to making a living online than building a site. The old saying of 'build it and they will come' is not true in this sense. Whenever I've added products or needed a question answered I have been very happily pleased with both the telephone and email customer service. Very quick and accurate. Just my 2 cents though. I know that everyone has their own story and experiences.