Getting It Right

As the owner of a customer centric small business, I take emails very seriously.

I read and reply to each and every one, and I usually respond as soon as I possibly can. If I'm not recording, it's not unheard of for me to respond by return, causing the recipient quite a shock, especially in this day and age when sometimes you're lucky to even get a response several days later (from other people I mean!).

I'll even field the occasional "support" email from ScreenCastsOnline members. I know I shouldn't and I know it's not part of the service, but if it's something I can answer in a line or two, then why not. Answering emails are a major overhead and time suck, but over time, I firmly believe that done well, can seriously improve both your good reputation and customer loyalty.

So I soldier on…

Yesterday, I received an email from a potential customer for the "SCOtutor for iBooks Author" application.

He is an author of children's books, and by his own admission, not very technical or computer savvy.

He explained in his email that he had seen my tutorial for sale but he didn't understand iBooks Author and he didn't understand the relationship between the Mac and the iPad. His main requirement was that he needed to get his book from paper into "something nice to show his agent".

Obviously, iBooks Author was complete overkill for him, and he didn't need to create an iBook for sale at this time.

I took his email and split it into sections and responded to each point in turn, with an explanation of iBooks Author, what it does and how it's positioned along with some further suggestions. My main advice was to perhaps just format his document in Pages to show his agent.

So basically, I advised him to consider another App, and forget about iBooks Author for now.

It meant a lost sale as far as "SCOtutor for iBooks Author" but the response back more than made up for it…

Don: That is the best reply I've ever received from anyone in the "help" world. thanks!

Ah! A good start to the day.