With so many business from around the world, who all have different levels of technical skills and knowledge, using our services there are times that things don't work out as well as either of us would like.
Mistakes are a natural part of business, luckily with a bit of education they can be minimised and some even avoided.
These are the most common mistakes that clients make that we've seen create frustrations and make it harder to get your tasks completed quickly and accurately.
1. Asking For Too Much In One Task
Remember that a task is a small change, addition or fix on a page, or to a platform.
Try to keep it to ONE task at a time.
If you have 10 things you want to change on your website across multiple pages, then it's likely these are 10 separate tasks.
If you have 4 new pages you want created, each page would be a separate task. If all 4 pages are very similar we recommend getting 1 page completed first and you approve it, then send in another task to duplicate the page you're happy with and explain the edits that need to be done to the duplicated pages.
2. Replying To An Existing Task with a New Task Request
While it may feel like email to you, on our end we are using a sophisticated tracking system that tracks each task in a separate conversation with time tracking, status, time it took to complete etc..
When you reply to an already completed (or even a partially completed) task with another request this often creates confusion and long conversation threads that lead to things being missed or done incorrectly.
Whenever you have a new task, start a new Email with a unique subject line summarizing the task rather than replying to an existing conversation.
3. Forgetting to Purchase a Priority Pass Upgrade
We understand there are times that you have tasks you need attended to by a specific target date (be that by today, by tomorrow, by Monday etc..)
It's important that you understand that we can NEVER guarantee a completion time on a task. Unfortunately there's just too many variables. However there is a way to ensure you task is Seen, Reviewed and Started on faster... and that is by purchasing a Priority Pass.
The sooner we start on a task, the sooner we'll likely complete it.
So if you ever have a specific target date for a task and it's not weeks or months away then let us know the target date and time and purchase a Priority Pass Upgrade so we can do our best to try and get it done for you within your target time.
4. Unclear Instructions
One of the biggest causes of mistakes and slow progress on our side is from Unclear and Confusing instructions.
We get it, as an entrepreneur you're busy and especially if you're non technical, you may not be sure how to explain what you want.
Here's a few golden rules:
- Provide some context - explain why this task needs to be done (this can help a lot with how we approach the task)
- Keep it simple with ONE task per request
- Provide Bullet Points of the key things you expect (think of it like a checklist for us)
- The more visual resources you can give us the better (think screenshots, videos, examples)
- Keep it conversational, because you are having a conversation with real people (we don't need multi page brief documents - if you think we do it's probably not a task)
For further help review our guide on Best Ways To Explain Your Tasks
5. Assuming a Hero Knows About Your Previous Tasks
This is something that can link back to the mistake of Unclear Instructions, and can cause errors and slow progress on our side.
As mentioned earlier each task is a unique conversation that is kept separate. This means unless the hero working on your next task was the one who worked on your previous task or has been given the Ref # of the previous task to look up and review then they won't know what was done previously.
Even if the hero working on your task was the one who did the last task, there is a chance it's not fresh in their memory as they've also worked on 1000's of other tasks for other clients since then.
The solution is whenever possible provide clear and full instructions for each task, that may mean providing information you've previously explained in the past again if the context or content is relevant to this new task.
If it's easier and you need to reference a previous task provide the Ref # of that task so that it can be looked up and reviewed.
6. Missing Information We Need To Complete The Task
Imagine this, you send in a request to create a new email sequence that you want sent to someone who fills in a form. In your task request you explain the form fields you want, and where the form should go, but you forget to provide the email copy for the email sequence.
This means instead of simply completing the task your hero needs to ask you to send through a document with the email copy and the task goes into Awaiting Your Reply status.
You're really busy and so you don't reply back with the email copy for 7 days, this means instead of your task being Resolved as quickly as it could have been it takes over a week from when you sent in the task to when it gets completed.
The most common Missing information types are:
- Login Details
- Copy (aka words) for Landing Pages, Emails etc..
- Images
7. Changing Passwords Without Updating Us
Many platforms require passwords to be changed regularly and it's a good security measure, however if you change a password and we're still accessing via an old password it means we can't work on your task.
We recommend sharing passwords to us via LastPass, if you use a tool like LastPass to save and share passwords it means when you change your password as long as you've updated the saved password in your LastPass account at the same time we'll still have access and be using the new password.
If you change an FTP or Hosting Login then let us know immediately, if we don't have FTP or Hosting logins and something breaks on your website it means we can't resolve or restore things until we get the new login details from you.
8. Asking For Advice & Recommendations
Our heroes have amazing powers and are constantly being trained and learning more and more about the Platforms we support.
However they aren't trained marketing strategists, they are implementors who are directed by your strategy and ideas.
Our job is to help you implement these and make them reality with as little effort as possible.
If you ever ask for technical advice or platform recommendations from the Hero team the response you receive will be general and likely a bunch of options that you'll need to research and decide on rather than specific advice for your individual circumstances.
If you need strategic marketing advice you can reach out to Customer Service for recommendations on where to go for getting strategy help.
9. Sending Enquiries & Service Issues to Hero Team instead of Support Team
The simplest way is to ensure that we see your enquiries is to remember that:
Tasks are emailed to concierge@automationagency.com so they are tracked as tasks.
Questions, Concerns, and any other Service/Support type enquiries are to be emailed to support@automationagency.com where they can be reviewed by our customer service team.
Final Word...
If you can avoid these common mistakes you will find that you have a far smoother and prosperous relationship with your Automation Agency team :)
We'll also be able to serve you faster, more accurately and with greater ease.