Just got this e-mail from someone who bought my class on the Tools Of Social Media:
Should there be sound with this PowerPoint? Otherwise, the very short PowerPoint did not teach me anything and was not worth the expense. I was looking forward to a training on getting a blog set up using WordPress. That is not what I purchased and I will gladly share that with the small business advisor who sent your link my way.
Of course I am leaving the name out. Now let’s be clear. I understand completely how frustrating it can be when you pay for something with your hard earned money and don’t get what you came for. I swear I do. Accordingly I work my ass off to make sure that I am not one of those people who does that to others. I do however, on a very extremely wonderfully rare occasion… make mistakes. Yep. It’s true. Even ME!
So let’s pick this apart (since I had a cancellation today and I am in the mood for this sort of thing). Then it’s on to make some money!
First, to the question of whether there should be sound with this power point. I submit to you the very first slide IN that PowerPoint:
Now I know that sometimes I overlook the fact that while something is simple to me (because I am an expert at it with years of experience) it is not so simple to someone else. So I COULD be wrong , but I THOUGHT that the big blue text that says “Click Here for an Excel sheet with the Playback URL and login info“ made it pretty clear. So I leave it to you my readers. If you tell me that this doesn’t make it perfectly clear, and especially if you have suggestions for how I can make this better, please submit them to seth@nerdenterprises.com with the subject “Suggestion for improvement on The Tools Of Social Media – Part 1 Slide 1″.
Considering that the issue here was “user error” and lack of attention I ask, was the comment..
“Otherwise, the very short PowerPoint did not teach me anything and was not worth the expense. I was looking forward to a training on getting a blog set up using WordPress. That is not what I purchased and I will gladly share that with the small business advisor who sent your link my way.”
really necessary? I mean I could understand if she had already gotten some sort of confirmation from me explaining that all she got was a series of slides with no audio in a PowerPoint, but this is a clear demonstration of what we call “contempt prior to investigation” where I come from.
Of course I asked her to let me know “who” sent her my way so I can inform the sender of my strict “NO ASSHOLES” policy. I think I should put that policy up as a disclaimer on all of my sites 
I LOVE that policy. It is my absolute favorite and it has saved me hours of frustration over the years. In fact it has often times put a big old smile on my face. Just like now see?
Now mind you I did reply to her immediately to let her know what the issue was (that there was a link on the first slide with the information she was looking for) and then just based on experience I knew it would be wise to double check the information she’d be receiving once she did click on the link. Sure enough (my luck) I did encounter a problem with the login URL she received. GREAT! And sure enough she e-mailed promptly to let me know that it was not working. I replied promptly and explained “I just saw that, working on it now, sorry for the trouble.” Fixed the issue and sent her the correct URL. She still hasn’t gotten back to me to tell me who referred her.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts and reactions by posting your comments below. In the big square box where it says “Leave A Reply” - just in case
Seth, don’t you just hate emails like that? The kind that you feel the need to whip out your crystal ball in order to figure out what the sender really MEANS!
To ask “should there be sound” is the total opposite of the REAL problem of the link not working correctly!
Everyone is in such a tear (rush) today that communication skills seem to be non-existent. I get emails like this all the time – “it doesn’t WORK” with no name or signature only an email address and half the time without a subject line. For me this means I have to copy the email address and search through both our customer and trial user databases to see if I can figure out who they are and what program that they have – then of course there is the time wasting email trying to find out WHAT it is that they feel isn’t working…..oh the joys (need a sarcasm font here).
To not respond to your question asking who referred her to your site is rude.
Well to be fair there were two issues. The first one, the one she complained about was that she thought all she was getting was the PPT presentation because she missed the message on that first slide. THAT link (the one in the first slide worked just fine – the other problem was with the Playback URL which she received when she eventually clicked on the link. She was not even aware of that problem when she sent this e-mail). I think she just missed the original link altogether and advanced through the slides. The non-working link was a bi product discovery which fortunately since I am the “brains” behind all this I was able to correct promptly on my own (ie I didn’t have to wait for my “tech’ guy to fix it).