Two versions of Armageddon – there is the biblical version which is all about the last big fight between the Good Guys (God and Angels) and the Bad Guys (Devil and his mob), huge big nasty brawl erupts, but in the end the Good Guys win.
The second version? Is a Movie where a huge asteroid is on a collision course to earth, if it hits, there will be Global Destruction (Armageddon). But like the Godly version, yippee there is a happy ending. Bruce Willis presses the button, nuclear bomb explodes and the asteroid is blown up and the earth is saved. All of this happens whilst Aerosmith sings in the background. Wow, what an ending!
Now, why are we talking about Armageddon? Well, this week we had the worst of the worst technical disaster with one of our hosting companies. It was Technical Armageddon for them. The good was attacked by evil and next thing you know, all their servers were blown up by a nuclear explosion and nothing was left to salvage (All files gone!).
What did this do? Well, it killed all our emails plus a few of our clients, lots of our of painstakingly created online forms disappeared. It was an issue. For us, we had a back-up plan and quickly were up and running with good old Gmail. For the clients, however? Well, we fell into the Godly version of Armageddon, that being Good versus Evil, and sorry it’s your (Ours) fault.
I say Good versus Evil as when things go wrong, good people can very quickly turn evil. Yep, you mess with the emails of a lovely old couple running a florist shop, you disconnect their e-commerce gateway in anyway and they will turn into fire breathing dragons quicker than you can say “Law Suit”! And hello, I don’t care what happened “It’s your fault” will be the signature of every text message/Facebook posting/Twitter tweet, heck, they will even screen shot the issue and post it on Instagram.
Now, regardless of the fact that it’s a supplier that had the Armageddon moment, that lightning had struck the building where the server was held or even an asteroid (keeping with the movie theme) had demolished the entire city, regardless of what the soon to be poor supplier is telling you about ETA of the issue being rectified, the mature age florist gives you the same sentence each time you chat….It’s your fault and get it fixed now.
It’s a terrible thing times like this. Customers are yelling at you, all you’re hearing is, “When will it be fixed?” “You’re ruining my business” “I will sue you” and you’re also harassing the poor server guy who is trying to rebuild life amongst the rubble of melted hard disks.
So, what are my pearls of wisdom for these Armageddon moments? Keep people informed.
Yes, regardless of how much abuse you will get, tell your customers what’s going on before they ask you, keep emailing them, post messages on your Facebook page, good news bad news anything is better than NO news.
And remember, either the Godly Armageddon, the Bruce Willis movie or your technical meltdown?
There will be a happy ending.
Hugs from TheCamel.co™
Copyright Notice
Graphics may not be downloaded and resold, added to design or art collections, as part of a gallery or template collection or redistributed in any manner without express written permission by TheCamel.Co®
© Copyright 2025 | All Rights Reserved | Designed by TheCamel.co ®