And we have bacon — if we bring our own.

http://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2009/07/13/bleep-that-hurts/

Regarding your post, next time you head to Canada, move to Vancouver please. I always have a good internet connection and a spare computer, so I’d be honored to be “Plan B”.

But it sounds like the “bacon every day” held up? This would still kinda be heaven…

Good question and good answer. The reality is, if we don’t take risks with growth, we don’t go anywhere. If we wait until we have 100% of the bandwidth we’ll need for any potential eventuality, we’ll never get anything good accomplished. So you do your best. Absolutely, you need backup plans for customer service, just like you do with technology. But saying we need backup plans is great in hindsight after the baby dropped the iPhone in the hottub and the wife used the contract to wrap the day’s catch.

Every business that grows goes through that phase of the cycle, and trying to avoid it is like trying to avoid the sun rising. It comes. You can manage it as well as you can, but you can never avoid it completely. To avoid it completely you would have to take your business’ level of conservativism to the point of being laughable.

I guess my short answer is, you don’t just say “oh well”, but you do say it. You can’t decide to solve the problem by working 20 hours a day, handily ensuring you burn out and give shitty service to everyone, instead of just the originally affected few.

What? Perfection isn’t possible? No wonder I’ve been feeling slightly loopy recently… ;)

While a person is making backup plans, a customer service one certainly would make sense.

You do the same thing that you do when you mess up with anyone else you have a relationship with. You say you’re sorry, you pay attention and see how mad the other person is, and if you need to, you make amends.

To some extent, you have to say “oh well” to the clients who get mad and go away. The alternative is to be perfect, which a) isn’t possible, and b) will drive you insane in the attempt.

That’s my opinion, anyway.

I ask because of the line: it’s always easier to sell to an existing client than to a new one. And while many of our clients will understand, many others will only see the lack of customer service. Do we say “oh well!” or do we have create an emergency customer service backup plan as well? And what would that look like?

What you’re describing in the first part of “prepare for a shit sandwich” is can actually be split into two different categories of things.

The first category is what is sometimes referred to as a single point of failure. These are the type of things that will single-handedly keep you from doing whatever you were trying to do. Single points of failures always need to be eliminated, because they have a nice way of manifesting themselves at the worst of times. Like when you have 50k on the hook.

What I find interesting is how the second category – which I don’t have a name to right now, so I’ll refer to it as “the stuff that happens to Naomi at an alarming rate” – becomes single points of failure. A kid running wild because he’s bored seems to be normal; a kid jumping on your lap because he’s bored while you’re teaching 50 people how to prepare for a business calamity becomes a single point of failure. The difference is context. I know, I know…maybe I should go write about this stuff on my blog rather than harassing you on yours.

I know a guy that can help with this type of stuff. Just sayin.’ :p

Enjoy your time with Michael, Jack, and Jamie. We’ll be here whenever you find some civilization.