Not An Email Person

There’s a feature on Kikay Exchange about this girl’s products which are gaining its fair share of attention. Consequently, people have started leaving comments and asking questions that naturally, only the girl can answer properly, given the fact she makes them. Unfortunately, she doesn’t reply to emails promptly, if at all, making the whole exercise pretty much a shot in the dark. Jill told me her website has also mysteriously gone down, making info about her and her products even harder to get – what more those inquiring to buy.

Today, there’s a request for me to assist someone to set up his email account. Which is perfectly reasonable if not for the fact that this same person has pretty much been using the same computer, the same operating system, the same email client, and the same email account, username and password and all, for the past five years. In fact, to add perspective to this, in the same period my nephew has grown up from grade school to high school, and now knows how to set up an email account with the ease of, well, a grade schooler. During which time, person requiring assistance has apparently learned nothing.

I know this is a ‘hate post’ of sorts, hate post being the term I use to describe blog posts that achieve anything but solve the issue with which it rants about, but please.

In truth, I am probably the most patient individual you’d ever meet with regards to explaining and helping people out tech – wise. In fact, I recognize my patience to be the reason why I had managed to get writing and consulting work in the past. The key is in knowing that people are generally afraid to ask questions feeling they are already stupid just by having them. I realize this fully and so take time to explain things clearly beforehand in order to avoid them having questions to begin with. This saves a great amount of time and more importantly, inspires confidence in people whom, after realizing their questions are valid, are therefore more open to asking them, and as such are on their way to learning more for themselves. This is a win win situation I’ve affected in more than one working scenario. It has also helped me become a better writer, I think, just because I am aware of what the reader is thinking and take time to make sure the proverbial light bulb is alight after reading what I write or listening to me explain.

However, this is a two – way street. It pains me to think that a Kikay Exchange featured article – something that a lot of shop owners, designers and backyard beauty product manufacturers are starting to line up for (we have backlogs of requests), is going to waste because the girl is just ‘not an email person’. How hard is it to merely reply to emails, reply to comments or even read them for that matter. It cannot take more than 15 minutes a day, and the consequences of such will surely pay for itself later on. It reminds me of a friend of mine who spent a fortune getting a website done SIX YEARS ago, beating many rivals by years. But for some strange reason (and he snickers as he relates this to me), he never answered any emails, NOT EVEN ONCE. As far as I’m concerned the whole investment has surely gone to pot, and he’d probably have done better if he just bought an ad in the paper (that’s how much they charged him).

And this other guy, asking me to come over and ‘fix his email’, which is essentially type in his username, password and the email host at the appropriate fields and press ENTER? He’ll have to wait. I figure if he still can’t do something as simple as that after five years, it’s worth punishing him. Maybe it might give him ten second pause to fiddle with it, and in half that time get it to work.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *