One of my longest client relationships is with a client whom is a fairly successful Online Business Entrepreneur.  He recently took an extended leave of absence from his business and is now back in the swing of things.  He’s having a tough time getting back to business and I’ve been challenged to keep him on target and on focus.  One of the challenges we’re facing is having him stick with the systems that were set up and in use before he left.

For example, we have an online support desk to manage his customer service.  It works extremely well for our purposes and has been for over a year.  Anyone who has questions about their orders or download links or needs support for one of our specific programs is directed to the support desk.  It’s been a system that has been in place for over a year and has been working well.  We even overcame the challenge of retraining clients to go to the support desk rather than emailing the business owner directly.  We had him change his email address and not publish the new one so that we could avoid him getting caught up in support questions.

Well, he broke the system.  One of the first things he did upon his return was publish his personal email address.  And guess what happened?  Yup – people started emailing him for support.  As soon as I saw his email address published, I sat him down and told him to expect support emails.  It’s human nature to want to deal with the guy whose name is on the door.  I told him to reply to every email and redirect them to the support desk for help.  Just a quick note thanking them for their question and asking them to resubmit it to the support desk for assistance as he has a team in place that could help them.

A few days after the email address was published, I started receiving emails in my inbox.  Messages forwarded from him asking me to look into this problem or another.  That’s where I put my foot down.

As an Online Business Manager, it’s my job to create systems to support online business owners and manage their daily operations.  It’s also my job to make sure that they use the systems we have in place in the way they were supposed to be designed. 

My client was breaking the system – going outside the standard procedures we had in place to support him.  He had complained of being overwhelmed by support e-mails in the past and not being able to focus on creating new products and services.  So we created a system that removed that stressor from his plate.  He went against the system by publishing his email address.  Anticipating that he would start to receive support questions, I outlined a procedure to follow should he receive Customer Service questions.  He went against it again by not following the procedure I asked him to follow.  We sat down again and I outlined how critical it is that he follow the systems we have in place and that he not let his customers stray from that system.

He’s vowed to not publish his email address anymore.  Will he keep that promise?  Only time will tell.  What I do know is that I will work to ensure that even if he strays from the established systems, that his team does not. 

My role as Online Business manager is to ensure the systems are followed.  That’s the most important thing you can do for a client.  Listen to their needs and challenges, design systems to support them, and make sure that they follow the systems.