Jan 10 2009 at 12:52pm
How not to handle technical difficulties, take 2
I meant to post this at the time but never did. Why do I never finish my drafts???
On Wednesday, October 8th our websites suddenly disappeared. Our VPS (virtual private server), hosted by VPSville, was completely unavailable. There was no explanation on their website. Our only information came from a thread at Web Hosting Talk.
The VPSville site was still live, but their forum was no longer active. Supposedly they did post something on their forums early on, but quickly took the forums completely offline. Over 24 hours passed before VPSville let their customers know what was going on.
The original announcement was vague. In light of later news that some of their servers had been hacked and all the data erased, this announcement was outright misleading. Needless to say, this was completely unacceptable. Not just that they lost the data. No, the worst part was that they didn’t tell their customers what was happening.
What do do when things go wrong (revised)
- Find out what actually happened.
- Fess up. Admit that your systems weren’t able to handle the traffic (or whatever the problem was). Do not blame the users.
- Make sure this information is published and availble to clients.
- Ensure that communication channels are open. Make every attempt to respond to customer questions.
- Do not attempt to cover up the problem.
- If you don’t know all the details, that’s okay. Tell people what you do know.
- Promise to get things working ASAP.
- Do get things working ASAP.
- Give paying customers a refund for services lost.
- In the future, make sure your servers can handle the traffic, or plan other ways to avoid the problem.
