Small Business: Embarrassing Communication

Embarrassing as it is, there are a couple of lessons to be learned. 

Recently a small business was implementing some upgrades to their point-of-sales and internet sales software. During the late night hours the software was taken down and their technicians worked diligently, quickly to complete the upgrades and reload them to the registers and system. One technician says to the other, "Done!". 

The second technician hears the first say, "Done!" and assumes all is well and the upgrade is finished. You guessed it, the software was not reloaded to the server or registers for all to see. The first technician really meant, "I'm done with my part, now it's yours to reload." The one word declaration - - "Done!" - - did not communicate that message well.  The following day a client emails, "We need help!!!???" 

Business is slowed as they don't have the point-of-sales software, online purchases can not be completed, and they had to create a work around on the fly -- remember business continuity planning we discussed earlier?

They called us for help. Keep in mind this software is the heart of our client's business so we move carefully, and start by retracing the steps taken for the upgrade. We start by meeting with the technicians to walk through each step that was completed from beginning to end.* 

Two lessons were learned: 
1. Communicate clearly your intended message and make sure the recipient of the message understands your intent. 
2. Verify completed work which did not occur in this situation.  

For small business owners clear communications are critical. One simple word with an unclear intent can "take your business down" for up to 10 hours. Although you may not have experienced a failure such as this, we encourage you to prevent the possibility of it happening to you, by talking about processes and most importantly, clear communications with your colleagues.

* We've learned from experience not to dive right in and start tinkering with the software, rather explore what led to the issue. 

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