Happened lots of times that after I quote price for a project, customer said that will consult with boss / colleagues and get back to me tomorrow / in 1 week / next month. Due to large number of people contacting me, some more or less serious, I cannot keep track of all chat messages and emails I am receiving, to send follow-up emails to people who do not come back in the promised time.
I suggest everyone who has requested a project from me, to contact me again if you are really interested in my services instead of waiting for me to reply your last email, to AVOID cases described below:
When customer is too vague (2018)
In the last days of 2017 a customer left a chat message overnight, asking for a quote / discount if purchase 5 car databases at same time. I replied that I can give discount for multiple / subsequent purchases regardless if they are bought at same time or not, and asked customer which database he is interested in (I am author of over 100 databases, some coming in multiple packages with less or more columns or data, new cars only and new+old cars, etc).
Customer came on chat where he said that will study databases I offer and get back to me. He didn’t… in January 2018 I sent him another email asking if he came to any decision which databases to buy. He replied that already bought from other data provider because I am not serious seller replying him vague without a concise price. How I could tell exact price if HE was vague saying that want to buy 5 databases without telling which ones?
Please contact me, don’t wait for me to contact you (2012)
On 11 June 2012 someone from Isle of Man requested a single-storey compact house plan with 3 bedrooms and garage. Because at that time, the House Design page displayed only 6 projects ranging from 2 to 4 floors, I started designing the 1st single-storey floor plan for FREE, intending afterwards to ask him if wants to go further to detailed architectural drawings (and negotiate price for them). He asked me how long it takes, I said 30 minutes, he refused to give me an e-mail, but promised that will remain on website.
I broke my own record for fastest-designed house, I told him that I am DONE, he quickly closed my website (later I figured a bug, visitors status remain sometimes online after they closed website, and sending a message made Zopim Chat to update status).
According Clicky.com, same IP visited my website again next day, twice, being online Zopim Chat pop-up with “Hello from website admin, if you need any help or just wanna chat, ask me here!” (automatic greeting for everyone staying on website for 2 minutes), but did not replied, never messaged me again.
Probably he expected to see his requested house published on website, or was waiting for me to send house plan via chat, got disappointed that I am a liar and did not designed the house promised, etc. Zopim Chat does shows online visitors and allow me to initiate a chat, I do not keep an eye on it, getting automatic greeting does NOT mean that I am aware that you are here, YOU NEED to message me to initiate a chat so I can know that you are here and deliver the work.
I published his house plan 2 weeks later to increase my portfolio of samples for future customers. The original customer never contacted me anymore.
Later in 2012 I figured out that on Zopim Chat you can set up a message to pop-up automatically when certain IP visit my website, and not for everyone. This helped me to recover about 10% of customers who closed chat without leaving any contact info, and visited my website again later.
Customer contacting me from 2 computers, not leaving contact info on 2nd one to know that is same person + browser crash = LOST customer (2017)
Offline Message left on 15 Jun 2017, 11:04 PM (GMT+0)
hi are you there?
Teoalida
Fri, Jun 16, 2017 at 8:06 AM
Hi there, how I can help you?
When you leave a message outside of my online hours, say whatever do you need, not just “hi are you here”, so I can answer accordingly.
I just woke up, you can visit website now and message me again via chat.
Someone came in chat in the evening of same day, asking me to extract data from SimpleTire.com, my programmer quoted price for this service, customer agreed, and suddenly… Chrome crashed, even if I restarted it, the customer closed chat immediately after seeing “Teoalida has left” without thinking that an accident happened and I will be back online 1 minute later, he also did not left any email address in chat. I told to programmer to put this project ON HOLD until customer returns because my browser crashed and he quit without leaving any contact email.
3 days later customer returned, sent me an email
Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 6:17 AM
Hi, I wanted to see if you were able to make any traction with the Tire Database that we were chatting about last week. I believe that you were going to check to see if your programmer friend had time to work on the data. I believe the DB sample showed to me was missing the All Season tire data; we would need the vehicle data as well.
Let me know.
Teoalida
Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 9:03 AM
Programmer had free time in weekend, if you would have left a contact email when my browser crashed or be patient few minutes as I came back online, I would have told him to get started… now he is busy with school exams. Let’s hope that next weekend we do it!
Customer
Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 4:14 PM
Ok let me know. I apologize, but I was unaware that your browser crashed; I assumed you still had my email since you contacted me earlier using it.
Look forward to getting this going.
Teoalida
Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 5:36 PM
Oh my god! If you weren’t sending yesterday evening the email asking if I made any traction, I would not have been aware that the person contacting me via chat asking for SimpleTire is SAME person who messaged me “Are you there?” during night and I replied in email!
Now we just wasted a good weekend and we need to wait until next time this guy have free time for us!
This is why is better to be descriptive from first message, don’t say only “are you there?”, the chat software is able to show previous chats/offline messages from same person, but this time it didn’t showed, when you came on chat it showed 0 past chats, probably you were on another computer or cleared cookies.
Customer
Mon, Jun 19, 2017 at 5:37 PM
ok, let me know when he is free.
Took a week for my programmer to be free again to take projects from me, but it was too late… customer never replied anymore.
Teoalida
Sat, Jul 1, 2017 at 1:29 PM
Haven’t heard from you since 19 june, CAN YOU REPLY? Are you still interested in this project? Need to know to pay my programmer or not, as the other customer don’t want to pay so much. He charge me $250 to make a custom scraper for SimpleTire search by vehicle as this seems very complex compared with tires scrap and other projects we done in the past, no wonder why he did not had time to do this job earlier.
Customer
Sat, Jul 1, 2017 at 6:16 PM
Hello,
We could not wait any longer so we had to pursue another source. We will be sure to contact you for our next project.
Best,
