Thankful Thursdays – # 2

Thursdays are devoted to stuff that’s going well-because there’s a lot more of it than we usually think, and because there’s a theory that putting your attention on the good stuff attracts more of it to you.

Some–okay, most–of you have probably heard of The Secret, the 2006 bestseller purporting to let you in on the secret to getting anything you want.  Some people leap wholeheartedly into that kind of thing, and some people start thinking ‘snake-oil salesman’ when they hear about it.

I tend to fall into the middle camp.  I haven’t managed to manifest a million dollars yet, but some experiments have yielded interesting results.  And one thing that certainly can’t hurt is to pay attention to the good things in your life.  If it doesn’t bring more of them to you, it reminds you of the joy of the ones you have.

Ergo.

Thursdays in this blog are devoted to thankfulness.

This Thursday, I am thankful for tech support that works.  Specifically, I want to send a shout out to MailChimp.  MailChimp is the service I selected to handle my email list for my News Flashes as well as the blog posts.  If you received this post via email, it’s thanks to MailChimp.

There were some good reasons I picked them in the beginning.  Their base service is free, and the volume limit they offer for that very attractive price is high enough that you can give them a serious test before you  have to pay anything.  They give you a lot of control over the look of your emails, so you can do that “branding” thing pretty well.

And their support is awesome.

Aside from having extremely clear online instructions and documentation, they’ve got a LiveChat thingy* that actually works.  Reps comes on really quickly.  They generally grasp the problem right away and have solutions to offer.    They are friendly and funny and fast.  They never try to pass the buck.  You don’t hear “Yeah, see, that’s probably a problem with your website host.  We can’t troubleshoot that for you.”  (At least, I haven’t yet.  I suppose it’s possible that I might run into something that is genuinely outside the scope of their service, but so far, they’ve really tried to solve every problem I’ve had.)

In addition, and this is more of a benefit than you might think, the chat chimes when the rep responds.  Unlike many other company’s live chat, you don’t have to sit there watching the window while the rep handles some untold number of other clients.  You can do something else in the rare instances that you need to wait for a response, because the chat will chime and let you know the Chimp has chatted.  (No offense to the MailChimp tech support staff who are more human than most.)  I really love the chiming.  It’s a serious selling point for me.

And if you’ve got a question and it’s outside chat hours, they respond to emails within hours.

Their instructions are clear and concise and they fix the problem.

And that chimp is slightly hilarious!

So, today, I am thankful for the menagerie–the MailChimp and the FatCow** are doing me proud.

 

* ‘ thingy’—a technical term for that which I cannot immediately think of the word
** my website host