If it is not working, we want you gone

This is not a moan about a website going down. It is about the trap. They make it easy to join, then make leaving such a pain in the arse that you stay. We do not do that.

The trap is the whole point

Anybody can make joining easy. One account, one bill and a load of friendly buttons. Your name is on the page, so you think the website is yours.

Try leaving. Can you take the pages with you? Can somebody else run them? Can you cancel one thing without breaking three others? That is when you find out what you actually own.

Wix was crap

We paid Wix. We built the pages. We put our name on them. But when we left, the Wix part could not come with us. We had to rebuild the useful bits as normal pages that can live anywhere.

Wix is gone now. Good. ContactCentre.ie does not need Wix to make a change or stay online. I do not want a clever website builder if the clever bit is really the lock on the door.

Then the old hosting caught us

The new website was already working on our own machine. We cancelled the old hosting and the public address stopped opening it. The website had not crashed. The old company still had one of the road signs.

It also knocked company email off course. Cancelling an old website should not pull at a separate website and separate email. I do not care whether that was clever design or careless design. The result is the same: leaving hurts.

We do the opposite

If our calls are not working for you, I do not want you trapped here. I want to find the problem and fix it. If we cannot make the work pay, I want you gone.

Not because I do not want the business. I do. But you should stay because our callers produce the result, not because a contract, a closed system or the cost of escape has you by the balls.

Nobody owes us the next campaign

Our callers have to earn it. Our results have to earn it. The way we treat people has to earn it. The next campaign is not ours until the client chooses us again.

The client owns the relationship with its customers and donors. The client gets its work and results back. We should never build a hook into the job that makes moving it harder.

Here is the test

If the service is good, people stay because it is good. If the only thing keeping them there is the damage caused by leaving, the service is shit.

That is the lesson from Wix and the old hosting. If leaving destroys the thing you thought you owned, you did not own it.