Hopefully your Memorial Day weekend was enjoyable and wasn’t interrupted with calls, e-mails and text messages from frantic clients and bosses that had Website emergencies.

Remember Winston Wolfe from Pulp Fiction? How he could be interrupted from a swanky party to fix an emergency? You need to be your own Winston Wolfe, or at least know where to find the Website equivalents from your staff and vendors.

Last Friday before we left for the long weekend, we were on the phone with a client, finishing up some details before we launched their new Website. They asked a very simple but incredibly important question: What happens if there are problems over the weekend?

During the week, that’s easy enough: We identify the problem and put either the right person or the best team on it.

However, over a holiday weekend—and perhaps for a day or even a week after the holiday—it’s not that simple, especially when people can’t be expected to come in, stay late or even be available on the phone.

The 5 W’s of a Website Contingency Plan

A Website contingency plan is very much a reflection of how well you already communicate with your clients, vendors and staff. Ask yourself—and your clients, vendors and staff:

• Who should be contacted? Who will be available to work on a problem—in the office, over the phone, or remotely on a laptop?

• What are some potential emergencies? What—and who—would be needed to fix them?

• Why should or shouldn’t something wait until when everybody returns to work the next week?

• When is it acceptable to call instead of write, especially if e-mails and IMs are not answered?

• Where will people be? With family? In an airplane? On a lake with poor mobile reception and no Wi-Fi?

• How can people be contacted? How will they be able to work? Do they travel with their laptops?

Nobody wants to be bothered with work-related problems after hours. However, marketing—both from a client and vendor perspective—has a lot in common with the service industry, and the key to great service is being available when needed and able to deliver results within a reasonable amount of time.

Does your hospital have a trusted and reliable partner to build, manage and plan your Website content and strategy? AVID Design offers free assessments for Websites, content, strategy and more.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Best Practices, Marketing, Things 'n' Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.