So much for remaining ‘small’, ’boutique’, ‘a one-man show’. For the past few months I’ve been dying a death of a thousand cuts but only slowly realizing it. Pardon me while and add some ketchup and pepper on my words as I’m about to eat them right in front of you and it’s not going to be pretty.

Despite my best efforts to contain myself I just can’t and I have to accept that Forward Multimedia has grown and continues to grow and I just can’t handle it by myself as I did in the past. 100+ sites in my portfolio means that many clients. Site updates, maintenance, requests for proposals, troubleshooting, client visits, phone calls, replying to emails, texts, What’s App, Skype calls, Teamviewer sessions, local clients, foreign clients. It’s beginning to feel like work… and I don’t like work.

Enter official Forward Support. I now have someone (who I’ll introduce below) to assist me with general support requests like site content updates, graphic work, online marketing etc., which would free up some of my time. Not to diminish the work of my new assistant, but by now many of my tasks are routine and don’t require (what I think) are my innate abilities until the site reaches a certain point.

I’ve always told clients that I’ll make any update that will take me just a few minutes at no charge and charge only when ‘water gets more than flour’. Guess what? Water has gotten more than flour. A few minutes multiplied by X number of clients and we can all do the ‘mats’.

The situation is untenable and will lead to inefficiency and ineffectiveness, and more importantly UNHAPPY CLIENTS. I’ve had to personally call a few clients to apologize and explain why their tasks are getting pushed to the back of the queue. Thankfully I have good relationships and understanding clients.

It goes without saying that my new assistant is not working for button. I have to insist on and enforce paid maintenance plans, something I haven’t emphasized in the past.

Some tasks, mainly the platform maintenance will still be handled by me as these updates sometimes have issues that can break a live site.

The classification below is just for you to better understand what maintenance covers. New clients always ask about ‘Maintenance’. Most, if not all, think maintenance is just updating their site with new content like images, text, news items. As you can see, it’s that and more.

There is no way for a client to estimate how long a task would take and so they are literally at my mercy when I tell than it took (or will take) so and so many minutes/hours. However, I firmly believe that my clients know and trust me implicitly to accurately measure maintenance hour usage.

After any maintenance work, clients will get an update on the task(s), with the time taken, and the balance of hours remaining. Your prepaid time DOES NOT EXPIRE, that’s why it’s not a monthly charge. It expires when I actually spend time doing maintenance work.

I’m pleased to introduce Ms. Avionne Niamath, my new assistant and Official Forward Multimedia Support. I’ll let her tell her about herself in her own words below, but I can honestly say that she’s absolutely competent and has hit the ground running having started about a month ago.

By coincidence she’s also from Princes Town (like me), a past student of St. Stephen’s College (like me), and a past student of School of Accounting & Management (like me).

She has a great working knowledge of WordPress, but more importantly, understands my language of web design, and I’m not referring to coding language specifically, but rather, she understands the ‘where I’m coming from’ part. This means I don’t have to explain things twice, and I can rely on her to properly interpret tasks.

Unlike me, she doesn’t walk on water just yet… but I believe she has the potential to get there 🙂

Please note that Avionne is official Forward Multimedia Support but not exclusive. She is also a freelancer who does projects under her own name.

Now hear from her herself…

I’ll be sending clients a special notification about the new Forward Support Desk with additional client-only details and guidelines about how official support will work and impact them. Overall, the intention is to have a better management of website tasks in a more efficient and timely manner to ensure that all client websites continue to work as they should for them.