In addition to the move, I’m pleased to announce that Blue Phoenix will have a full time tech support specialist starting July 1st. Isn’t that great!? An actual person on the other end of the phone instead of that really bad voice mail message I recorded years ago. To capitalize on having another person in the office, we do need to change a few things, though. Rather than calling or emailing me directly, I’m asking everyone to either call the office phone (850-522-1744) or email support@bluephoenixconsulting.com. This way your request gets handled by whomever is available first rather than having to wait on me.

I know that for some of you, the choice to do business with Blue Phoenix was related to the fact that we were local. So I understand any apprehension you may have about this announcement. If you’d like to find a local company to take over, just let us know. While I hate to see any of my client’s leave, I do understand and will do all that I can to make such a transition as easy as possible.

Some of you are wondering where your monthly invoice is, since it should have been sent out this past Monday. I was delaying sending them until the lease on the new office was signed. Now that it’s been done, I’ll be getting the invoices sent out this afternoon. Please make sure to send the payment to the new address, as shown below (it’ll also be on your invoice):

Blue Phoenix Consulting
2167 NE Loop 410 #F20
San Antonio, TX 78217

If you have any questions or concerns about these changes, please feel free to call or email me.

Unfortunately, many of our clients won’t let us operate in this capacity. As a result, they are in the very boat that we’re saying we can get people out of. They have websites that don’t do anything!! Client comes in, says ‘I want a website that does x, y, and z.’ We talk with the client, get a feel for the situation and then recommend a, b, and c instead. The client refuses, so we go ahead and build them a site that does x, y, and z. The result? The client is happy because he got what he wanted. But I’m not, because the client didn’t get what he needed; and believe it or not that sort of thing bothers me. It keeps me up at night. I started this company to help clients to do better. It’s like Henry Ford said, “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a better horse.” So many times people come in asking for better horses and just won’t let us sell them the Model T that would help them so much.

This past September, Blue Phoenix Consulting crossed over the two year mark. From what I’ve read, supposedly 33% of business fail before their 2nd anniversary, so the fact that we’ve made it this far seems like a reason to celebrate. I guess we sort of cheated though, since many of our clients have been since before Blue Phoenix was formed. Some clients, such as McKimmey Associates Realtors, have been with me for quite a few years. But, back to my point, I’m ecstatic that we’ve made it this far and have done this well, but there’s more to be done. There are changes to be made. With that thought in mind, I wanted to share my vision for 2009.

First priority is that we’re making changes to our own internal systems. We’re always working on client systems and haven’t slowed down to look at our own. So, starting with the mailing of the January invoices we’ll be using a new system that will offer greater flexibility, reliability, and security. This was something that’s been debated back and forth for a while but the scale tipped this last month when invoices when out late to several of our clients. We’re also implementing a support ticket system, which should be online in late December. I know some people aren’t going to like using the ticket system, but I promise it’s a good thing. It’ll provide a way to track issues and help us to ensure things are handled in a timely manner. That said; yes, you can still call us or send an email to our support address. Of course we’re just going to go create a ticket and input whatever you emailed or said, so that we can track it.

Our other goal is stay in touch with our clients more and try to get back to our consulting plans. One way that we’re going to do this is by starting this blog that you’re reading now. We are going to start posting articles on a quasi-regular basis. The articles will be on topics that we think will helpful to our customers. Additionally, we’re going to work to create white papers that break things such as SEO down so that everyone can understand it.

So, as I end the first of what will become many, many blog posts, I just want to thank all of our clients for your support in helping Blue Phoenix Consulting make it past the two year mark.