When you know you're doing the right thing: some representative comments from clients

Note: This blog post is from 2019. Some content may be outdated--though not necessarily. Same with links and subsequent comments from myself or others. Corrections are welcome, in the comments. And I may revise the content as necessary.

Well, I got a really nice one today, and I thought I'd share it here also, as it really does capture well what I strive to do in my work:

"Having worked with you more than once now, I've been extremely impressed with your quick response time, problem-solving ability, professionalism, and interest in not just fixing the problem yourself but also building up our own troubleshooting skills. Your methodical, step by step investigation transformed a confusing, hair-pulling server issue into a clear problem with a simple solution, which in this case turned out to be a low level cloud infrastructure issue that had nothing to do with CF or our app code. You are a web app troubleshooting rock star, and anybody with significant CF deployments ought to keep your contact info handy."

Conan Saunders MyComicShop

I will admit that he expanded his comment a bit when I asked his permission to quote him, but nearly all the others are just as written to me originally, such as this from last month:

"We really appreciate all your help over the last few months. Our uptime now far exceeds any previous record over the past decade!"

Nick Powell, Director of IT American Association of Individual Investors (AAII)

These are music to my ears! Not because of the praise, but because helping people make their servers go better and stay up longer, as well as saving people trouble and heartache while also making them more self-sufficient--that's what I love to do!

Is all my feedback glowing?

A critic may argue: "you just show positive comments there. Does EVERYONE love their engagements with you?" Well, no, of course not. Different strokes for different folks, right? But if you didn't know, I offer a satisfaction guarantee (on my consulting page): I don't expect people to pay for time with me they do not value.

I am happy to report that I've analyzed that "refund rate" and confirmed that over the years it's averaged about 1% per year over each of the past several years. And I DO remind folks of this refund option before I invoice them, so I'd say the positive comments are FAR more representative of the experience for most.

And there are many, many more of them (over 60) expressed on that references page from this year, last year, the year before, and going back over a decade. (And the rate of them is no different this year than before. Not bad for a "dying" platform. More on that some day in another post.) If you're interested, I'll leave it for you to check out the rest.

Why don't I share more references like this?

I've never promoted these kind of remarks here. Indeed, I just thought today as I posted this one on the page that I might take a moment to draw attention to them here also.

I've simply for years just put them on that page, hoping people would find them if seeking them (I do offer a link at the top of the page, and in text on the consulting page). The reason I created the page was of course to give prospective clients a chance to hear not just how I may propose I work (and how well I might typically be able to help), but to hear what others have experienced.

I suppose I could create a carousel of some sort where they appear on the site. Honestly, I'm too busy solving problems to get around to such. The old story of the cobbler's children having no shoes! :-)

And yes, I know there are still other venues for obtaining/displaying such "reviews", from Feefo or Yotpo, to LinkedIn, and so on. I've just not had a strong reason to seek out reviews/recommendations that way, instead just letting them come as they do. We'll see if I may get around to doing something like the above at some point. I don't NEED them, but I might benefit.

I'll just keep doin' what I do

Indeed, the references are just like the work I do, which flows like a river, coming day after day and week after week, in God's good providence--with about the same number of hours per week, and with about a dozen different clients each week, most being repeat customers from weeks or years past, though also generally a new client or two each week. (Again, odd, when CF and CFML are supposed to be dead.)

If you can't tell from all I share (here, as well as on the Adobe CF Portal, on the FusionReactor site, and elsewhere), I love what I do, and I love helping people do what THEY do in terms of troubleshooting their server problems. (And yes, even with "serverless" being a thing, along with containerization in general--there's still a need for the troubleshooting experience I bring, whether with CF or other tech. More to come on my work in those other platforms, in time.)

Indeed, you may well see news of some other new media I've been considering, to pick up where blogging leaves off. I won't say you'll "hear of it soon" because...well, I'm just too busy to commit to a date. :-) But I work at these other plans as I can, and will release them when they're ready. Time will tell.

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Need more help with problems?

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