Creeva’s World 2.0

For those that have read my post on my Ash­land Humane Soci­ety expe­ri­ence, they have replied with a long and lengthy com­ment which I will dis­sect and reply to on in this post. The ital­ics belong to the commenter.

We thank you for your input regard­ing our email address being posted by Ras­cal. They are a won­der­ful orga­ni­za­tion and they do great things for the com­mu­ni­ties that they go to.

They offer low cost spay and neuter to areas where peo­ple have lost their jobs, homes, or had to take a reduced income and/or have a large pop­u­la­tion of un-spayed or neutered ani­mals. In some of the south­ern coun­ties in Ohio, they actu­ally screen the peo­ple who use the ras­cal clinic for need, based on income. You can imag­ine how grate­ful these peo­ple are, who could not afford such a pro­ce­dure with out the ser­vices ras­cals. The Ash­land County Humane Soci­ety has not decided to take this approach and has allowed all who would like to use the clinic, to be able to do so.

I am respond­ing to this blog as you for­warded it to us, i would assume for some response. Seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion regard­ing rather it should be responded to was given, but have decided to do so. There are things that would be help­ful for the com­mu­nity to know.

I’m curi­ous if they would have still responded if my post enti­tled “Ash­land Humane Society’s Poor Ser­vice” wasn’t the the third hit in google when you search for the “Ash­land Humane Soci­ety”. While I stated in my orig­i­nal let­ter that I was post­ing it on my blog an e-mail reply would have been fine, though I would have replied with this post just the same.

Lets address your above issues.

Yes, you did email us regard­ing an appoint­ment. That email was sent on Fri Jan 25 @ 12:52 pm. This is LESS then 48 hours prior to the arrival of Ras­cals. We close out the sched­ule for each clinic, either when the clinic is full, or the Thurs or Fri prior to the arrival of the clinic. Ras­cal needs some type of surgery sched­ule prior to arrival, so they know how to stock the unit for that clinic. Usu­ally, our clin­ics fill up first.

This par­tic­u­lar clinic was closed out weeks prior to Fri, Jan 25, as it was FULL. This infor­ma­tion was stated on our voice mail at our phone num­ber. I am not sure how we could have con­veyed that infor­ma­tion to you since you only emailed us. We may have been able to respond to your email if emailed us earlier.

The time ahead was irrel­e­vant since accord­ing to the Ras­cal unit site there was no stip­u­la­tions on the amount of lead time that I would need to sched­ule the appoint­ment nor did it even sug­gest I call ahead and ver­ify. I just had the fore­thought since it was the morn­ing of and didn’t know what time they arrived in the morn­ing. If the Ras­cal Unit needs a cer­tain amount of lead time it should state that on their web site where it states to sched­ule it.

The eas­i­est method to respond to indi­vid­u­als who do not know any bet­ter would be to set up an auto-responder in your
e-mail stat­ing the best option is to call ahead and ver­ify if you need to make an appoint­ment or need imme­di­ate assis­tance. This is how you would inform any­one via e-mail. Sim­ple to the point and no one try­ing to get in con­tact with you would have proper expec­ta­tions set.

I am sure this is still upset­ting to you as your per­fered com­mu­ni­ca­tion is email, and you seem to be a very techy per­son hav­ing his blog and web­page. But, we are a Humane Soci­ety ded­i­cated to the wel­fare of ANIMALS. So, we have ani­mals to take care of, ani­mals need med­ica­tions, trans­ported to vet care, spay and neuters sched­uled, adop­tion vis­its arranged and han­dled, cages need cleaned, adop­tion web­sites need updated, injured ani­mals need picked up, neglect and inhu­man­i­ties called need fielded and inves­ti­gated, com­mu­nity pub­lic rela­tions, fund rais­ing events, man­ag­ing vol­un­teers, and we could go on. So, our apoli­gizes, if we only get to check the email once a day or less. Ani­mals come first.

E-mail is my pre­ferred com­mu­ni­ca­tion and I expect any busi­ness that offers this as a means of con­tact to take it seri­ously. I do not need imme­di­ate con­tact, though you felt a full two weeks to respond in any fash­ion is good cus­tomer ser­vice. If e-mail is too tech­ni­cal I’m sure postal mail would arrived in that same time frame. I nei­ther asked nor requested a post on my blog, but since i did post it I felt it fair to include that I did in the e-mail. While you may say ani­mals are your pri­mary con­cern within the same time frame I have con­tacted other vet­eri­nary clin­ics on spay and neuter prices and have got­ten a response with 24 hours. At least two of those were vol­un­teer orga­ni­za­tions, from your assump­tions this must mean they care about pets less then you.

At the point my blog arti­cle was orig­i­nally pub­lished you were unaware which per­son it was that e-mailed you, I would expect that any orga­ni­za­tion that offers e-mail as a form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion to at least check it before they go home for the day. While you may state that pets are your first con­cern if I was con­tact­ing you about a poten­tial adop­tion of of one your pets and had not received a response I could have moved on to the next place that would. If you hon­estly believe e-mail is sep­a­rate from tele­phone calls wait until the cur­rent tweens are grown up and expect responses via text mes­sag­ing. Maybe that will be the time frame you actu­ally take it as an impor­tant busi­ness tool. It is a busi­ness tool to you, it allows for adop­tions and com­mu­ni­ca­tions with your cus­tomers. Not hav­ing a timely response may put off poten­tial adopters and then an ani­mal may have to put to sleep if it’s not res­cued. Iron­i­cally check­ing your e-mail at the end of every day may save at least 1–2 ani­mal lives a year, so I too think of the animals.

Your email started with ” I would like to make an appoint­ment.” And, appoint­ment IS need. Some­one would have had to made con­tact with you to sched­ule your ani­mals, get your ani­mals names, give you a time to show up, and pre-operative surgery instruc­tions. Your blog here starts that you called to CONFIRM your appoint­ment, just by send­ing an email does NOT mean that an appoint­ment has been set. It is just a means to con­tact the Humane Soci­ety, to let them know of your need/interest, so some­one can get back in touch with you.

If you notice that e-mail that prompted you to respond was writ­ten to the Ras­cal Unit — I was kind enough to CC to let you know what was being said. It is as much your fault as it is their’s that the site said I could make an appoint­ment via e-mail. This also begs the ques­tion — why would some­one have needed to make per­sonal con­tact? To Sched­ule — that was what the e-mail was for? Get my ani­mals name’s? I could tell you there names were larry, curly, and moe but there real names may be pro­fan­ity terms that I only use around my own house (they aren’t before you ask). The point is there is no ID or ver­i­fi­ca­tion that I’m bring­ing you the pet I said was hence the name require­ment is ridicu­lous espe­cially since it is on the paper­work I would have to bring in. Give me a time to show up? This is as sim­ple as reply­ing to an e-mail. Pre-Operative instruc­tions? I already received these from the Ras­cal Unit web­site, also I had all the paper­work filled out and ready to go. It seems I was more pre­pared for this then you were.

If it’s just a means to show inter­est you are beholden to con­tact your part­ner Ras­cal Unit and inform them to make the changes on their web site.

I am sure that you would not con­tact your per­sonal med­ical sur­geon via email to sched­ule a surgery. and if you did and recieved no response assume that things were going to go all as planned. How would you even know if they received the email? How would you know if they were or weren’t hav­ing email/computer prob­lems. Wouldn’t you be con­cerned when you did not hear from them, if they even recieved your email. Would you know won­der if there was any­thing you needed to know or pre­pare for prior to your surgery? ‘Wouldn’t you want your appoint­ment con­firmed? Wouldn’t you want to per­son­ally hear from someone?

Are you going to com­pare the two? Really? We’ll start with the fact to get med­ical surgery you have to be referred to a sur­geon from a gen­eral prac­tioner. At this point what I did do was con­tact the gen­eral prac­ti­tioner (Ras­cal Unit) went to their web site. They referred me to con­tact you — their con­tact method stated for you was to to calls OR e-mail to sched­ule an appoint­ment. In real life though your GP would con­tact the sur­geon and the sur­geon would then con­tact you to make an appoint­ment. Yes I have dealt with med­ical con­fir­ma­tions of my appoint­ments via e-mail. I would also defy you to find me a doctor’s office that doesn’t reply or acknowl­edge their e-mail they receive. I know you don’t have to deal with insur­ance but they do and their e-mail addresses are reg­u­larly mon­i­tored. They know this is how they get paid. I’m sure a recep­tion­ist at the doc­tors office would reply in e-mail that the per­son would have to call for an appoint­ment if e-mail was an issue.

Why would I per­son­ally want to hear form some­one. I’m sorry you don’t think e-mail is per­sonal. Wouldn’t tak­ing the time to hand­write a note actu­ally be more per­sonal? Yet because I type it out instead of hand writ­ing it (which in my case would have been far less leg­i­ble) it becomes more imper­sonal then a phone call? I don’t need you to waste time call­ing me since your could have replied to the e-mail that you can’t take appoint­ments liek that quicker then it takes you to walk from one end of the room to another to answer the phone. If you throw in that some­how you have some­one sit­ting next to the phone — this per­son should have a com­puter alert­ing about incom­ing e-mail.

Fur­ther, many Humane Soci­ety are not open on week­ends, oth­ers still have short hours on Saturday’s and office staff is not there. I am sur­prised that you were not con­cerned about this pos­si­ble issue when you sent your email on Fri. afternoon.

Are you daft? I knew the Ras­cal Unit was going to be and knew from the web­site how long the pro­ce­dure would take. The only thing I didn’t know was the start time. Why should I have wor­ried about the hours?

Appar­ently, con­cerned came about the morn­ing of the clinic Jan 27, 2008. That is when a phone call was placed by you. And, one of two vol­un­teers for that day (shar­ing her own per­sonal time) answered the phone, in the mid­dle of check­ing in, half of the 59 people/pets sched­uled for the clinic that day. She was try­ing to keep the check-in flow going, and answer peo­ples ques­tions, give instruc­tions, han­dle surgery paper­work, assist with ani­mals, ect. things were a lit­tle chaotic. She per­son­ally apoli­gizes if she con­veyed her­self as rude to you, as that was not her intent. She also stated she did not elab­o­rate or explain to you the pro­ce­dure or dis­cuss the email as she did not have the con­vience of time to do so. She stated she told you it must not have been checked as she knew how hard we work at get­ting back with every­one. She per­son­ally did not know who & when the last time the email had been checked. You even stated that ser­vices were offered for Feb 24, 2008. We sched­ule the clinic on a first to con­tact us basis, even if a mes­sage is left.

We did not ask or instruct ras­cal to place our email address on their web­site. And, we gave seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion over the last cou­ple weeks to your input about hav­ing it removed. In the end we decided let it remain as in the 14 plus clin­ics we have done with ras­cal, this is the only inci­dent. And, we apoli­gize to you, we are ter­ri­bly sorry.

Once again — I was wor­ried since I hadn’t heard back about the start time or arrival. I hadn’t even con­sid­ered my e-mail would have been unseen or ignored. I stated the woman who answered the phone cut me off, which was fine. She didn’t do it rudely and I under­stand what she was going through. Since I couldn’t say she was or was not the one respon­si­ble for check­ing the e-mail I didn’t take it our on her. Her answer about how often you do check your e-mail made my orig­i­nal addressed to the Ras­cal Unit rather then you. The part­ner­ship you two have going on is what is at issue. If I remem­ber cor­rectly you are the ONLY one that states on the Ras­cal Unit web site that you accept appoint­ments via e-mail. Other stops have e-mail addresses you can INQUIRE to. Yet under your list­ing it states I can make an APPOINTMENT with you at that e-mail address. This means Ras­cal Unit doesn’t have a stan­dard block post­ing it puts with all of it’s part­ners, hence you or more specif­i­cally some­one in your orga­ni­za­tion has put forth that expec­ta­tion. You don’t have to remove your e-mail address you have to get the word­ing changed to set expec­ta­tions properly.

One more note for the com­mu­nity and your­self to know. Your Ash­land County Humane Soci­ety is only oper­ated by vol­un­teers, NO PAID EMPLOYEES.

These very same vol­un­teers have reg­u­lar pay­ing jobs at 40 or more hours a week, some go to col­lege in addi­tion, involved in their church com­mu­ni­ties, some also vol­un­teer for other non-profits, they have spouses, kids and some grand­kids. They have reg­u­lar busy lives such as your­selves and the hours they give to the humane soci­ety are hours taken away from the other parts of their lives. They do this for their love of ani­mals and to pro­vide ser­vice such as this for the com­mu­nity, to pro­vide a bet­ter future for the ani­mals, and to help and assist the peo­ple in the ‚Ash­land Com­mu­nity. The core group of daily volunteer’s is small as most do not have time or want to ded­i­ca­tion such a large amount of their free time to keep this Humane Soci­ety oper­a­tional on a day to day basis. We appre­ci­ate and are grate­ful for any­one who can, does or wants to help, no mat­ter how big or small a ges­ture. Mr. Gueth your­self included, as you can see we could use help in the techy depart­ment, it take a “back burner” to the needs of the animal.

These vol­un­teers are the very same peo­ple who are “pro­vid­ing poor ser­vice”, a lit­tle sup­port and under­stand­ing is uplift­ing and greatly appre­ci­ated, it makes it worth the effort.

Ash­land County Humane Society

Why does paid or un-paid make a dif­fer­ence. If I come over and mow half your lawn and then don’t charge your not going to be annoyed. I under­stand vol­un­teer­ing — I used to vol­un­teer at for the Friend’s of Habour­town yearly for 3 years before my move to Ore­gon. Count­ing my com­mute I had a 55 hour work week and still vol­un­teered 30–40 hours a week min­i­mum for 5 months a year. My wife dur­ing this same time frame put in more hours then myself with the same orga­ni­za­tion. This being a decade ago — we still checked and responded to our e-mails daily. Some of us even checked them from our day jobs on break since it takes less then a minute to know if there is any­thing pressing.

Via the Inter­net today I can order pizza from at least 3 places in town (one of them I can or soon can text mes­sage in an order), I can order gro­ceries and have them deliv­ered next day. I can mange my bank account and order any­thing over the inter­net. I can order dog col­lars that have GPS track­ing on my pets so I can get e-mail updates on where they are or track them in real time with a cell phone. The Inter­net really is where com­mu­ni­ca­tion and busi­ness of all types is going.

After post­ing the orig­i­nal blog arti­cle my wife and I dis­cussed start­ing a low cost ser­vice for non-profits to get suit­ably wired in the 21st cen­tury. You may say that this is to make a profit, but really it isn’t. The price we have been throw­ing around is less then 1 hours worth of com­puter repair at most places in your town, also it is to cover the prices for the other ser­vices we would be con­fig­ur­ing for you — domain reg­is­tra­tion is not free. Essen­tially the cost has been dri­ven down where the profit would be less then what I make in an hour dur­ing my day job. So I want to make clear that try­ing to work on that idea is not some get rich quick scheme. Though we may be able to work some­thing out at cost for you.

I tell it like I see it and don’t hold back. In your let­ter you admit there is some PR short­com­ings and wrong expec­ta­tions set that I have pointed out more explic­itly. I hold no per­sonal anger to you that has lasted more then the 20 min­utes that it took to write the orig­i­nal post/e-mail I sent out. I call it like I see it, because of this some peo­ple don’t like me. That’s fine. If you can look at this as straight talk and no per­sonal ani­mos­ity we may be able to work some­thing out. The best thing I can say is that I’m enough of a straight shooter that I won’t lie to you since I have no rea­son, nor will I go behind your back since obvi­ously I believe in the open­ness of the pub­lic forum.

I would say you can call me (I think I left my num­ber in the orig­i­nal e-mail) I would sug­gest you write though. You see if your not on my con­tact list any phone calls to me go straight to voice­mail. My voice­mail is then e-mailed imme­di­ately after it’s left. So essen­tially in take the time to call me it’s still going to be han­dled on my side via e-mail. Oh and that ser­vice is free. If you were on my call­ing list though it would ring my work phone, my home phone (if it was plugged in), and my cell phone at the same time until I answered one of them.

P.S.

Same with faxes too (also free).

P.P.S

Soon I may be mov­ing my postal mail over to a ser­vice that scans it in an e-mails it to me.

E-mail really is impor­tant to a busi­ness to get any­thing done in a faster fash­ion then the old ways.

UPDATE:

I for­got to add a cou­ple things — I man­aged to respond within an hour and half of the com­ment being left since I was alerted to it via e-mail.   The sec­ond part is the first hit in google for “Ash­land Humane Soci­ety” points to an adop­tion site.   To adopt a pet I have to e-mail some­one out­side of the Ash­land Humane Orga­ni­za­tion to a per­sonal e-mail address.  Granted that per­son prob­a­bly works for the Ash­land Humane Soci­ety, but all inquiries should be set to go through the address they use for busi­ness.   Finally the same site points to the Ash­land Humane Society’s web­site  — www.ashlandhumane.com — the prob­lem with that is they allowed their domain to expire and it was picked up by a spam blog on Jan 17th of this year.  This is another they need to update with their part­ners and fix within their organization.