How easy it is to make silly mistakes

I had an email from a client this week entitled "Your phones aren't working". He'd tried to call us and found it went through to some completely random person we'd never heard of.

Turns out that it was completely our fault and we'd just diverted the phones wrongly instead of to our call minding company who answer the phones for us when we can't.

But it got me thinking about how easy it is to make silly mistakes. And while the above mistake wasn't serious and it was corrected easily, it does have an impact on how people perceive us.

Now I know mistakes will happen in the future and I think that's just one of those things we'll have to accept, there are procedures and systems we can put in place to minimise mistakes happening. For instance, I can put the number to our call minding company on the wall next to my desk so that I can refer it to as I'm typing it into the phone. I can also listen to the number as the automated voice reads it back to check I've done this correctly.

If you look at any business, there are probably loads of simple systems and procedures that can be put into place that minimise mistakes from happening, but also speed things up too. I can think of several I'm going to be implementing in ET over the next few months. What simple systems could you put into place in your business?