Productivity Portfolio

Ideal communication for us is two way. One party initiates and the other responds. A problem occurs when either party doesn't respond. Sounds simple, right? Generally, the solution is simple and hopefully people discover it before the other party gets mad. We had too many breakdowns in communications this week and we categorized them into 3 common problems.

The Wrong Email Address

This is one of those examples of the obvious which is probably why it happens so often. People click the Contact Us link and send an email. On our web form, we ask you to provide your email address so we can respond. Some people make a mistake and enter an incorrect one.

Regardless of what you enter, we get your email. The problem occurs when we try to respond and get a message indicating undeliverable email because the user address doesn't exist. Sometimes, we can figure out the correct email address as someone transposed a letter. Most times, we're stuck.

Solutions:

1. Use a program like AI RoboForm that can identify and fill form fields. RoboForm is a password program manager we've reviewed in the past . This is a great feature they have in addition to their password management.

2. Try out one of the web toolbars that have auto fill form capability. One example is the Google toolbar that changes the color of form fields which it can pre-fill. MSN has their MSN Search toolbar that offers form filling capabilities for Internet Explorer.

Double Opt In Not!

We now offer a service to send readers a weekly email update. Part of the subscription process requires you to acknowledge that you wanted our email newsletter. This step is by design and is called double opt in. It's a common safeguard to ensure someone isn't signing you up for something you didn't request.

Lo and behold, we started getting emails from people saying they weren't receiving the email updates. Some people didn't realize they needed to respond to the email sent by our email provider. Without your acknowledgement, we don't send the email updates. In fact, we delete sign up requests after 2 weeks figuring you didn't initiate the request.

Solution: Check your email for the confirmation message from Productivity Portfolio and respond. The email should arrive within 10 minutes with the title Confirm Subscription.

Knocking at Your Door

It seems many of you have spam problems. Or at least that what we're told when we receive an automatic email from your challenge response service. The result is our replies are getting stopped. We stopped going through the drill of filling out the CAPTCHA request. One issue is that we don't have enough time to fill out all these requests. While you may think it is only a minute or two, it adds up for us when you multiply that by the amount of email we get. Secondly, some of the companies want us to commit to their terms and conditions which we find unacceptable.

Solutions:

1. Check your spam folders to make sure legitimate emails aren't getting stopped.

2. Whitelist our Timeatlas domain. This is preferable to using individual addresses as we're never sure who will respond. It might be Anne, Jesse or Support.

The bottom line is we're not ignoring you. If you don't get a reply to your inquiry in 48 hours, let us know as something is wrong. You might be pleasantly surprised to learn we have a response or newsletter that's already been prepared and have been waiting for your call.