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insi-ded: Customer horror stories

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Customer horror stories: The webinar nightmare

Are you a webinar fan? A keen attendee? Perhaps an enthused host? If so, you might not be after you read this story. Months of preparation. Meticulous planning. Flawless slides. What could possibly go wrong?

If you want to submit your own CS or community horror story, do so here. (You can be completely anonymous!)

It was webinar time. And this was a big one. We had spent weeks and weeks prepping for it and put a lot of thought, time, and money into it. Top tier guests.

We were as prepared as we could be.

The day of, I go through the material one last time and have planned to do the webinar from the comfort (and quiet) of my own home.

But for some reason, on this day (as Murphy’s law will have it), my internet decides to be flakey.

No big deal. With plenty of time on my hands, I head to the office.

I arrive and no one is around (shoutout to Covid). Aahh, sweet silence. Stable internet. Glorious.

I get setup, log in…

Login fails.

Login fails again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

……

Now I start to panic. It’s 30 minutes until we go live. 

No one is around to help (again, shoutout to Covid.)

“Wait, is Caps Lock on?”

Login fails.

“Ok, wait. What if I activate caps and use shift while typing.”

OMG. I’M IN.

Alright. The time has come, let’s start the webinar.

Hundreds of people are waiting to join. But all they see, and myself, the host, is the message: “The Host of this meeting will let you in soon.”

Why.

WHY?!

I can’t figure out what’s wrong and at this point I’m running 15 mins behind schedule. I’m sweating and I start wishing I would have worn makeup because if I ever get this darn webinar started, I most definitely will be a sight for sore eyes. 

At this point, my inbox is getting bombarded with questions from would-be-webinar attendees. My esteemed guests are probably equally annoyed although handling it with grace.

I can’t figure it out. I just can’t. So I decided to call off the webinar. 

Days later I find out I screwed up the settings during setup.

Congrats to me, traumatized for all future webinars.

The lesson? Always triple-check your settings and do a test run. 

Want more horror? If you think you can handle it, head over to customerhorrorstories.com.