A couple of days ago I wanted to do a simple thing.
You just know this is gonna be a story about how it wasn’t simple at all, right?
So… I simply wanted to export a list of emails from Klaviyo. (That’s the email software my clients use.)
Now… clicking the link for this wasn’t hard.
But when I did… a blood-red warning flashed up:
“We are temporarily unable to load the list of profile properties in your account. Please try again or contact support.”
What? They can’t give me a simple CSV file?
Oh dear… is this another Klaviyo outage — like 2 weeks ago?
I gave it a couple of days. But it kept on happening.
So it was time to ask Klaviyo support: “What’s up?”
The customer support person replied to tell me…
Because I only have the “Manager” role within this client’s account… I can’t export the CSV file.
Ah… yes.. of course.. I should have known that.
After all…
The error message made that abundantly clear. *sarc*
Now… this behavior IS mentioned on their “roles” web page. I guess I should have studied that swarm of bullet points while I was learning Klaviyo.
But from my side of things…
It’s perfectly reasonable… (former software developer speaking)…
If software has an option that’s visible and clickable… then you can expect it to work for the access level you have.
I could’ve been shown a reasonable error message like:
“Sorry, you need the Admin role to do this”.
Instead:
It looks like they were going for the worst user-experience award of the century.
I mean… the message made it look like something was wrong at their end.
If I was shown a sensible error right away… it would have quickly sorted this all out.
This whole palaver reminded me that:
This kind of stuff shows up ALL THE TIME.
I mean the number of bugs, typos, and downright weirdness I see in software and websites are plentiful.
And I’ve sent tons of “Hey, did you know?”-type messages to website owners.
Just trying to help out. And because I felt embarrassed for them.
There’s an opportunity here for freelancers
If you spot things like this… maybe you can offer help.
But DO NOT rush in with a message like:
“Your website sucks and I can make it awesome. Hire me!”
A helpful, gentler approach is usually best.
Send a simple message. Share the thing you noticed. And wish them well.
Then… if they reply to say “thanks”…
Reply with something along the lines of:
“No worries. Hey, do you have someone to help you fix that? I’m a UX writer and am happy to help…”
This goes for any skill where mistakes or oddities might show up on websites or in software… design, illustration, writing, UX, web development… and probably more.
Sure, it’s putting yourself out there.
But that’s a fine way build relationships… by connecting with people who may need your help.
And a couple of minutes sending a message like this… you can just factor into your daily and weekly marketing time. (You do have time allocated for that, right?)
It’s an opportunity to make a connection with a business. Perhaps one who could even be a “dream client”.
Now… in this instance… I’m not interested in working for Klaviyo.
It just happened I was a user of their software.
But it shows… even the big players need help sometimes.
They might not offer you work. Or they might.
But taking a helping-first approach is the best policy as a freelancer.
And not always looking for a payoff. But being patient.
Because there’s truth in: what goes around comes around.
P.S. I’ve not seen an oddball error message in BerserkerMail yet!
You might know by now… it’s my one true email marketing love. 📨❤️
Because it hits the sweet spot of usability and behind-the-scenes deliverability “magic”.
For the lowest-friction system for sending daily email (or less often too)… I have an affiliate link for you.
Check it out here:
https://a.chrismilham.com/berserkermail
Ready to build your email list? Go here…
EmailForTheWin.com
Chris Milham