Friday, January 23, 2009

Sorry for the slow response time

Awhile back, I was reading some opinions about how to determine the best Golden Dawn group for oneself. Now, I will admit that I am opinionated about the issue. After all, I am a lodge officer and have been such for several years. Plus I have been in more than one group: some good, some bad.

But there was one comment (which I am sure was meant as a joke) that said the Golden Dawn group that responds the fastest is the best. And it has been bugging me ever since.

I am not sure about the response time for membership inquires from the Big Name Orders, but I do know that for the lodge I belong to that response times are not quick. Ice ages have came and gone in some cases.

On a good day, the email is checked once, and only once. On a bad day, it is not checked at all. That is the first speed bump in the road.

The lodge also has a couple of dead links out there (created by former members) which if they are the ones that you are using, well, your communication goes into a internet black hole, never to be seen by a current officer. This is not so much a speed bump, as it is those nasty spikes that the cops use to blow out the tires of fleeing cars.

The second speed bump is the schedule of our meet and greet officers. Often they have to compare notes to figure out when someone can meet you before they can even reply to you to set up a time to meet.

Another speed bump, one that I hope no one is guilty of, is if we are unsure of your suitability based solely on your email. If your ego is showing, or you are engaged in dubious practices, or are considering joining for the wrong reasons (the lodge is not right for everyone), then there is going to be a delay in the response time.

The final speed bump that prevents rapid response time is that someone has to have a couple of mintutes to actually answer the inquiry in the first place. We have never figured out how to set up the auto-response feature on the website, nor have we ever agreed on what form letter to send out to actually consider using the function.

All this combines to make our response time slow, sometimes painfully slow.

And if anyone is turned off by this, we do know one thing: the lodge is not going to be right for them. After all, instant gratification is not part of our system, just hard work.

Thank you for your call. Your call is important to us. Please hang on for the next live human being to take your call. There may be a small delay in answering your call. Thank you for your call...

1 comment:

Suecae Sounds said...

Just out of curiosity:
Which G.D order are you personally affiliated with?
You don't have to answer if you do not feel that it is information that you think is important. But I just thought that it would be interesting, since there indeed is a plentiful of organizations honing the traditions of the Golden Dawn.