Data is the lifeblood of your business. Without it, your business doesn’t exist. So we know how important your data is. That’s why we backup the entire database on the entire server every single day. We used to conduct backups 4 times per day, but that really wasn’t necessary, so backups are now done every morning at 3am while we’re all sleeping.

But the reason why I felt it was important to write this blog post is to encourage you to backup your own account every time you add or edit information in your account. You can do this on the my account/general screen:

It literally takes just seconds to do. And to make it even easier, we’ve made it so that a small window will display when you click the “logout” link. In this window you’re prompted to backup your data. So all you have to do is click the “yes” button in the window and you’ll shoot right to the “Data Backup” section and be able to backup your data.

Here’s what the window looks like:

So as mentioned above, simply click “Yes” and you’ll be directed to the backup section on the “my account/general” screen and you can proceed to backup your data.

You might be thinking “why should I backup my data if you back it up?” Good question. Here’s why:

We’ve had some situations where members who are in the process of doing things in The Customer Factor will end up deleting some of their data. We provide a series of safety measures in The Customer Factor to make a person think twice before they do something, but in a few instances, it isn’t followed. And once the data is deleted, it’s gone. However if you backed it up, it can easily be restored with a couple of clicks.

Keep in mind that we can’t go into the main backed up file for the entire server in this situation.  That’s not what we back up the server for.

I’ll give you some examples that have actually happened concerning data deletion. This is obviously not meant to embarrass anyone, but it’s important to talk about so that no else does the same thing.

Example 1:

A few months ago a member did a search for customers, selected them all on the search results screen, clicked the “personalize it” button and sent out some personalized letters to all the customers on the search results screen. After this was done, she clicked the “Back” button (never click the “back” or “forward” buttons in your internet browser. Use the navigation buttons/links provided by The Customer Factor).

After clicking the “back” button she ended up back on the search results screen with all the customer select boxes still checked. For some reason she thought that in order to finish the letter sending process, she needed to click the “delete selected” button which would delete the customers from the search results screen. But what ended up happening is when she clicked the “delete selected” button and then clicked the “ok” button in the window that popped up, her customers were deleted from her account.

Here’s the window that pops up when the “delete selected” button is clicked:

This info. in this window is supposed to make a person think twice and ask themselves the question whether they want to delete the customer(s) or not. But for some reason that wasn’t done in this case and after this member clicked “ok”, the customers on the search results screen were deleted entirely.  What made it worse is that she didn’t have a backup. I can promise you that now she does backups every time she’s in her account.  🙂

So this post is really meant to encourage you to do two things: First is to backup your data as we’ve already discussed. But the 2nd thing this post is designed to do is to encourage you to stop and read the little boxes that pop up. We put them there for a very specific reason. So if you click a button or do something within the software (ie: deleting or archiving prospects/customers) which generates a window that opens up, please read it in full and then take action accordingly.

You may very well want to delete a prospect (or multiple prospects from the search results screen) or a customer (or multiple customers from the search results screen), so when the little window opens up asking you to confirm that you want to delete, simply click “ok” and you’re good to go. But always make sure to read the info. in the box before clicking any button.

Example 2:

I’ve had a couple of members “restore” a backed up file into their account, but the problem was that it was an old backup file. So what happens is that the old file will override all the data currently in their account and they’ll end up with old data.

You can “restore” your data on the my account/general screen here:

After you browse for your file that you previously backed up and saved, you then click the “restore” button. Remember above where I talked about safety measures? Well…we have another window that pops up when you click the “restore” button. Here’s what it looks like:

Please note the text in the window. It clearly says that the file “will override all current data within The Customer Factor“. So unless you know you’re about to restore the most recent backed up file that you previously saved, DO NOT restore your data.

But here’s the most important thing to understand about this restore function. Chances of you ever having to restore anything are slim. Maybe if you delete something and then realize you shouldn’t have deleted it, then you may want to restore your most recent backup file, but that’s pretty much the only reason for restoring anything.

The only thing you always want to do every time you log into The Customer Factor and add/edit any data is to do a data backup. But rarely will you have the need to restore it. I can assure you though that if the need ever does arise (like in the 2 examples above), you’ll be glad you have the most recent backup file on hand. So please backup your data regularly.

Have a great day,

Steve

Update: Here is a short video we put together showing you how easy it is to backup your data.