It happens, the web is a constantly evolving set of technologies that are bewilderingly complex and yes... sometimes things go wrong.
How should we deal with the fact that we may be on one job when a previous customer gets in touch to say that something is broken and needs to be fixed urgently?
Obviously this kind of situation is far from ideal. The truth is engaging the services of a small company like us is always a compromise to having your own dedicated staff to manage your website who would be able to respond immediately to any request.
The reason people employ us is to save a heck of a lot of money, most small business or project websites do not need full time staff. Employing us for the short period of time it takes to build and maintain a website makes a lot of sense.
So how do we deal with a problem like the one described above, the answer is simple:
The current project development is paused, the problem is resolved as quickly as possible and work resumes on the current project as soon as possible too.
That's it.
This is entirely different to taking on new work. That is completely out of order and it is really not okay to break off work on one project to start new work, HBM will never ever do this, to or for anyone. We treat all customers equally and work on a first come first served basis.
If you have new work, which includes making changes to your site, this is not an emergency even though it may feel like that to you.
Think about it, if we were working on your project and we broke off to start a new project for someone else, you would not be happy about that, right? If we apologised and said "we are very sorry there is a problem with a previous build that we have to fix urgently and we will return to your project as soon as possible", you would, hopefully, be understanding of this and also, expect the same treatment for your website should anything go wrong there too.
Simple, fair, reasonable, honourable and accountable.
In reality this situation occurs surprisingly infrequently, it's actually really rare and even rarer for a problem to take very long to fix at all.
Why? We build robust and reliable websites that 'just work' and don't sign off on work unless we are completely happy.
All that is to say, we hope you never find yourself in this position, but if you have a problem with the website we built for you, then we will fix it.
End of story.
We will literally do whatever it takes to fix the problem as soon as possible, even if this means working in the evening, through the night or at weekends.
There will never be any legitimate reason for you to contact another developer. Of course you are perfectly entitled to do so, but if they do anything with the code then they accept full responsibility for the entire site and we may no longer be held accountable.
Thank you for your cooperation, patience and understanding.