The New Year is a good time to make changes in your life, because you have just experienced a time of rest and reflection. Nevertheless, it seems to be a tradition in America to make New Year resolutions and then break them before the second month begins. The reason most resolutions fail is because people often do not have a plan associated with their resolutions. Or, they may have a plan in place, but it has not been prayed about and laid out in a succinct manner. Thus, on their own, most people do not follow through with their resolutions. We at Classical Conversations are not alone, however, because we have committed our plans to the Lord.
Proverbs tells us that in order to be successful we need to involve the Lord in our plans:
Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed (Proverbs 16:3, NIV).
If Classical Conversations were to have a list of New Year resolutions, it would look something like this:
1. Provide better customer service.
2. Update our website.
3. Provide more support for Classical Conversations communities.
Since most resolutions fail, we have decided to plan and to commit these plans to the Lord, resting in the assurance of His promise articulated in Proverbs 16:3. I would like to share with you some of the plans we have for the upcoming year, so you can pray for us, asking the Lord to bless our plans and make of them a blessing.
Let us take a deeper look at each of our resolutions:
Provide better customer service
We simply did not perform up to our expectations in 2012. Our plan was to provide world-class service through utilizing better technology, better hardware, and more customer service representatives. In order to address this issue going forward, we have hired a new customer service manager who is a Classical Conversations dad with experience in meeting customer expectations. Our current customer service manager is moving out of the area, and will continue to work with Classical Conversations, but in a role that is more suited to working from home. We are also hiring another full time customer service representative who has years of experience working in a variety of fields. We have purchased new software that will help us manage customer service questions more efficiently and it will help us to spot issues before they become larger problems. We are updating our phone lines so that we can answer more of your phone calls with a live person, instead of you having to leave a message and then wait for us to return your call. We are also purchasing additional inventory and working with our vendors to have on hand more of what you need, so that we eliminate back orders as much as possible.
Update our website
We are working with a company called Trinet to update our website and provide you with much clearer information that is easier for us to add to our site. Trinet is a Christian company—not in name, but in practice—and they have won many awards for their website design. I am edified by the fact that every time we talk, they have a daily Bible verse to share and a prayer, asking the Lord to bless our planning. We are very excited to be working with them and hope to have the first phase of the new website up and running by the end of August. The changes will help develop your understanding of the classical model, and they will make our website more user-friendly and enjoyable for browsing.
Provide more support for Classical Conversations communities
We are continuing to hire and train parents to become support managers for their local communities. We are working on new training materials to help lead them into deeper understanding of the classical method, thereby better equipping them to help their communities capture these lost tools of learning. We are finishing Leigh’s new book, The Question, with its release some time later this year. This will help families to continue to grow and strengthen their home schools.
We have many additional exciting things happening at Classical Conversations, and I cannot wait to roll them out this year and keep us on track for meeting your needs to the best of our God-given abilities.
Happy New Year!
