
Well this is one way to get attention. Ignore your customers until they write long rants on the form.....
I wake up this morning to this and the news that the US Open has once again stiffed it's players. Maybe Barry Behrman and myself are too similar, little guys with big dreams who bite off way more than we can chew.
Well at least I know that this is the case in my case with cases. I always dreamed of having a shop that could make any sort of case I could think of. We I have it now along with all the bills and issues that come with 15 employees. And in China some of those issues are downright weird from a western perspective. But what does this sob story have to do with not answering someone's inquiry?
Well simply that sometimes I am just overwhelmed with queries and I don't have an answer ready. When it comes to tangibles like when is my case going to be done? Can I put this order in with you? I am not always ready with a good answer because I simply don't control my staff. When you own a business like this and you do get a lot of orders you find very quickly that you can't simply walk in and demand that everyone cater to your whims. Well, you can but you end up with two major problems if you do, and those are that you end up with delayed orders and two you end up with upset staff.
It's much easier for me to discuss things on a intellectual level, to talk about pool and it's issues or show off things we have done than it is to talk about ongoing orders and new orders. I love making cases but I hate the paperwork aspect of it. And that's what the taking of orders, the answering questions, the emails/pms back and forth are, that's the "paperwork" side. And I know that this is really not a good way to be in my business. Will Prout said it pretty plain when I was at his house earlier this year, he owns more of my cases than anyone, (only one custom ordered so far), he said, "you have to do what pays the bills". And he is right but that still doesn't make it easier for me to deal with people when I don't have good answers for them right at the moment I read their questions.
I think everyone here knows I have struggled with this these past couple years, well in honesty the past couple decades. I am a dreamer who likes to imagine what can be, solve technical problems in case building, show off what we did and play pool. So without another boring biography we are here where I do have a shop capable and willing to do just about whatever a customer wants. The last piece of the puzzle is finding some people to handle the paperwork aspect of it. That turns out to not be very easy at all but I am working on it.
Anyway, usually people get what they want from me and usually they say it's worth the wait. I don't like these threads, no one does. But if the worst thing that people can say is that I am late with the cases but the cases are still worth it then that's not too bad. We can only improve from here and we are GOING to improve from here. As I told my wife if we can figure out how to promise a delivery date and get the case there a week sooner then we will be heroes in this business. Underpromise/overdeliver is a winning formula no matter what the business is.
But getting there, especially in a true custom shop like ours hasn't been as easy I think it should be.
John