It cracks me up when every cuemaker or casemaker that frequents this site is in a rush to post some fancy case or cue they finished in order to stroke their own ego. Yet a customer who's paying good money gets grief for wanting a photo every now and then to prove you are as far as you say you are with the cue. Pretty damn funny if you ask me.
Um, I think I can safely speak for myself and my colleagues that not EVERY case maker, nor every cue maker who frequents this site gives their customers grief for requesting updates.
I will however echo Eric's sentiment that doing updates does take some time and it's not just a "minute" either.
Yesterday I did a video update. It took me two minutes to do the video, 30 minutes to upload it, five minutes to do all the settings. Ten minutes to write the email notifying the customer of the video and additional information.
When I started this business I swore to myself to build in a system to take pictures every day of every project and email that to people every day. Three years later I still don't have that system down but we are closer and do send out progress pix several times a week. This is only possible though because I have an assistant who will take care of this for me. Without her I would do this sporadically at best.
Even when I tell people I will send them pictures I forget to tell my assistant to send pictures.... :-(
Without a good system in place I can't imagine a person who does all the work by themselves doing much in the way of updates with images.
My rule in our shop is that at the end of the day everything gets cleaned up and we take pictures of the work in progress and then later that evening or first thing in the morning the pictures are emailed. We don't always do this every day but we try.
I am however THE WORST at answering email and private messages. If I have one habit I'd like to change then it would be to develop the habit of answering all emails immediately and not putting them off until later.
Well, I really have nothing to add to the thread but I figured this was a cheap way to go to confessional......
Eric - your case is almost done. - will be a surprise.
Greg - Your case isn't even drawn up yet
Lenny - your cases are almost done. Pix sent.
Jim - your case is almost done. Video sent.
Bruce - your case isn't started yet.
Art - your case is almost done.
Murray - on the drawing board.
Gillian - your case is on the drawing board
Mike - almost done
Marcus - it's coming I promise!!!
Christian - I am stuck on the design.
Ross - Halfway done.
Donny - PLEASE send me your address - yours is done.
Vince - We are about to start tooling yours.
Tony - on the drawing board
Who did I miss? Well there are many that I did miss and who I owe cases to. This list is only a partial sample of the people I am having conversations with regarding their orders.
I really need a better system, a better system? I need a system period.
Well, I am really grateful for my customer's patience - thank you all.