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Customers!
Alright…so you buy a new truck, 30ft rigid body. You transport said truck to Ireland, passing my workshop on the way, arrange to have truck spray painted, take said truck to spray painters again passing my workshop on the way, take said truck back from said spray painters, passing my workshop again, arrange to have living quarters upholstered, take said truck to said upholsterers, passing my workshop again…..collect said truck and take it back to yard passing my workshop again then you remember ‘oh yes, signwriting’….you ring me to put decals, (with specialist colours I don’t stock) on both sides, back and front and you need it done by tomorrow because said f*"^£$%ing truck is going to Europe!!!!!!
Customers!
Rant over ……………….(maybe! 😀 ) -
13 Replies
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:lol1: :lol1: Welcome to my world Harry. These are the only customers I get most days… your learn to accept it after a while. 🙄
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Happens to us all the time Harry.
The good customers we try to help out, and the bad ones we point to the notice on the wall that says, "A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on ours".
Nah, that sort of thing has been part and parcel of my daily life for as long as I’ve been in this business. In fact longer – it used to happen in my previous occupations too. 😀
The major problem from my point of view is that once you’ve bent over backwards to help that customer out of a hole they will think that that sort of service is the norm and never give you any notice. So even the good ones that make a habit of it need letting down every now and again, just to keep them on their toes. 🙁
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I get this all the time with construction and plant hire companies. They wait months for the machinery to be delivered, spend a couple of days doing the checks on them to make sure everything works then decide to call me to do the graphics the day before it’s due to leave the yard. I fell out with 2 of them because of this….apparently my fault I’m supposed to be a mind reader. They dabbled with other sign companies and after a while came back. I used to think this only happened to me but since being on this site realised that I’m not alone on the day to day issues that we all have.
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quote John Childs:So even the good ones that make a habit of it need letting down every now and again, just to keep them on their toes. 🙁:lol1: :lol1: :lol1:
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I’m not alone! This could be a movement or a Facebook page! :lol1:
"A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on ours".
😀 😀 I’m printing that out as I type John! 😀
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A lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on ours"
Mr. Childs, You are a genius with words! 😉
That is going up in my place before you copyright it. 😀
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Not my words gentlemen, they were mercilessly stolen from somewhere whose source lies deep in the mists of time. 😀
quote Phill::lol1: :lol1: :lol1:It’s no joke Phill. As you know, I’m a great believer in giving exemplary service because I believe that that’s what makes us stand out amongst a sea of competitors, but there’s always a few clients who will take advantage.
Recently we had a shopfitting firm in Corby who were always ridiculously short notice, usually give us an order over the phone and wanting to leave their factory fifteen minutes away as soon as they put the phone down to come and collect.
We took it for a while, and they got used to being able to get away with that behaviour. We could see the problem coming, so Peter and myself looked at how much business they gave us, about £1,200 per year with a lot of grief, and decided that they were somewhere near the bottom of our priority list and that it would be better to lose their work than to let a better customer down.
Inevitably the day came when we were in the middle of a job for an important customer which couldn’t be interrupted. The baddie got most upset when I wouldn’t interrupt a £10k job to slip her £15 line of text in and a row ensued. I’m not sure which of us slammed the phone down first but, needless to say, we don’t work for them any more.
The point of that screed is that we had allowed a not very good customer to expect a service level better than they deserved and it cost us their business. If we had trained them better in the first place we might still be doing their work, but on our terms.
Life’s just one long learning curve, innit? 😀
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quote Karl Williams:I get this all the time with construction and plant hire companies. They wait months for the machinery to be delivered, spend a couple of days doing the checks on them to make sure everything works then decide to call me to do the graphics the day before it’s due to leave the yard. I fell out with 2 of them because of this….apparently my fault I’m supposed to be a mind reader. They dabbled with other sign companies and after a while came back. I used to think this only happened to me but since being on this site realised that I’m not alone on the day to day issues that we all have.
I get this all the time too Karl
A client rang me the other day and asked if I did accreditation numbers…. and I said yes, all the time. He said good, then hung up.
A few minutes later he rang and said could I send him 20 in grey. No problems I said, and all was sweet.
An hour or so later I realised that the accreditation number they used to have had been changed, so as it was late and they would have been closed for the day I just sent him a little email asking him if he could let me know the new number as I didn’t have it on my file, and I’d get it done asap.
Next day before closing he rings and says ‘when can I expect those numbers, and I said I sent you an email last night asking for the new numbers so I could get them done.
He said he doesn’t have time to read emails, and said he needs them in about an hour.
I couldn’t help him that quick because he was over 1000 klm’s away, and he didn’t know the number anyway. Just before he hung up he said ‘forget about it, you are hopless, I’ll find someone else.
Ok I said, have a nice day. 👿
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We don’t use an answer machine any more because of the same sort of thing.
We used to have a customer who would ring about 5.30 after we had gone and leave an order on the answer machine for collection in the morning.
Then someone would turn up to collect it at 8.30 the next day as we were checking the messages. -
had a good one today – email came in, – can you quote me please for 2 number signs?
If I knew what a number sign was I would have been happy.
I was tempted to say the number affects the price what number were they looking for?
Nigel
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It’s a standard sign mate, haven’t you heard of them? 😀
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quote Nigel Hindley:had a good one today – email came in, – can you quote me please for 2 number signs?
If I knew what a number sign was I would have been happy.
I was tempted to say the number affects the price what number were they looking for?
Nigel
That’s a Bounty Sign Nigel.
You’re bounty know what he wants. 😀
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At least he was prepared to wait for them, though he actually wanted the quote within an hour as he need to quote his client within 2 hours?
funny too though when I asked for more information he said its ok im only quoting for them at this stage?
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