The Customer Is Always Right

It’s been hectic lately - good, busy and productive, but hectic. I’ve managed to survive through more hectic times, so don’t worry. We’re getting into the busy time of year at work. Lots of trade shows, lots of orders, and we’re launching some new products. The cool thing is that I’ve been playing a pretty big role in the new products addition. I’ve been working with a programmer on a new dynamic web site for a division of the company which we designed for easy and quick product addition. Now that we’ve basically got that up and running as slick as possible I’ve been developing the print materials - direct mail, catalogs, etc. So I’ve been having a lot of fun. It’s good, challenging work, and it’s helping the company grow.

When I starting looking for the right job about a year ago I was out for something small so I could make a difference, but I still needed something that would be a good stepping stone to the next level when I’m ready for that. I started to have some doubts about my decision after the first few months. At a certain point I didn’t feel like I was pointed in the right direction in terms of my career ambitions, but now that I’m really starting to see an interest toward growth in this company I’m a lot more positive about where I am.

Yes, the commute up to Rogers still sucks, but at least I’m enjoying where I’m going to. 494 can be kind of scary in the morning. Especially when I’m trying to pour out of my coffee thermos into a little cup while driving down a construction zone with no shoulder and a semi truck next to me hogging the middle of the road. But, the work is good so I don’t mind where I’m headed every day. That at least makes the drive worth it. Hopefully we’ll be able to get out of Bloomington and find a place that will be a little more central and I can not spend so much time, gas, and money on getting to work every day. The only problem is that the more central suburbs are either too expensive or too icky of a neighborhood.

So that’s the scoop on work. I haven’t talked about work much. You know, I guess it’s hard to. You keep hearing about people getting fired from their jobs because of their blogging about work (like that Delta airlines stewardess who got fired for posting a photo of herself posing on board one of their planes), so you have to be careful. Sure, work hasn’t always been all that wonderful, but I understand that you’re going to have your petty gripes and botherations at any job. So I don’t really need to vent about work too here too often, at least not as often as I did while I was working over at the bank.

Yesterday was one of those days, though. I’ve been trying to get a catalog off to print, and unfortunately have come to a bit of an impasse with a rather icky Prepress department at this particular printer. But I don’t choose the vendors, my bosses do, so I just tried to deal with it the best I could. But it just got very, very difficult not to just tell these guys “screw you we’ll just find someone else to do it then.” No, I didn’t say that, but it almost got to that point.

You know, over a great bulk of my working life I’ve worked in a customer service oriented position and have had the “pleasure” of dealing a lot with angry customers. So one could say that I’ve developed the skill of talking angry customers through a situation and getting them to calm down, and finding at least some way to reassure them that the company cares about them in some way shape or form, even if it’s total bullshit. When dealing with this prepress guy at this printer yesterday, I seriously felt like I was dealing with an angry customer.

So I sat there as this guy talked down to me on the phone and I thought to myself, wait a minute… what’s going on here? I’m the customer here, aren’t I? This guy is acting like I’m HIS problem. That’s when I went to my bosses and to purchasing, told them the whole situation, and to my delight they backed me up. They called up the owner of this printing company and basically said to get their asses in gear or we’ll take our catalog somewhere else for printing. I guess we’re going to have a meeting with the owner of this printer on Monday and I get to be included… you can bet I’ll be discussing this prepress guy’s attitude with him.

I’ve dealt with difficult customers many times before, and I honestly wasn’t being difficult with this prepress guy. I was just asking logical, legitimate questions about why he was asking such unreasonable things of us. You see, we were given a high-resolution proof of the catalog that we had sent over to get set up for print. There were a couple of minor things that needed to be fixed so I fixed them and then re-sent the documents to get proofed again. Other than the few minor issues, everything else looked great. So after I sent the fixed documents, this prepress guy calls me up and says that I have to fix the whole thing, even the stuff that looked fine on the first proof. So I thought, wait a minute, you already proofed it out to us and everything worked fine, why doesn’t it work now? What are you doing different? I have physical proof sitting in front of me and you got it to work and now you’re trying to tell me it doesn’t? Nothing changed about the documents, they are all in the same format we sent them to you the first time. Why did they work then and not now? And it wasn’t a matter of something changing about the documents since the first time, they were the same. It was the way they were created he was taking issue with, but there was not an issue with that the first time so why should there be now? Apparently he was quite offended by whatever it was he thought I was implying because he became quite argumentative and angry toward me. He made me feel like I was inconveniencing him and so I got caught in the corner trying to calm him down and trying to help him help me, and that’s just not the way it should be at all.

It’s just a plain case of bad customer service. I’ve seen it in many instances, and it’s always really surprising to me when this very simple requirement of a successful business (good customer service) is so blatantly disregarded. It should be so obvious, but unfortunately it’s apparent that not everyone understands the importance of customer service. It can really make or break a company. As I said, I’ve put in my time in the customer service industry, so I’ve seen a lot of what it can do first hand.

No matter what, customers have to be treated a certain way. As long as someone else is paying for your way of life, be it through a weekly paycheck or your clients paying for your products or services, you are essentially working on their time. This may be a bit of a heartbreaking realization for many small business owners or entrepreneurs, but it’s a fact regardless. Your clients are your customers, no matter what other word you use to describe them to yourself, and your customers need your top of the line service, always.

Of course, there are some people that think they are the exception to the rule. Case in point, employees in a large organization - the bean counters, for lack of a better explanation. These people often only report to their co-workers or their managers and can make the work environment hostile with their lack of people skills and professionalism. This is a generalization but applicable nonetheless. The justification for this sort of behavior? They aren’t dealing with the actual customers so they don’t feel the need to act like they are.

Now, could you imagine if they treated their co-workers and managers as if they were customers? What a difference that would make. In reality it’s not that hard to hold that sort of mindset either. You are accountable to your managers. They are your clients and therefore your customers. I’m not saying you have to be a kiss-ass, but a good work ethic and even showing a little bit of undue respect at times is definitely an important part of success.

Needless to say, I’m going to make this clear to this printing company and if they don’t get it, I’m going to recommend to my bosses to find someone else to do the printing.