I just had to write and acknowledge two ladies who left really good comments to my little egocentric hissy fit from the other day. Both Terri and Trish took the time to make really good points and I hope that you will take a minute to read both of them.
To summarize, though, Terri and Trish both pointed out the other side of the coin. Imagine if you were the customer whose order was bumped back another day. You wouldn’t be a happy camper, either. And Terri went on to say that she probably would not return to a shop if she found out that they did that, just because another customer called and just had to have their order sooner. Trish made the really good observation that I’ve known about this trip long enough to have been able to place the order earlier, so it really does become a case where lack of preparedness on my part should not become an emergency on anyone else’s. That one really hit home because usually I am a lot better organized. I know when I read a comment and it feels like I just took a sucker punch to the gut that someone has struck gold. 😉
Well stated, both of you! Thanks again for taking the time to give me other ways of looking at the situation. The funny thing is that I used to think I was pretty good at putting myself in the other guy’s shoes, but I really missed the boat on this one because I was too wrapped up in my own selfishness. Whew! What a humbling learning experience. 🙂
Totally off topic, but wanted to let you know that Ring of Roses arrived today!!! I love the little wax seal, very cute.
You’re very big-hearted, Jenna. Yeah, you could’ve ordered the scissors earlier, but I still think that the old ‘customer is king’ philosophy needs to be re-adopted in retail. It doesn’t take any longer or cost any more energy to be polite & helpful than it does to be rude & dismissive.
I was worried that maybe I had been to harsh. Glad to see you took it objectively. I made some additional comments on my blog
Having a business grow is a wonderful thing to happen until you realize you’re beyond your ability to cope by yourself. It then becomes the time to inform your customers that it’ll take you a week to turn around their order. On one hand that’s wonderful that you’re that big, on the other hand you’re now disappointing customers who’ve gotten used to a one-day turn around on their requests. You’ll never make all of the people happy all of the time. All you can do is your best. And I agree with the comments about communication. Even if there’s no way you can get a customer’s order to them in a hurry, please don’t stop communicating with them. Also, give the customer the option to either wait on a backordered item, or to have it shipped separately. I recently quit doing business with an online shop that I used before she went “public” – about 5 years of loyalty from me – because I was having to wait on backordered items. I had no way of knowing what those backordered items were, so I wasn’t given a chance to say to ship separate, cancel them, etc.
Congratulations on your ONS Jenna, I hope you do very well.
Chuckled at the comments about customer service. Working in that area myself there is always a very fine line. I did wonder though, if the orders for the LNS were a week behind – and was this happening regularly – did that shop have enough staff too? It’s great that you can be so objective too.
I do hope that you got your scissors.