Makin' Latex

KINK ENGINEERING: The life and times of a latex saleswoman...

Posts tagged insanity

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Our new stress managment jar for less than perfect customers and would-be-customers.   Every time a customer causes an issue with Archean (who spends about half her day in administraion and the other half building products) the company donates $1 towards our eventual purchase of 10,000 ball pit balls for our spare room. (That’s ~15 ball pit balls per annoying customer) Most of our customers are AMAZING.  They know what they want, pay for it, and respect our time-lines and our commitment to quality work.   Unfortunately, some people don’t. Even after a bit of coaching about how our online store works, how we are a small, busy company, and how our time is better spent working on orders instead of quoting for off-webstore orders or crazy rush shipping,  (helpful tip… if you ask for rush shipping we might need to know what you want to purchase, and where you want it sent to) some don’t get it.   Then they get “fired”. Yes.  We fire customers sometimes.  If we can’t do business with you without a thousand emails back and forth, waffling, complaints about prices, changing  and re-changing orders and otherwise being a drain on our time… we’ll just refund your money and allow you the opportunity to deal with another company that does not respect their own time, attention and effort. This may seem harsh, but we do it for our own sanity, profitability, and for the benefit of those customers (99% of them are wonderful) who do take the time to know what they want, and when they do need more from us, they ask thoughtful questions in a timely way.   If we spend less time with the 1% of customers who suck our time away, we can spend a lot more time with the 99% who give us what we need to get to work. A lot of this mentality was reinforced by the latest Back to Work podcast (Episode 52 - Walk the coastline, bitches) in which Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin discuss the value of your time, and some of the pitfalls of starting your own business or independent thing.  As I’ll always say, this podcast is invaluable for anyone who wants to get better at anything. We look forward to your orders - don’t be creepy.

Our new stress managment jar for less than perfect customers and would-be-customers.   Every time a customer causes an issue with Archean (who spends about half her day in administraion and the other half building products) the company donates $1 towards our eventual purchase of 10,000 ball pit balls for our spare room. (That’s ~15 ball pit balls per annoying customer)

Most of our customers are AMAZING.  They know what they want, pay for it, and respect our time-lines and our commitment to quality work.  

Unfortunately, some people don’t. Even after a bit of coaching about how our online store works, how we are a small, busy company, and how our time is better spent working on orders instead of quoting for off-webstore orders or crazy rush shipping,  (helpful tip… if you ask for rush shipping we might need to know what you want to purchase, and where you want it sent to) some don’t get it.  

Then they get “fired”.

Yes.  We fire customers sometimes.  If we can’t do business with you without a thousand emails back and forth, waffling, complaints about prices, changing  and re-changing orders and otherwise being a drain on our time… we’ll just refund your money and allow you the opportunity to deal with another company that does not respect their own time, attention and effort.

This may seem harsh, but we do it for our own sanity, profitability, and for the benefit of those customers (99% of them are wonderful) who do take the time to know what they want, and when they do need more from us, they ask thoughtful questions in a timely way.   If we spend less time with the 1% of customers who suck our time away, we can spend a lot more time with the 99% who give us what we need to get to work.

A lot of this mentality was reinforced by the latest Back to Work podcast (Episode 52 - Walk the coastline, bitches) in which Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin discuss the value of your time, and some of the pitfalls of starting your own business or independent thing.  As I’ll always say, this podcast is invaluable for anyone who wants to get better at anything.

We look forward to your orders - don’t be creepy.

Filed under b2w backtowork podcast swear jar customers business ideas managment sanity insanity pennies dollars frustration fired latex meriln mann dan benjamin xkcd