Things have been crazy here the last couple of months. I find as you ramp up to handle increased activity, you become more efficient and make quicker and mostly better decisions. We fell a bit behind, so we hired additional staff and worked longer hours to get caught up.

When you’re geared up to produce, meet deadline after deadline and you run into suppliers that barricade that journey, it can be very frustrating.

I’ve written before about achieving balance between process and performance, as big business continues to get bigger. Two things happened last week that made me question how big business can grow and still keep service in the forefront.

The Apple is Rotten. We bought three 27” iMacs last year. They are a great product and when we added a new artist this past week, we reached out to purchase another. We talked with a business manager at the Apple retail store we purchased from last year. They asked if we were happy with the performance of the machines we had and after a brief discussion, agreed that she would prepare a new one, just slightly faster than last time. I mentioned I didn’t want to wait around at the store for an hour like last year. She assured me that I just needed to bring the invoice and it would be ready to go. The short strokes were that I still waited an hour to get the machine and after taking it back to the office, the artists determined it was the wrong machine totally. When I called and suggested that they bring the correct machine to my office (15-20 minutes away) and take back the other one, the response was “we can’t do that”. End of discussion. Their error, but our problem to deal with. What do you think? Is this acceptable customer service for companies large or small?

1.888.Rogers.1- It’s great to be able to have a toll free number that spells your company name. Getting properly served through that toll free number is one issue and my recent experience with a lack of flexibility is another. We have a small rental house near Humber College. We got it when my son attended that school and have kept it as an investment. The short strokes were that the students using the internet services apparently went over the download limit and our bill doubled. We asked for a statement so that we could better understand what was going on. The answer was no. Why? Because we paid by credit card. I said, “If you are going to lose us as a customer because of this, is your answer still no? The representative had a well prepared, polite and concise answer, “I’m sorry sir, I can’t help you”.

I can tell you that I’m pretty flexible, roll with the punches and I’m not a complainer by nature but this type of close minded, process driven, lack of flexibility really burns my jets. How about you?

Lee’s Quote for the Day

One of the most over used taglines but good overall philosophy is “We’re big enough to serve you, small enough to care”. In some cases the tag needs to be updated to “Big enough to serve you, too big to care!