Wait... Don't Kill Him Yet
On November 22nd I wrote something titled "Kill That Man", which was of course meant figuratively not literally. Anyway, now I think we should show him mercy in return for the lessons we learned from him. Here is the story: after the initial shock, on the 23rd of November we decided to place an order on his website so we could test his cookies... to see if his cookies were as good or better than ours. Essentially, we wanted to put ourselves in the shoes of one of his customers to see what this guy was really up to.
First of all, it was a nightmare to place an order. My wife, who is a computer engineer, spent more than an hour figuring out how to do it. Then we paid the money by bank transfer to the account specified on the site. Next, we waited and waited and waited some more to receive the cookies. Then on the 7th of December, which was a full 15 days after we had placed the order, we received an email from the man saying that he was sorry he could not deliver the cookies as ordered. Apparently he had a problem with his chocolate supplier, who was until further notice out of the chocolates used in our order. The guy was honest enough to ask for our bank information so he could send our money back, although a quick look at the bank transfer notice would probably have given him this information anyway.
So, I think we should hold off on killing him yet because of the following lessons:
1- Working with a website must be very easy and quick, otherwise why would customers spend longer than a few minutes trying to demystify how things work. We spent a lot of time, because we had an inherent interest in knowing how a potential competitor operates.
2- Our deliveries must...must...must be absolutely on time. A long time ago I read something to the effect that "promise the moon, deliver the sun". If we say delivery in three days, we must do our best to make it in two. We felt more and more cheated as we waited and waited for the arrival of our cookies.
3- Selecting suppliers is as important as anything we can think of. It's a supply chain, if one link breaks the whole operation screws up. This is something that we will have to scrutinize even more closely in the coming weeks and months.
4- Saying sorry and offering to send a customer's money back after a two week delay in delivery is just not enough. We may order cookies from this man again in the future, just to see the development of his operation, but I doubt if many others who had a similar experience will.
I was so happy that our cookies were not delivered that I could hardly contain myself. However, this competitor failed this time... others who will surely show up as time goes by may not. We will remain on our feet, let them come... and go. We will observe, learn, improve, and go on.
First of all, it was a nightmare to place an order. My wife, who is a computer engineer, spent more than an hour figuring out how to do it. Then we paid the money by bank transfer to the account specified on the site. Next, we waited and waited and waited some more to receive the cookies. Then on the 7th of December, which was a full 15 days after we had placed the order, we received an email from the man saying that he was sorry he could not deliver the cookies as ordered. Apparently he had a problem with his chocolate supplier, who was until further notice out of the chocolates used in our order. The guy was honest enough to ask for our bank information so he could send our money back, although a quick look at the bank transfer notice would probably have given him this information anyway.
So, I think we should hold off on killing him yet because of the following lessons:
1- Working with a website must be very easy and quick, otherwise why would customers spend longer than a few minutes trying to demystify how things work. We spent a lot of time, because we had an inherent interest in knowing how a potential competitor operates.
2- Our deliveries must...must...must be absolutely on time. A long time ago I read something to the effect that "promise the moon, deliver the sun". If we say delivery in three days, we must do our best to make it in two. We felt more and more cheated as we waited and waited for the arrival of our cookies.
3- Selecting suppliers is as important as anything we can think of. It's a supply chain, if one link breaks the whole operation screws up. This is something that we will have to scrutinize even more closely in the coming weeks and months.
4- Saying sorry and offering to send a customer's money back after a two week delay in delivery is just not enough. We may order cookies from this man again in the future, just to see the development of his operation, but I doubt if many others who had a similar experience will.
I was so happy that our cookies were not delivered that I could hardly contain myself. However, this competitor failed this time... others who will surely show up as time goes by may not. We will remain on our feet, let them come... and go. We will observe, learn, improve, and go on.
albaloo - 8. Dez, 08:15
