Marty said:
Just thought I'd mention a recent experience...
Recently I've had an extraction problem with a Kelbly action. I sent an email to Kelbly's with photos to see what they thought.
I then backed up the email with a phone call and to my surprise was put directly through to Jim Kelbly. Jim was helpful, patient and knowlegable. He'd already seen my email and was in the process of responding. He must have given me over half an hour of his time on the phone. Furthermore he is sending some replacement parts out to me to see if that will remedy the issue.
Point is, that Jim was 100% behind both his product and the support of the customer. A true gentleman.
That's what customer service should be everywhere, but sadly, is all too rare. A story...
From 1992-1999 I was a commercial Orchid grower, the first one to successfully build his business on the internet. I worked very hard at it, hitting my email at roughly 0500 every morning, spending the day on the newsgroups, on the phone, in the greenhouse and still at it at midnight, sometimes later. The last thing I did before bed was email. We had a small local following too, but 99% of sales was internet business. I got to be quite famous, even in town where I'd get stopped in stores and asked if I was that "Orchid guy". At any rate, along about 1995 I picked up the phone to take an order, and this nice lady from Kansas asked if I was Rod. I said, yes...and all of a sudden she's screaming in my ear, GUSHING that she can't believe she's talking to me. The lady from Kansas had been dealing with the "big boys" for so long that she'd gotten used to being served by the help. The "big boys" were the growers that were multigenerational, operating on acres of land, versus our little 10,000 sq feet of growing space. Old money, very knowledgable, yes, but not the sort of people that associate with the lower classes. So I made this woman's day just for doing what I'd been doing day in and day out...but it was different than what she was used to. It was quite embarrassing, but it made me realize that when you choose to associate your own name with your product, there's certain expectations that come with the territory, and that includes access to the person responsible as a matter of course, not as a favor. There's the temptation to hold oneself above the riff-raff, to preserve the mystique, and while that's often a good business practice, I think that's unfair to the people that ultimately pay the bills, and that is the customer. I could have worked half the hours if I didn't spend so much time with the customers, but if happy people come back for more, happier people come back twice as often. Everybody wins when the Kelbly's, the Berger's and the Venger's walk the earth just like everyone else. The truth of all of that is found here: As soon as I became disabled by the cancer, the business went down the toilet. The family couldn't deliver what I had even though the product never changed. The product wasn't just the plants, it was me, too. -Rod-
