...and, by way of apology, this is a quickly typed rant, but it has to be set free else I do damage to myself by screaming or beating myself senseless against a doorjam, or actually calling one of our proposed vendors and destroying a relationship...only, a relationship takes two, right?
Here's the thing: If you want to do business, to make sales, particularly in a down economy, wouldn't it be helpful to, uh, return phone calls? Eventually?
My pathetic story follows...
Here's the thing: My in-laws own a coffeeshop and a bookstore in Appalachia. We are expanding the coffeeshop to a third location. These are well-established businesses, but we do live sort of in the middle of nowhere, in a region that is often lampooned in various ways for various reasons. And, of course, there's Jim Bunning, but that's another rant...
So. We're expanding. And we're having trouble with an espresso machine, in part because our water filtration system isn't working. This is important to the coffee business for several reasons. First, if you don't filter the minerals out of the water, it blows up your espresso machine. Second, if you don't filter the water, it makes the coffee taste bad.
In one of the trade journals we run onto mention of a new and affordable filtration system. I go online and find our nearest vendor, across the state. We call. Nobody calls back. For a week, nobody calls back. These things sell for $250 each, we need three of 'em and a lifetime supply of replacement filters. Nobody calls back. So I go back online, find another vendor across the state, call there. On a Friday. I get the electronic receptionist. Push the requisite buttons to end up at a sales desk...where there isn't a human being. So I leave a message. This was, oh, three weeks ago. No response. So, I get online, look up the company again, find their national sales office in Chicago. E-mail them, telling them our problem, asking if we're calling the wrong people, if they've simply hired incompetents, or if our account is simply too small and not the kind of business they're in. Which is fine, if it's true. (Insulting, but fine.) He e-mails back, tells me to expect a phone call on Monday. E-mails on a Saturday, even. Thursday after, I e-mail him, tell him I'm still waiting. That was ten days ago.
Second example...part of the deal with opening a new place is we need a soft drink cooler, which the bottlers provide. The sales mistress comes out, looking at six-month-old notes that indicate we want a fountain. Well, no, they talked us out of that. Six months ago, we DID want a fountain, but they convinced us it was too much trouble. I want a cooler. I also want information on some of the energy drinks they sell, because our new location is near campus, and it makes sense. She takes my e-mail address. Nothing. OK, my handwriting sucks. I call on Tuesday, because we open next week and I need to know where the cooler is and if it'll be here in time (so as to order their product to stock the thing), and give her my e-mail address again...noting that hers isn't even on her business card. No reply. Call again on Thursday. No answer.
Third example...we need a phone line in the new place for the credit card machine. The phone company says they'll be here Wednesday. They have my phone number to call me so I can let them in the space, because I'm not living there and have one or seven other things to do. No answer. End of Wednesday, as I succumb to my first migraine in ages and ages (another casualty of global warming, I fear), I end up on hold after the woman answering tells me that they aren't coming on Wednesday, but on Saturday, and that Saturday is what's on the order. Well, it's not what I wrote down, but, unfortunately, I had to retreat to the bathroom before she was done putting me on hold. They ended up calling my father-in-law, whose number is also in their records since it's his business, and telling him they'd be there by Saturday.
So. It's Saturday afternoon now. I've been out in the garden picking beans, and I'm hot and dirty and ill-tempered, and there's no sign of the phone company. Now, in their defense, there were really bad floods across the state, and they may well be diverted. But they're in the communications business, right? They have phones, right? They could at least call us and tell us what the freddy uncle charlie katie is going on, right?
No, they can't.
Bare minimal competence is a rare treasure.
Maybe I should've gone into sales. I always thought I sucked at it. But at least I could answer the phone.
Seriously, folks...you cannot win if you do not play, and I fear that the broader story here, that big business can't interface with a mom & pop enterprise, that sales reps are either way over-worked or incompetent...these may well be systemic problems.
Or else nobody thinks we really sell coffee in Appalachia. But we do. Several tons of it a year.
Of to the showers. I think I feel better. Thanks for bearing with me.