SOME PEOPLE!! (gripe)

So, Im in store...uploading textures...photoshop open at the same time...redoing textures that didnt look right once uploaded...helping customers already 'at' the store find stuff etc.....displaying & putting the new stuff out..and I got an IM off a person who bought 2 bundles of textures off me yesterday.

Let me replay yesterdays scene first

Customer walks in... ' have you got any palace type walls with windows? elegant but not too flashy?' I directed her to the walls with windows...
'ooh theyre all a bit run down looking..i want a palace!'

I directed her to a Morocan set..10 textures all matching designed to link one to another..i mean you cant go wrong really...all seamless all matchig...I canot stress matching enough...co-ordinated textures..

I say ' I'll let you browse' and Im pottering about the store...she buys the Morocan and POOF goes w/o saying 'goodbye..kiss my ass or anything..thought it was a bit 'off' but anyway..out of interest and like i do with most ppl I meet, i went to the profile..loads of quotes about ' treat ppl how you would like to be treat yourself' and such like stuff

I felt the customer was a bit rude but anyway...bigger fish to fry..went back to my working SL day.

Gets the IM today...

" i was wondering if you could help me pick a cute texture for my home and 'my love' "

( i didnt know who she was at 1st )

me: you in the store?

' no...i bought 'ALL' those elegent textures off you yesterday and I dont know which one to put where '

me: so you want me to come to your home and help you decorate from the textures you bought yesterday? ( said with the hope she might pick up on the fact its kinda asking a lot)

' yesss! ' ( A teleport offer pops up)

WTF??????????


hey im ALL for finding them..creating them..helping people PICK them...but im not dropping everything to go decorate their houese for them too????

Hell...i spend hours in Photoshop...hours in store...and im just expected to have nothing better to do than go to a strangers house and interier decorate without so much of a thanks or please?

hmm?

Treat others like you would like to be treat huh?( she'll understand my lack of any response b4 i logged off with a headache & cold)

if you buy an outfit from a designer...would you IM them...ask them to nip over to your home and help them decide what SHOES to wear with it???

ggrrr

Thats my first real BAD customer be funny in a few hours...for now im kinda pissed at the nerve lol

Actually, and designers can maybe back me up on this (i.e. clothes, hair and shoes), they do get requests like that...lol.

wow

Still on a learning curve then I guess.

I suppose ppl dont know how busy you get unless they 'walk a mile in your shoes' so to speak.

I will go back & politly explain im not an interier designer I simply create the concepts and ideas...I dont have time OR the skill to do my own store! lol

Ok..im a grouchy cow i admit it...I feel bad now

it wasnt the request so much as the attitude yeah?

Almost like ' hey i spent money at your place...you OWE me '

Thats what ticked me off..

And I DO work hard on customer care...I have a 'service' thingie...and I will IM customers from the account history...send them a notecard which thanks them for their custom...with a 100L$ voucher attached of their next purchase...

I take time to get to know who my customers are if time permits...and so far this is the only person who has in my opinion was rude and demanding..just wanted to get that in ..i run a business in RL and understand how good customer relations effect me..

bummer...am i a BAD person???

I love your textures btw . Could you come decorate my house? j/k

The fact that you have to ask if you're a bad person, probably means you're not a bad person *grin*...

there are always customers, no matter what rl or sl business you run or work for who will expect the world of your company because they spent a few bucks. If you bend over at a 45 degree angle, they will expect 90, if you bend at 90, they will expect more...I wouldn't worry about it too much

That being said, I'll remember next time I im you and ask that you don't decorate houses *grin* jk

I have spent hours with one new customer explaining shoes and walk replacers to them and not all of the shoes they were having issues with were mine. It turned out to be worth it for me, because that customer bought everything we had, requested some custom items, and has since brought their other new friends. I like helping people, and SL can be so solitary and boring at times that if I have the free time, I always assist customers. And yes I have even helped decorate houses.

You could have assisted the person and turned that into an additonal decorating business.



At any rate your bitching in forums, shows a lack of professionalism. You were not wronged or defrauded, just annoyed. Are you going to post in forums about everyone who pissses you off in your stores? Wow, what a great customer service policy.

I once had a customer that came into my shop and bought a couple of my things, and then sent me a glowing message about how cool my stuff was and how much they liked my store. Couple weeks later they made a place just like mine and started selling my objects.

That was a bad customer.

Helping someone use something they bought from me is just customer service <shrug>

and I consider it Idea Central! You go on making those great textures, I'll go on buying them and decorating and redecorating my house and buying and redecorating, lol. SL is a blank canvas, and you provide the paints, not the arm to lift the paintbrush! *hugs* Keep up the good work, and YES! Your customer service for me has been everything and more! Thank you!

Most of my customer service is providing refunds to people after they purchase multiple copies of copyable plants. But occassionally they will ask me to come help them place things in their landscape or help with a bit of terraforming. It usually doesn't take very long if they've been working at it and just have a couple of questions.

I'm gonna go look at your textures now.

Going that extra mile is worth it because you will have one very happy customer most of the time, which basically means more business for you. I know this because every time I show someone my house they ask about the windows and doors, I remember how awesome Lee Ludd was at helping me with them and even adding a combo for windows to his assortment, and I tell them that if they ever need anything like that, he's who they should see.

On the other hand you were probably just irritated and overworked to begin with, so I can understand the reaction. It is a bit much to ask and if I ever did something like that I'd fully expect a polite "No, I'm sorry, I'm really busy right now.", personally.

EDIT: So is TPing out of a shop after your purchase without saying goodbye to the proprietor rude? I've only met a shop owner once, but if they just pointed me where to look and I found it I wouldn't think of coming back to bother them just to say bye when they might be busy O_o

How you react to customer requests like this really depends on your business model.

From what I gather, the biggest return on your time is from making new textures.

Here's a scenario:

You spend 2 hours making a texture set
With no intervention from you 80 people come in and buy that set

If you have a customer who needs 2 hours of help in order to make 1 sale, you just lost out on 79 other sales you could have had by making a new texture set.

Of course things are never this cut and dry, market saturation, differentiation from competetors etc. For some businesses customer service is an important value-added feature and (especially when growing a business) word-of-mouth advertising can be an important factor. Look at the trade-offs: what do I gain by increasing (or decreasing) customer service and what do I lose by increasing (or decreasing) customer service.

If your goal is to have fun and make a little money at the same time, I say do whats fun and take the loss of a sale. You'll be a lot happier and I doubt you'll lose much in revenue.

I'm really a little surprised at this post. I've gone to help people install new gadgets in their houses for free before -- and I didn't even make or service the stuff I was helping to install. Going the extra mile makes for such grateful customers and the returns, both financial and personal, are always worth it. Don't be afraid to charge for your time, but at the same time, don't be annoyed when you could instead be offering a valuable service to your customers.

Particularly with regard to texturing: It may come easy for many of us, but as you can see by examining the quality of texture application on many prims in-world, not everyone is skilled at choosing and placing textures. It's often a pretty big blind spot. Always try to offer the "complete solution" to your customers (apologies to any fellow Best Buy sales veterans who recognize that phrase ). You'll create more loyalty than you could ever build any other way.

You should have just let the person know how much you charge for that service!

One of the biggest oversights of texturing in SL: overly stretched textures on narrow faces because repeats per face and other parameters weren't adjusted by hand.

I've also found in my experience that after doing business with people in SL, some of them which have really gone the proverbial "extra mile" and more I've recognized as being good friends later on. It speaks not only of commerce, but of personal character. Approach does matter tho, I doubt they would be nice had I come up to them ranting angrily with a rolling pin in my hand.

Naw, you're not a bad person. And I like your store!

This is actually a really cute story. I love it when naive people ask too much of me, cause you know, it's really quite a compliment! In this case, it means she trusted you and your taste. She got as far as getting the textures, but didn't trust herself to know best where to put them. It's cute, actually!

coco

P.S. And like others said, all that stretching and stuff, some people probably just don't know how, and don't know why the textures don't look as good in their house as they did in the store.

I get customers asking my advice about matching clothing items and accessories and shoes all the time. I'll gladly make recommendations on what I would wear with a certain outfit, but of course personal tastes differ. I keep Landmarks to places I know make affordable, quality products, and hand them out when people are looking for items I don't make, or just something different than what I have.

When it comes to my prefabs, which only cost a dollar, my customer service is far more limited. Not because they only paid a dollar, but because the houses are meant to get people started on their own building and texturing. I will help them set them up and give them some basic starter knowledge, but I won't help them add-on or retexture. That kind of defeats the purpose of making something for them to learn on.

Good customer service is the best way to build a successful business. How far I'm willing to take it depends not only on my time constraints and my own knowledge, but how I'm approached about it. People asking for help will almost always get it, (unless it's something I simply can't do) but people who demand it and try and treat me like some personal servant often find themselves disappointed.

My big issue with the customer in this story is:

When asked if she wanted help decorating, she didn't say "oh yes, do you have free time?" she sent a blind tp. I think the thing that bothers me about some customers (and I'm not a merchant at all, so this is me observing fellow customers), is their thought process and communicating to the designer that the designer has all the time in the world to cater to them and them only. Customer service is a good thing, and going to help decorate her house would have been good customer service. I agree with that. However, to me, the customer erred by sending a tp instead of asking if there was a time that she could get assistance at her residence in placing the textures. That's my main issue here.

That is the part of your story that I picked up on right off. I had the same reaction earlier this week. I received an im from a person (not a newb) asking me to use the land tools to return her objects as she just didn't have the "strength" to do it herself. I chuckled and explained that I was not in the sim. She made no inquiry about time or convenience just sent a tp. Since this was someone I had never met and I don't have a business, I can easily imagine that there are times when customers expectations can try your patience.

Oh it wasn't me that had the customer problem lol....

my biggest problem is saying twenty times during an event what the event is, who the dj is, what we're voting for and then announcing voting, including the prior info and having people say "what are we voting for again? who's taking votes?" lmmmaooo.

Really. when you think about it, its flattering that the customer thought so highly of your texturing skill that she sought your advice. I get requests like this all the time from people who like my quirky nontraditional style of building and texturing.

LIke you, I dont have the time, patience, or inclination to assist that way, but the request doesnt annoy or anger me. I feel appreciated