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Old 2008-12-16, 7:02am
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Cody_ABR Cody_ABR is offline
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Join Date: Jul 31, 2008
Location: Bloomington, Indiana
Posts: 239
Default Re: ABR IMAGERY

I'd like to take a moment to share my thoughts about our decision making process.

First, allow me to differentiate between the negative posts that consist of actual issues that we have been given an oppurtunity to address,and the secondary type which appear to be a form of venting frustrations that seem to be "unresolveable". We welcome constructive criticism in the form of negative posting because that is how we innovate our business strategy. In regards to the secondary type of negative posting, we only ask you include a proposed solution so we have an ability to start a constructive dialogue about how to address your concerns. Going over and over on an issue may feel necessary, and that is your right as a consumer. If the main focus of these posts is to help a future patron avoid the pitfalls you have experienced, then lets take that into consideration when posting. If your focus is to relieve ABR of potential customers, then your time here is of no significant value to forwarding the industry. That being said:

I started working here over two years ago. Over the past two years I have seen our business expand dramatically. We have moved into a huge warehouse and have added product line after product line. With growth comes a need for new jobs in the office and the warehouse accordingly. As our business continues to grow, we have experienced "growing pains".
We continue to pride ourselves on higher quality product, and an unbeatable selection of in stock merchandise.

While we strive for perfection, mistakes are an inevitable cost of doing business. Only by providing us adequate opportunity to fix our mistakes, can we continue to progress. If are attempts to solve a problem aren't satisfactory, we depend upon feedback from our customers to improve our methods of delivering sound customer service.

We are in a fragile industry that depends on distributors to stock items at a large volume to keep vendors cash flow high and where vendors try to keep prices down to make items affordable.
All of this brings us to a fine line that all of us walk. We are all trying to work in this industry.Only by making tough descions do we move forward, or back in some cases. But that is what all of us have to do as small business owners.
I personally feel that our "professionalism" has grown over time, and we will continue to build this business into something great.Everyone in this industry works on limited budgets and with limited resources. We are no different. As I mentioned, we are still experiencing "growing pains", but we are well aware of each and every time someone is upset.
After reading your posts I understand why you are upset and the way the situation was handled was unacceptable. I am certain Ross and I would be more than willing to make it right, especially seeing how upset you are. So far we have yet to receive a phone call after Ross posted that he would personally fix any problems if given the oppurtunity.
As a manager you know that no matter how good you are it is up to each individual employee to provide the service your customers deserve.
We have had a relatively large amount of turnover in the office over the past year due to this very issue (percieved lack of customer service). At this point, I feel comfortable with our office staff, and its ability to render quality customer service. For many years we operated under a policy of settling up on the next order due to the nature of fraudulent orders. Generally fraud occurs with first time customers and as a small business we used this as a means to ensure ourselves that the customer had no ill intent. This is obviously a policy that is flawed and needs revision. I am looking forward to hearing everyones thoughts on how to better our customer service, while maintaining a small business budget. We would like to devote more time to the situation, but as we all know time is a limited resource.

I hope by taking a moment to post our thoughts on the matter, we have shown that we do care about our customer's satisfaction, but we are far from perfect. Only with cooperation and understanding from our customers can we continue to turn your feedback, into actual changes in our practices and standards. With this type of constructive dialogue, we hope to benefit future customers.

Cody Sexton - ABR
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