Courtesy Paul Downs CabinetmakersOf course, our very picky customer found the flaw immediately: “What happened here?”

Staying Alive

The struggles of a business trying to survive.

We got a call from a potential client a week ago Monday, which isn’t unusual. We get two or three calls every day. Our phones are set up so that they all ring whenever a call comes in. I sit within a couple of feet of my other two salesmen, Don and Nathan, and whoever is free grabs the call. I happened to be in the middle of writing an e-mail that day, so I let it ring and Don picked up. He answered: “Paul Downs Cabinetmakers, Don speaking, can I help you?”

I was paying half attention, in case it was for me. He listened for a few minutes, during which I turned back to my e-mail, and then he said to the caller, “Yes, he’s here,” and put her on hold. He turned to me. “She’s a client, but she only wants to speak to you.” We exchanged raised eyebrows — that is very unusual. In fact it hasn’t happened in recent memory. So I picked up the phone and had a conversation with a client who started out by asking me if I were familiar with Company A, which is one of my competitors.

Yes, I replied. The name comes up often when we are working with New York clients. It’s a company that is larger and older than we are and builds a wider range of furniture items. It has both custom and production divisions. I have seen some of its work and it looks O.K. — decent craftsmanship but no better than the jobs require. “I went to visit their factory,” she continued, “and I was very disappointed with their work. Very, very disappointed. Is your work good?”

Now, that’s kind of a rude question. When you walk into a restaurant, do you ask the hostess, “Does your food taste good or is it going to make me vomit?” What could I possibly say except, “Yes, I believe our work is as good as any of my competitors.” Which, as far as I have seen, is true. I get out in the world now and then and look at other people’s products. What I see is consonant with my own experience of running a factory. In the world of custom fabrication, people get what they pay for, with the occasional deviation from the norm, for better and for worse.

Back to the client: she asked me some fairly technical questions about how we made things, which indicated some knowledge on her part of what happens on a shop floor, but she projected a tone of distrust with my answers. I could only get the most basic information from her regarding the specifics of her own job. I was wondering why, if she didn’t think our work was going to be any good, she bothered to call. “Tell you what,” I said. “You’re in North Jersey and we’re just outside of Philadelphia, so why don’t you come down and take a look at our shop and the work we have on hand, and make up your own mind.”

She said she’d think about it and hung up. Hmmm, I thought. That was very different from our usual client call. People usually are happy to discuss their own project and don’t have many questions about our qualifications.  The Web site seems to convince them that we are legit. Don and I discussed it, and he said she had seemed aggressive from the beginning, brushing him off and insisting on talking only to me. We were both a little put off by her attitude. The job had potential, though, so I figured I would do my best to put her at ease if she decided to proceed.

I got an e-mail from her two hours later suggesting that she visit on Friday. That was good for me, so I confirmed. I also sent her our list of questions that we use to initiate a job and got enough information back so that I was able to put together a preliminary proposal for her to consider before her visit. I have found over the years that doing this speeds the decision process along considerably. It gives the clients something specific to react to, which helps them to think about what they really want. Also, because our proposals are impressive, I figured that this might help put her at ease.

She showed up on Friday at the appointed time, accompanied by her company’s chief financial officer. I gave them the shop tour, which took about an hour and covers our office and design process, the different kinds of wood we use and our major equipment pieces and how they operate. I walked them all around, and we examined a number of partially completed projects. We concluded with a swing through the finishing shop and ended up in our photography area, where we had a just-completed table assembled for picture taking. This particular table was a complicated design with some difficult details: an oval top with solid maple edge, plain maple top, and an oval curly maple center panel. The plain maple was set at an angle across the top to form a giant X-pattern. The grain continued across the dataport lids.

All of this had been difficult to execute, and almost all of it had been done perfectly. There was one thing that I didn’t think had come out exactly right. There was a very slight misalignment between the oval center panel and the adjacent maple panel. It was less than 1/64th of an inch, but you could feel it if you ran your hand over it. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t perfect. I had no qualms about shipping this table, as it was within the bounds of what I consider acceptable, although closer to the edge than I like to be.

Of course, our very picky client found the flaw immediately. She ran her hands over it repeatedly, brow furrowed, and said to me, “Oh, I don’t like this. What happened here?” I imagine that everyone has experienced a version of this moment. I was trapped. No matter what I said, it was going to sound bad, because the real explanation was that the work simply wasn’t perfect, that it was hard to do and we had come close but we hadn’t nailed it. Furthermore, we weren’t going to do it over because we couldn’t guarantee that it would be any better the next time (leaving aside that we didn’t have time and that it would cost quite a lot of money). I directed her attention to all of the parts of the table that were, in fact, perfect, and I guess she decided that it would have to do, because we then proceeded to move on to the specifics of her project, and when she left I was under the impression that we had passed the test. Squeaked through, maybe, but we made it.

I had the weekend to mull over this experience. I was, frankly, spooked that a client had anything other than raves for our work. We have had almost no negative feedback regarding our craftsmanship from our clients for the last couple of years, while we regularly get e-mails saying how much better the work is than the client had expected. That’s not to say that nothing ever goes wrong on the shop floor. When you make things, there are always going to be variations in the outcome. Some come from the materials you use, some from the design, some from the tools, some from the people who manage all of that.

We review each issue case by case and make decisions as to whether to ship a job or do it over. This method appears to be working. It allows us to get work done and out the door at costs that leave us some profit. Any procedure at any company can be tightened up, but it can be expensive, and it could result in work that is better than our customers are willing to pay for. A conference table doesn’t, in fact, need to meet the tolerances that you might expect of  a jet airplane. No one’s life is threatened by a slight misalignment in veneer patterns or a speck of dust in the finish of a base pedestal. So the question is: Should I let the reaction of an extraordinarily picky customer push me into changing our manufacturing process, at the risk of increasing our costs?

I brought this issue up at our Monday meeting. The table was still set up in the office, so we stood around it while I told the story of the very picky client. It turned out that it was the shape of the center panel that had caused the problem. The pointy oval didn’t allow the guides on our machines to function with their usual accuracy. Is there a better way to build that design next time? No, it’s just a difficult detail, and there’s no better way to do it than we had tried the first time. The shop floor guys have done their best and can’t solve the problem. So we turned to the design and asked some questions of the sales department. Why was the table designed that way? Did the client ask for it? Not really, it turned out: the salesman just thought it looked cool. Did we get extra money for all of that extra coolness? No, but we did get the sale. Which beats not having any work to do at all.

All of this was discussed in a nonhostile way, with everyone in the company listening. It took about 15 minutes to get through. In the end, the lesson learned was: don’t sell tables with pointy oval centers. If a client doesn’t ask for it, and isn’t paying for it, and it might cause trouble, don’t do it. Sales guys have to be careful not to underprice their designs just to close the deal. Our shop floor procedures can continue as they are.

And the very picky client? We will only present her with options that we know we can execute without difficulty. Her quote will include some extra padding so that we can spend extra time on the shop floor making sure everything is just so. If she places an order, and I don’t know if she will, we’ll be super extra hyper careful that everything is perfect.

What do you do with a client whose expectations exceed your normal level of service?

Paul Downs founded Paul Downs Cabinetmakers in 1986. It is based outside of Philadelphia.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=445c8cb1d4d85d5009bd1874f1f3cb97