Do You Make Your Customers Jump Thru This Hoop ?

In my offline world career, I represent multiple manufacturers. Frequently, I call in for samples to take to architects, developers and contractors.

Yesterday, I left a message around 4:30 with a plant manager, asking him to send me two samples. I left my cellphone number, in case he had any questions.

He didn’t have a question, but he did call. I wish he hadn’t called.

He called me, after I’d called him, to tell me to fax the sample request in, so he’d have a record of the request.

No, really, he did that. Really.

He turned one call and a shipment into 3 calls, because, he said, that’s the way we do things.

I absolutely hate that phrase - because that’s the way we do things.

I asked him a simple, that’s how I am, question:

” Dave, couldn’t you have taken a piece of paper, which my fax is gonna be, written down who I was, the time I called and the two samples I asked for and saved 2 calls and a fax ? Wouldn’t your paper look just like my fax ? “

” That’s not the way we do things “, is all I got back.

So I have to come in off my trip thru the bush in Africa and send a fax or I have to call someone in one of our 17 locations and have them drop what they’re doing and send a fax, all because they want to do things poorly, stupidly, blindly, ignorantly …. or, I just thought of this, I could use one of the other 24 manufacturers who won’t make me act in a stupid manner !

Maybe if Dave calls, in a month or two, and wonders where that fax is or why I haven’t placed any orders since then, I can tell him -

” That’s not the way I do things. “