“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things…” Machiavelli, The Prince
Well, it had to happen, eventually…Someone wrote me an email critical of my company that was truly deserved…Yup.
We failed to follow up on something that we said we would…And guess what? The customer was disappointed….And he let us know about it.
And you know what I did, when faced with his accurate, yet stinging criticism?
I gave excuses. I laid down a litany of the usual: “We were understaffed that week.” “Fed Ex screwed us up…” “We were working on a backlog of held shipments and logistics snafus…”
Blah, blah, blah.
Excuses. Yeah, these things happened. These things tied up hours and hours and hours of our time. And this poor prospective customer’s request was lost in the shuffle of “should have. could have, didn’t.”
We did not deliver what we said we would. Period.
Fact of the matter is, we fell victim to that easiest of business gaffes- Over-promising and under delivering. And to make matters worse, when I exchanged emails with the customer, I actually had the chutzpah to tell the guy I was sort of annoyed at his insinuations that I didn’t care, or that UC was making excuses. He even went so far to say that my time writing my daily blog would have been better spent doing more customer-service related things. And called into question why I waited to respond at length only until he complained.
Since I write these blogs virtually the minute I wake up each day, and they are the one part of my creative expression that I therapeutically share with others each day, that was “the final straw” in my fragile ego, that made me snap. My ego and self righteous indignity got the best of me, and I was thinking awful thoughts: “Chill out dude, you’re one of 1,900 customers...in fact, you’re not EVEN a customer yet…You’re probably one of those number-crunching, egotistical MBA-bean-counter types that loves to criticize others but quietly hides his own inadequacies…And how dare YOU suggest that I spend my valued forum/blog time, which brings pleasure to many others, on something else, just because YOU had a bad experience…”
Arrggh...what an idiotic attitude I had! Fortunately, I kept them to myself.
Was he right? On this occasion, he was right. He was disappointed. He bought into our believe system, and we let him down.
We failed.
Truth be known, as clients, you don’t really care, or need to care, that I might have 34 phone calls and 14 emails to return that morning, along with 24 shipments…You shouldn’t have to. You want to know if we have that blue Acro with the purple polyps in stock, because you want it for your collection.
You don’t care that my livestock manager was stuck in traffic, that I forgot my lunch, that I left my wallet at home…That’s not your concern as a customer, is it? And my lack of sleep, my partner’s family obligation, my dad’s death, my crazy jet-set speaking weekend, Joe's sick girlfriend, the dirty jeans our warehouse guy wore, or that annoying head cold are not things you should have to worry about…
Excuses.
You placed an order and need to know when it’s going to be shipped, and weather or not we set it up to be held at the Fed Ex location like you asked.You wanted to know if we could find that cool Acro for your wife's birthday. You wanted an answer to a simple question. Things you deserve.
We didn’t follow up on an email. We failed to properly follow an instruction regarding shipping. Maybe I didn’t return a call when I thought I could….It doesn’t matter what the reason is- you didn’t get why you expected.
You’ve been honest with me, so I certainly owe it to be honest with you, right? This is how we grow as people and as a company.
I responded to this guy with an emotional, almost whining tone, about being too darned busy…Sheesh….Really? Weak. That sucked. He even pointed out that the emotional response was a sign of a problem.
Fail.
I acted in the very manner that I laugh at when some vendors do, when called on a mistake in a feedback forum, albeit I did mine within the confines of a private email…
Choked…sucked…blew it. And what was worse, I was actually ticked off when the guy zinged me back…My ego took it personally: I'm The “Great Scott Fellman…7-time MACNA speaker, worldwide fish celeb, author, frequent flyer, crazy beloved comedic benefactor of reef clubs everywhere”…I Took a well-deserved, direct kick in the butt…and I was mad!
My über huge ego didn’t like it. I mean, he spoke critically of MY company, and of ME. We're the guys that always get the positive press. No one ever seems to publicly criticize us. We're the ones that speak out for reefers everywhere..seemingly beloved by the reef keeping world...how could this be? REALITY CHECK!
Whoa, Scott. It’s not personal, it’s business.
Yet, I couldn’t wait to turn this into a positive; to share it with you people- the most important people in the world. When we’re wrong, we’re wrong. We’re disappointed, too, when we screw up.
Remember when Apple screwed up with the I phone 4 antenna? It was the first, very public failing of a beloved brand…And Steve Jobs handled it perfectly, by sharing the disappointment in the company’s actions with the people who mattered most- brand lovers, and outlining a plan to fix the problem.
I’m no Steve Jobs, but I can take his response as precedent, right? It may have been a private communication, but the implications are most public.
Guess what? The customer had some points. It’s business. We need to do more if we expect to get more.
He was correct in many of his assertions.
Instead of getting ******, I should have shared with him what I’m sharing with you: The problems as we recognize them, and how we intend to fix them.
As you know, we’ve always been up front with you, and especially with our goal of providing unparalleled service for our market sector. Most of you have received that from us. Some of you apparently have not.
And that sucks.
“Some” should not be a word that we use.
Our business has taken off in a huge way; grown faster than we had ever anticipated…The train has left the station at full speed, and we were hanging on for dear life! The systems that we carefully put into place 18 months ago when we were just waiting for the phone to ring. This systems served us well, but when we became a serious business- a REALLY serious business- they were simply not enough to keep up. We didn’t update these systems.
Until, in an incredible coincidence, literally just about the day the customer called us to task. Oh, the irony in that.
To that end, we have instituted significant changes about the way we do business. Changes that bring us in line with our customers’ expectations, and keep us ahead of the curve, where we need to be.
Radical change can be frightening, particularly in companies with deeply entrenched, non-productive systems. Fortunately, as we’ve demonstrated many times, we’re not scared of change. We were, for a few milliseconds, and it did nothing but hold us back. We’re done with that. We’ve found that the best way to alleviate the pain of what doesn’t work is to “weed the garden…” To yank out the aspects of our business that don’t contribute to our brand lovers' happiness with us.
We're constant gardeners.
Again, pulling from Apple’s storied history, you may recall that, back in the mid nineties, Steve Jobs brought the focus at Apple back to what their customers wanted most. He cut the product portfolio down to 10 items from 350, but each one of those 10 products were as perfect as possible. He reorganized Apple around the insights learned from Apple’s core customers.
And it worked.
We’re not trimming down to 10 corals; don’t worry. However, starting immediately, we’re getting UC back into focus about what matters the most- our customers. We never really lost site of it, just got a bit…distracted. Some of our core mission suffered a bit as we got busier and busier.
Enough of that.
It starts with the most basic of experiences; A visit to our web site. You probably noticed that we’ve changed our format on our website offerings to give you more concise, informative product descriptions and summaries of the conditions a given coral is being kept at while at our facility. This is a direct response to YOUR feedback. Maybe YOU didn’t notice, but a couple of other vendors did, attempting to mimic our template. Made us smile.
We’re keeping our site as minimalistic-clean as ever, to avoid the typical “web vomit”; those tacky, overly-busy vendor websites you see everywhere.
We are re-vamping a couple of our product selections, to offer a greater, more organized selection of some of the coolest new stuff you've ever seen! We’ll be changing the way you buy certain corals! And it’s all based on feedback from you!
You’ll see new features, like video, more interactive stuff..a an App-Store approved UC mobile application…all rolling out in the coming weeks.
Weak points, like the way you purchased UC virtual gift cards, have been simplified and the process beefed up. You can now get your product immediately after purchase, without waiting for one to be manually generated.
Maybe we did get too big too fast. When did that happen? One of our web people told us that our metrics are so high that we should consider offering advertising space for sale on our site, LOL. He went on to show us that we literally are blowing our competition out of the water with our site metrics. No one in our category is even close. Scary. He said our metrics are better than most of the sites we’ve advertised on…Oh, the irony.
With big visibility comes the need for big changes, to do things better. All the visibility in the world doesn’t help if we suck. Metrics are numbers. This business, as we have always asserted, is about people, and customer service based on realistic expectations and extraordinary results.
Communications have sometimes not been handled well. We had a single point of contact for communications, and when that contact was unavailable, business suffered. Response times to inquiries increased.
Unacceptable.
We’re re-configuring some things to improve communication. The only difference you’ll notice is faster response times to inquiries. We’re working smarter. It won't be perfect at first, but you should notice some differences quickly.
Oh, moving forward, I want to start out by asking you all a simple request: In order to receive the best possible service with inquiries, please make them via our email or telephone:
email: [email protected]
or to me directly:
[email protected]
Or, you can do it the old fashioned way and just call us up: 818-570-0848. If the first person that receives the call is not available, it will be routed to another one of our team. Please note that we are located in Los Angeles, and operate on Pacific Time. Calls that come in at 6:00AM PST will not be returned until later, m'kay? (Or, as one of my colleagues at another So-Cal based aquatics biz once said in a fit of anger: We'll be happy to return your call at 9:00PM PST, okay? LOL )
Please do not make purchase requests via PM here. It’s not that we don’t want to work with you, it’s just that we can’t man the forum 24/7 and provide you the same service that we can when we communicate via one of our direct outlets. Initial requests like ‘hey man, do you have any more Strawberry Shortcakes?” , husbandry questions, etc. are fine. But when it comes time to taking orders, or things like “put me down for one of those, but I want one with four branches…” , it gets too awkward to provide a good purchasing experience for you on an outlet not intended for such. Please make it easy on yourself and just call. We can talk!
Thanks for that.
We’re improving things like shipping communications. We have instituted systems with multiple levels of redundant checks, so that orders are shipped accurately and with excellent communication. You’ll continue to be updated about shipping as we have always done, only better.
I can go on and on, waxing poetic about how great we are and how cool our new improvements are, but none of that will matter unless you notice it. We hope that you will.
As I have suggested many times, we’re human, we screw up. we make mistakes. We fix them.
We’re fixing them.
And to all of you who have continued to come along for the ride, stuck with us during these growing pains- those of you who have “bought in” to our core values, our vision, and our sharing, we thank you, apologize for any failures, and look forward to continuing our work with you! Thank you for your feedback, suggestions, criticisms, and most important- your friendship.
And to the guy who I exchanged emails with last night: I thank you for your lack of sugar coating; for holding up a mirror for us, and for me. It helped us more than you will ever know.
However, dude. I’m still gonna write my blog everyday. Deal with it. :boxing:
Onwards.
Stay Wet.
Scott Fellman
Unique Corals
Well, it had to happen, eventually…Someone wrote me an email critical of my company that was truly deserved…Yup.
We failed to follow up on something that we said we would…And guess what? The customer was disappointed….And he let us know about it.
And you know what I did, when faced with his accurate, yet stinging criticism?
I gave excuses. I laid down a litany of the usual: “We were understaffed that week.” “Fed Ex screwed us up…” “We were working on a backlog of held shipments and logistics snafus…”
Blah, blah, blah.
Excuses. Yeah, these things happened. These things tied up hours and hours and hours of our time. And this poor prospective customer’s request was lost in the shuffle of “should have. could have, didn’t.”
We did not deliver what we said we would. Period.
Fact of the matter is, we fell victim to that easiest of business gaffes- Over-promising and under delivering. And to make matters worse, when I exchanged emails with the customer, I actually had the chutzpah to tell the guy I was sort of annoyed at his insinuations that I didn’t care, or that UC was making excuses. He even went so far to say that my time writing my daily blog would have been better spent doing more customer-service related things. And called into question why I waited to respond at length only until he complained.
Since I write these blogs virtually the minute I wake up each day, and they are the one part of my creative expression that I therapeutically share with others each day, that was “the final straw” in my fragile ego, that made me snap. My ego and self righteous indignity got the best of me, and I was thinking awful thoughts: “Chill out dude, you’re one of 1,900 customers...in fact, you’re not EVEN a customer yet…You’re probably one of those number-crunching, egotistical MBA-bean-counter types that loves to criticize others but quietly hides his own inadequacies…And how dare YOU suggest that I spend my valued forum/blog time, which brings pleasure to many others, on something else, just because YOU had a bad experience…”
Arrggh...what an idiotic attitude I had! Fortunately, I kept them to myself.
Was he right? On this occasion, he was right. He was disappointed. He bought into our believe system, and we let him down.
We failed.
Truth be known, as clients, you don’t really care, or need to care, that I might have 34 phone calls and 14 emails to return that morning, along with 24 shipments…You shouldn’t have to. You want to know if we have that blue Acro with the purple polyps in stock, because you want it for your collection.
You don’t care that my livestock manager was stuck in traffic, that I forgot my lunch, that I left my wallet at home…That’s not your concern as a customer, is it? And my lack of sleep, my partner’s family obligation, my dad’s death, my crazy jet-set speaking weekend, Joe's sick girlfriend, the dirty jeans our warehouse guy wore, or that annoying head cold are not things you should have to worry about…
Excuses.
You placed an order and need to know when it’s going to be shipped, and weather or not we set it up to be held at the Fed Ex location like you asked.You wanted to know if we could find that cool Acro for your wife's birthday. You wanted an answer to a simple question. Things you deserve.
We didn’t follow up on an email. We failed to properly follow an instruction regarding shipping. Maybe I didn’t return a call when I thought I could….It doesn’t matter what the reason is- you didn’t get why you expected.
You’ve been honest with me, so I certainly owe it to be honest with you, right? This is how we grow as people and as a company.
I responded to this guy with an emotional, almost whining tone, about being too darned busy…Sheesh….Really? Weak. That sucked. He even pointed out that the emotional response was a sign of a problem.
Fail.
I acted in the very manner that I laugh at when some vendors do, when called on a mistake in a feedback forum, albeit I did mine within the confines of a private email…
Choked…sucked…blew it. And what was worse, I was actually ticked off when the guy zinged me back…My ego took it personally: I'm The “Great Scott Fellman…7-time MACNA speaker, worldwide fish celeb, author, frequent flyer, crazy beloved comedic benefactor of reef clubs everywhere”…I Took a well-deserved, direct kick in the butt…and I was mad!
My über huge ego didn’t like it. I mean, he spoke critically of MY company, and of ME. We're the guys that always get the positive press. No one ever seems to publicly criticize us. We're the ones that speak out for reefers everywhere..seemingly beloved by the reef keeping world...how could this be? REALITY CHECK!
Whoa, Scott. It’s not personal, it’s business.
Yet, I couldn’t wait to turn this into a positive; to share it with you people- the most important people in the world. When we’re wrong, we’re wrong. We’re disappointed, too, when we screw up.
Remember when Apple screwed up with the I phone 4 antenna? It was the first, very public failing of a beloved brand…And Steve Jobs handled it perfectly, by sharing the disappointment in the company’s actions with the people who mattered most- brand lovers, and outlining a plan to fix the problem.
I’m no Steve Jobs, but I can take his response as precedent, right? It may have been a private communication, but the implications are most public.
Guess what? The customer had some points. It’s business. We need to do more if we expect to get more.
He was correct in many of his assertions.
Instead of getting ******, I should have shared with him what I’m sharing with you: The problems as we recognize them, and how we intend to fix them.
As you know, we’ve always been up front with you, and especially with our goal of providing unparalleled service for our market sector. Most of you have received that from us. Some of you apparently have not.
And that sucks.
“Some” should not be a word that we use.
Our business has taken off in a huge way; grown faster than we had ever anticipated…The train has left the station at full speed, and we were hanging on for dear life! The systems that we carefully put into place 18 months ago when we were just waiting for the phone to ring. This systems served us well, but when we became a serious business- a REALLY serious business- they were simply not enough to keep up. We didn’t update these systems.
Until, in an incredible coincidence, literally just about the day the customer called us to task. Oh, the irony in that.
To that end, we have instituted significant changes about the way we do business. Changes that bring us in line with our customers’ expectations, and keep us ahead of the curve, where we need to be.
Radical change can be frightening, particularly in companies with deeply entrenched, non-productive systems. Fortunately, as we’ve demonstrated many times, we’re not scared of change. We were, for a few milliseconds, and it did nothing but hold us back. We’re done with that. We’ve found that the best way to alleviate the pain of what doesn’t work is to “weed the garden…” To yank out the aspects of our business that don’t contribute to our brand lovers' happiness with us.
We're constant gardeners.
Again, pulling from Apple’s storied history, you may recall that, back in the mid nineties, Steve Jobs brought the focus at Apple back to what their customers wanted most. He cut the product portfolio down to 10 items from 350, but each one of those 10 products were as perfect as possible. He reorganized Apple around the insights learned from Apple’s core customers.
And it worked.
We’re not trimming down to 10 corals; don’t worry. However, starting immediately, we’re getting UC back into focus about what matters the most- our customers. We never really lost site of it, just got a bit…distracted. Some of our core mission suffered a bit as we got busier and busier.
Enough of that.
It starts with the most basic of experiences; A visit to our web site. You probably noticed that we’ve changed our format on our website offerings to give you more concise, informative product descriptions and summaries of the conditions a given coral is being kept at while at our facility. This is a direct response to YOUR feedback. Maybe YOU didn’t notice, but a couple of other vendors did, attempting to mimic our template. Made us smile.
We’re keeping our site as minimalistic-clean as ever, to avoid the typical “web vomit”; those tacky, overly-busy vendor websites you see everywhere.
We are re-vamping a couple of our product selections, to offer a greater, more organized selection of some of the coolest new stuff you've ever seen! We’ll be changing the way you buy certain corals! And it’s all based on feedback from you!
You’ll see new features, like video, more interactive stuff..a an App-Store approved UC mobile application…all rolling out in the coming weeks.
Weak points, like the way you purchased UC virtual gift cards, have been simplified and the process beefed up. You can now get your product immediately after purchase, without waiting for one to be manually generated.
Maybe we did get too big too fast. When did that happen? One of our web people told us that our metrics are so high that we should consider offering advertising space for sale on our site, LOL. He went on to show us that we literally are blowing our competition out of the water with our site metrics. No one in our category is even close. Scary. He said our metrics are better than most of the sites we’ve advertised on…Oh, the irony.
With big visibility comes the need for big changes, to do things better. All the visibility in the world doesn’t help if we suck. Metrics are numbers. This business, as we have always asserted, is about people, and customer service based on realistic expectations and extraordinary results.
Communications have sometimes not been handled well. We had a single point of contact for communications, and when that contact was unavailable, business suffered. Response times to inquiries increased.
Unacceptable.
We’re re-configuring some things to improve communication. The only difference you’ll notice is faster response times to inquiries. We’re working smarter. It won't be perfect at first, but you should notice some differences quickly.
Oh, moving forward, I want to start out by asking you all a simple request: In order to receive the best possible service with inquiries, please make them via our email or telephone:
email: [email protected]
or to me directly:
[email protected]
Or, you can do it the old fashioned way and just call us up: 818-570-0848. If the first person that receives the call is not available, it will be routed to another one of our team. Please note that we are located in Los Angeles, and operate on Pacific Time. Calls that come in at 6:00AM PST will not be returned until later, m'kay? (Or, as one of my colleagues at another So-Cal based aquatics biz once said in a fit of anger: We'll be happy to return your call at 9:00PM PST, okay? LOL )
Please do not make purchase requests via PM here. It’s not that we don’t want to work with you, it’s just that we can’t man the forum 24/7 and provide you the same service that we can when we communicate via one of our direct outlets. Initial requests like ‘hey man, do you have any more Strawberry Shortcakes?” , husbandry questions, etc. are fine. But when it comes time to taking orders, or things like “put me down for one of those, but I want one with four branches…” , it gets too awkward to provide a good purchasing experience for you on an outlet not intended for such. Please make it easy on yourself and just call. We can talk!
Thanks for that.
We’re improving things like shipping communications. We have instituted systems with multiple levels of redundant checks, so that orders are shipped accurately and with excellent communication. You’ll continue to be updated about shipping as we have always done, only better.
I can go on and on, waxing poetic about how great we are and how cool our new improvements are, but none of that will matter unless you notice it. We hope that you will.
As I have suggested many times, we’re human, we screw up. we make mistakes. We fix them.
We’re fixing them.
And to all of you who have continued to come along for the ride, stuck with us during these growing pains- those of you who have “bought in” to our core values, our vision, and our sharing, we thank you, apologize for any failures, and look forward to continuing our work with you! Thank you for your feedback, suggestions, criticisms, and most important- your friendship.
And to the guy who I exchanged emails with last night: I thank you for your lack of sugar coating; for holding up a mirror for us, and for me. It helped us more than you will ever know.
However, dude. I’m still gonna write my blog everyday. Deal with it. :boxing:
Onwards.
Stay Wet.
Scott Fellman
Unique Corals
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