Three Things

   So heres the deal. I'm writing this on Thursday and uploaded the video tonight as well. The video is scheduled to go live on Saturday and then on Sunday morning I can just share this post to facebook. There really is a lot of bullcrap involved in this blogging effort but so far I'm still willing to invest the time. Why am I posting it early? Glad you asked. The main reason is because one of my daughters is getting married on Saturday and the last thing I want to do is dick around with uploading Greasy Shop Rag videos on her special day. A secondary reason for doing it this way is there may come a time that I want to use the youtube time machine and travel to the future. Or is it the past? If I make a video that isn't seen until days later then am I going back to the future? Time travel is complicated.

 When I titled this post I obviously had three things on my mind. Three reasons for scheduling the video in the future (here we go again) but I can't think of the third reason.  I don't think it was customer service but that should have been on the list anyway and this post should have been called "Four Things". When I remember that other thing I'll just go back from the future and change this whole post. Don't worry, you'll never know what happened.

 Customer service can make or break a business. Now its true some people will shop a certain store for low prices no matter how crappy the experience has been in the past. I'm thinking big box stores when I say that but what about small business? A small shop can't afford a bad reputation when it comes to customer service. Where I work we sell new outdoor power equipment and we also do warranty work for many major brands which means we service the cheap crap you bought at the big box store. Many times the equipment isn't actually covered under warranty because a customer did something stupid. The fact is that they buy it in a box, set it up and then foul it up. When you buy from us you get an assembled unit, a test run and as much training as you need. All that extra stuff is free and not billable time. That makes it hard for us to compete with a store that just pushes you out the door with an unassembled unit.

 To make up the difference we try to earn loyal customers that will come back and rent equipment or tents. Maybe they'll think of us for their snow plowing needs or lawn mowing, fertilizing or spraying. We also offer trucking and delivery services and also light fabrication work. Some free labor to earn a customer can go a long way towards a bigger sale down the road. And don't forget about word of mouth. 

 At the end of the video I say "bill 'em". We don't actually bill this customer. It literally took seconds to figure out the problem and later I learned he borrowed the saw and had no chainsaw experience at all. The fact that he borrowed the saw and was willing to take it to a repair shop and pay the bill without ever having had the chance to use it told me he was probably a good guy. We took the time to educate him and I hope we earned a customer. I don't normally babble on this long and then stuff a video in your face but the video is only 40 seconds and I needed it for my time machine experiment. 

https://youtu.be/NTH5lfFi6zU

Later.