Sorry grannypat, I know that thread title made you cringe but it wouldn't let me use italics in the title.
There have been several threads lately about communication issues with Hammock Gear. And there was another vendor a while back that had really bad communication issues and I believe they may have even shut down for a while to revamp and fix things. In these threads there are people that commiserate with the OP, others that bash them for bringing it up, and others that jump to the defense of the vendor like a parent blinded with parental bias that thinks their child can do no harm. (There's no way my child could have done that officer, he's an angel.)These threads all pretty much go the same way with people saying the same things and in the end the vendor steps up and makes it right for the OP and things continue on.
I'd like to offer up my perspective on the subject. I'm mostly going to be talking about HG because that's who I personally have had the most experience with and they are the current vendor that has been the topic of discussion.
My history with HG includes the slow communication people have been talking about(my last email to them was never even answered) that happened almost two years ago, so that's not a new thing. I've had customer service issues that were resolved immediately and beyond what I would have expected. And I've ordered straight from their page without the need for communication. So I'm not an outsider looking in. I understand completely where the OP's are coming from.
Now here's where I'd like to broaden the perspective a bit. I disagree with the golden child perspective of "they're so awesome they can do no harm". And I disagree with the "you shouldn't be complaining on here, you should only say nice things" crowd. Those kinds of posts are in no way helpful.
I see things like this: HG could solve their communication issues right this second if they wanted to. All they have to do is stop taking custom orders. It's their desire to give each and every customer exactly what they want that has created a situation where not only is their gear in high demand but so is their personal attention. The easiest thing for them to do is say "No more, here is what we offer, pick one." That is my biggest fear is that our constant demand for personal attention from our vendors to answer our every little question is going to cause them to stop offering personal service. That is the thing I love about cottage vendors, personal service and top quality gear. It's not customer service, lots of places have good customer service, even big box stores do. It's certainly not just a cottage thing like we tend to delude ourselves into thinking. The draw of cottage is personal service and quality. But at the rate we as customers are driving things we may lose some of that personal service in order for them to maintain the standard of quality and customer service.
I think HG is becoming a victim of it's own success and they may have reached that point in business where it's time to step up to the next level or scale things back. I personally would like to see the former happen before the latter. So I'd like to offer up a few ideas to help in that arena.
First we as customers could make it a point to bring our questions here first instead straight to them. I'm sure a lot of the questions they are asked repeatedly could easily be answered by those of us that already own their gear. And if someone does ask a question on here we should answer them instead of telling them to just email or call Adam. That could potentially reduce a fair amount of email traffic.
Second maybe Adam could create a FAQ page that is prominently displayed on the website. Maybe even post a FAQ sticky on here as well.
Third maybe conduct a poll here to see how many people have gone elsewhere to make a purchase because of slow or no communication. With the idea being that if enough people are going elsewhere it may be more profitable to hire someone to handle communication than to not have someone.
Lastly they could take a page from Papasmurf who is on the frontline of creating the ultimate hammock gear buying experience.
Now all of this doesn't just apply to HG, it could happen to any of our vendors that become in as high of demand as they have. Maybe all of this is just the early morning ramblings of someone that should have stayed in bed. It's certainly starting to feel that way, my train of thought is starting to sputter and veer off the tracks.
So let me bring this novel to an end by saying instead of rehashing the same threads with the same camps making the same posts lets look at this from a broader perspective and see if there's anything we can do as a community to help alleviate the problem on our end because if our incessant demand for personal attention goes unchecked this is the kind of thing that could lead to a change in how our vendors operate around here. I realize that seems kinda doomsdayish so I guess I have officially ventured into the realm of sleep deprived rambling. I'll leave now before any credibility this post may have started with is lost.
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