Saturday, December 11, 2004
Working to a tight timetable.
Anna has been quite stressed this week waiting for a dress for a customer in bonny Scotland. She waited in all day Thursday for a delivery and it didn't come, and then tried to work out contingency plans for getting the item to the customer should it not arrive on time.
Living in the Midlands its pretty convenient for this sort of service as most networks involve a depot somewhere close to us. This basically means that any item going from the Midlands area has plenty of time to be collected and routed to any part of the UK. Items going the other way from the extremities of the UK are much more time sensitive and more likely to involve a delay or misrouting of some sort.
Anyway we checked out a courier in Coventry and while the parcel would have probably got there they didn't have an insurance scheme suitable if it didn't, so I checked out the rules and regulations for getting compensation for consequential loss from the Post Office, should the item not arrive on time.
I'm not sure they would pay out (what insurance does), but we opted for £1000 consequential loss on top of the cost for sending via Guaranteed delivery, so if the item had not arrived by Monday I would have been authorised to allow our customer to get herself to Edinburgh or Glasgow and go into any swanky shop to get a suitable dress to fit her, provided that she kept the receipts.
Luckily it didn't come to that, we got a phone call this afternoon from our customer to tell us that not only had the dress arrived on Saturday morning, but that she was delighted with it and wished to thank us for our good customer service. I have to say that our customer might have been relieved that the dress had arrived on time, but I'm sure she was not as relieved that it had arrived as us.
Much as we like the business, rush orders (in this case about 2.5 weeks from request to delivery) involve a lot of stress, the ignomy of not actually coming up with the goods, fills us both with nightmares. Luckily it hasn't come to this yet (touch wood), but I'm sure that something will, someday. Its making sure we do the right thing for the customer, should the worst come to the worst.
Living in the Midlands its pretty convenient for this sort of service as most networks involve a depot somewhere close to us. This basically means that any item going from the Midlands area has plenty of time to be collected and routed to any part of the UK. Items going the other way from the extremities of the UK are much more time sensitive and more likely to involve a delay or misrouting of some sort.
Anyway we checked out a courier in Coventry and while the parcel would have probably got there they didn't have an insurance scheme suitable if it didn't, so I checked out the rules and regulations for getting compensation for consequential loss from the Post Office, should the item not arrive on time.
I'm not sure they would pay out (what insurance does), but we opted for £1000 consequential loss on top of the cost for sending via Guaranteed delivery, so if the item had not arrived by Monday I would have been authorised to allow our customer to get herself to Edinburgh or Glasgow and go into any swanky shop to get a suitable dress to fit her, provided that she kept the receipts.
Luckily it didn't come to that, we got a phone call this afternoon from our customer to tell us that not only had the dress arrived on Saturday morning, but that she was delighted with it and wished to thank us for our good customer service. I have to say that our customer might have been relieved that the dress had arrived on time, but I'm sure she was not as relieved that it had arrived as us.
Much as we like the business, rush orders (in this case about 2.5 weeks from request to delivery) involve a lot of stress, the ignomy of not actually coming up with the goods, fills us both with nightmares. Luckily it hasn't come to this yet (touch wood), but I'm sure that something will, someday. Its making sure we do the right thing for the customer, should the worst come to the worst.
