Q&A with Vendor Lead times, customers service and quality control

I'd like to take a moment before we (all vendors) enter into our busiest time of year too open up a Q&A to customers and potential customers about our products and everything that goes into getting them to you. I'd like to open this up too any of the vendors here to put your 2cents in as well and help possibly answer any questions, concerns and or issues you've had in the past so that all of our customers have a better understanding of the process that goes into making products.

The purpose isn't to make excuses or incite bash fest on customer/vendor relationships but more a chance to manage expectations on both sides of the purchasing process. That said, please no vendor bashing, in-fact if you want to just leave the name out of it, maybe we can all answer the question as if it was directed at us.

 

I'll take the lead and try to explain some of the common problems we have all experienced.

Lead times and ETA:
I don't think a week goes by with out seeing a negative post here about someone waiting for product for their truck. I only want to speak for our selves but please other vendors feel free to chime in with your own 2cents.

Our general response for lead time is currently 4-6 weeks which if everything goes smooth is a pretty accurate statement. That being said when we have new products or we are releasing new products that time frame can be pushed out a little. We've quoted as much as 12-14 weeks. Even if we have it here, we are very tempted to say "it's in stock ready to ship" the problem is the next day we hand the work order to our shipping guy and he finds a scratch on that bumper that's been sitting on the shelf for a month or he calls in sick. This is one area where we've been working on saing 1-2 weeks even if it's on our shelf. We'd rather over deliver and under promises than the opposite.

There are a lot of factors that make up these time frames and if any "ONE" factors is messed up then the time frame can be pushed back. And if a couple factors fall out then that is generally when we have upset customers. I think it's important to remember with all vendors when reading reviews that people are twice as likely to complain as they are to compliment on a job well done. And trust me, when we see a positive post or something nice in a e-mail we love that. I make sure we share it with our employees. Because the flip side, when we screw up my employees all hear about it. I as I'm sure many small companies do, take this very serious and we take home with us with someone is upset or not happy with our products. Not only me but my employees do as well. After we pick our selves up off the floor we pull together and use it as a learning lesson.

That being said here are some of the key factors for all of us that have to come together in perfect harmony for everything to go smooth in the 4-6 week lead time.

Order placed and follow up: I can't tell you how many people "think" they placed an order with??? One of our re-sellers, random e-mail to us and they call 6 weeks later and are upset we don't have their order. If you place an order online, always call to make sure we got it.
Material: it's rare but in some cases we've had orders held up because readily available tubing is simply not available to a later date.
Laser cutting: almost all of our parts are laser cut and pre-bent, pre-cut or pre made for us. We place PO's for those parts and if they are off even one day it sends our schedule into a tail spin. The other problem is they are company just like us and suffer from the same problems as us. If they match a whole batch of the wrong parts and deliver them to us that whole process starts all over again. It's happened more than once.
Employees: with most of the vendors here we are small 2-20 man operations, if our welder, shipper, grinder, shop bitch call in sick, that throws a wrench into the whole thing.
Powder coating: We are as tired of giving this excuse as customers are tired of hearing it. We beat our powder-coater up hard, but just like our laser cutter, they have their own shop with their own issues to to contend with, they just happen to be second to last in the line of things that need to perfectly fall in place to get the order out on time.
Shipping: Shipping is the last in the line of excuses you will hear and I think we can all agree our number 1 complaint as business owners. We have fought with shipping companies since we started, from scratched products to lost products we've seen it all.

Like I said one of these factors not falling into place hurts, two is really bad but we've had all of them fall apart. That's usually when we get the worst reviews and we learn the most though.

Again not a bash fest, not an excuse fest, we just want to improve our process. One of the biggest things we are always focused on is COMMUNICATION! We get praised on it constantly but 10 outta boys don't make up for one screw up, so we know it needs work and we are always working on that.

 

Good idea for a thread topic.

 

I think you broke this down very well as I know first hand how the process goes.
We do a small amount of work as I'm a 1 man operation so things are even slower because I end up chasing material, picking up/dropping materials, parts, powder coat etc..

I know laser tells me 2 weeks but sometimes it's 4 weeks depending on their schedule.. powder coat can take 1 day but can be delayed up to 2 2weeks.

I know a lot of people expect to have everything in stock but it's difficult for low volume companies to stock product.

All we can do is do our best to get products to our customers as quickly as we can.

 

Well said. I don't think a lot of people realize what really goes into the product construction of the majority of products for our rigs. A LOT goes into creating these custom parts and, like you said, if one thing goes wrong by even a day, the whole thing gets thrown out of wack. It doesn't just effect that one order either; it can cause the whole order line to get backed up; just like rush hour or the line at Chipotle.

With home grown and small business shops, quality goes up, but speed to market goes down. It's a resource game. As a reseller of custom parts like Demello and Trailworx, we try to communicate in advance the expected lead times and temper expectations. Many a time I've wanted to scream "We're not Amazon!" We're just a couple of guys trying to get a piece of the pie.

 

Pretty much all problems between vendors and customers can be boiled down to a problem with communication. Most people, on both sides, tend to be reasonable, but when one side can't or doesn't communicate with the other things break down real quick. It's like two hands trying to lay the same brick, but not working together. Focusing on always improving that is a good idea.

 

another thing people don't seem to realize is that these items for example... bumpers, sliders etc are not built and just sitting around waiting to be purchased... everything like that is built to order otherwise these companies would be broke from inventory just sitting around... for quality items the wait while as painful as it can be is definitely worth the wait for quality, well built items. i waited 8 weeks plus for my front and rear bumpers but when they arrived every little detail i requested was made to a "T" and couldn't have been happier with the final product. Thus the reason i will be purchasing from these vendors again in the future...

 

I think the other side of vendor issues is customer expectations.
Telling a customer "Yup., we'll have it next week", when there is no prayer of that happening doesn't help.
When I ordered a set of sliders from Tammy, she said "Well it should be x weeks, keep in touch".
It was very close.
I wanted your guys to do the install, so she said "Come up next Wednesday around 9:00".
I got there around 9:15, and the tech was finishing up another job.
Had a cup of coffee, he got on it, and I was out before noon.
I can't imagine anything better from a small shop.
What was even better was that my wife had to have hip replacement surgery and the sliders allowed her to get in and out of the truck with a small plastic step - worked great!
No problem here.

 

Agreed, we take it personal and we get upset with our selves when we see our name blasted for not delivering on time. BUT recently, it also seems to be a blessing. We want people to know that despite learning from past mistakes and doing our best. We aren't perfect and things happen. Communication IMO is number 1.

 

We as I'm sure all vendors see the wide spread understanding of things. Where we might get one customer saying "I'm in not hurry, I know it takes a while" too another customer screaming mad because they got it in a week and not in 1 day. We do our best to gauge the customer and fit our communication best to them. We've been told, "stop calling, I know I'll get it when I get it" too "you never called me" despite having e-mails and phone records to prove otherwise. The instant gratification is a tough nut to crack but having convo's like this where someone isn't already upset, I hope it helps all vendors.

 

I'm pointing all our customer service to this thread because it is the same thing that I explain over and over ha ha

 

Very nice write up. I honestly have nothing to add that's valuable.

Only comment I can add is:

If you, the customer, has a comment, complaint or question, don't start a thread and do it there. Call us, whichever Vendor it is, and do it that way. I'm sure I speak for most that with the shear size of this forum, no matter how hard I try I miss people's threads or comments, especially when there is no tag to notify us. I often do a search with just Mobtown in case there was no tag so I can at least find it.

We're all businesses and to try to contact us through a forum is somewhat poor. The Vendor does not have a direct relation with the forum, it's merely a selling tool and a way to get people to know us. You wouldn't expect to go to a forum not related to Amazon and ask an Amazon order related question so whys this one any different.

Call or email us or any Vendor direct. It'll get you the quickest results.

Again, thanks for doing this @JDEMELLO

 

Couldn't agree more. Shoot us an e-mail, shoot us a message here or any other social media, call us. Remember too that we are humans too and have families and responsibilities just like you.

 

@Blackout14

 

bump.