True Business- real life for small businesses

Regular readers (yes, you, Mum) will know that I spend a fair amount of time here banging on about customer service. Today, I doff my cap in honour, because I’ve got a guest writer in to tell his story. Eamonn O’Rourke is a great friend of mine – and mighty funny too. So pop the kettle on, and take a seat. Because getting a great British Garden Shed really shouldn’t be this hard…

“I’ve worked all over the world, been to both poles, round the equator, and dived in nearly every sea. I’ve had the privilege of being immersed in cultures both ancient and modern but none of them have embraced what seems to me that uniquely British icon, that symbol that tells a man he has arrived. I refer, of course, to the Garden Shed.

Mock ye may; but while Americans are cosseted in high-tech facilities paid for by venture capitalists, and our European partners are comfortably ensconced in Brussels-funded industrial-strength villas, the British entrepreneur is in his shed, knocking out everything from steam-driven tampling w0pples to prototypes for three stage rockets. I have this picture in my mind of pipe-smoking men in sensible cardigans, reinforced at the elbows with patches of something that they slapped together a few years ago and which turned out to be Kevlar, inventing everything of any importance to us in our modern lives, all from the reassuring comfort of a shed in Solihull.

Obviously, I am now of the age where one of these structures has become essential. My wife and I make scale miniatures as a sideline for sale in America. It’s a classic shed enterprise.

It was fantastically exciting making plans with the missus for what design of shed we’d go for. The long winter nights flew by and, come spring, we were ready to choose the lucky supplier.

Imagine my delight when I discovered that the centre for this industry is Birmingham! The Midlands: the engine of the Industrial Revolution and probably the very birthplace of the shed! Until then, men just crouched under orange crates.

I placed the order for my new shed with a man with the most comforting Dudley accent and a shedside manner that was at once interested, reassuring and knowledgeable. “This man knows his sheds,” I gleefully informed the wife.

Delivery was set for 27^th May. A friend had kindly offered to help me prepare the base for the long anticipated edifice, so I got him to knock up a ton and a half of sand and cement and lay 50 slabs for the purpose. Sure he moaned, but he’s from the Midlands too; and I told him he’d be able to sit in the shed and feel like he’s right back home again.

Said shed arrived on the back of a lorry still smelling of coal, steel and cordite. The two chaps had the shed up in two hours and relieved Mrs O’ of £910, cash. As they were back on the lorry and away before you could say Newcomen Engine, my wife didn’t notice the defects until they were well north of Watford. The shed, our long-awaited, budgeted for, and vital shed, had problems!

Mrs O’ was on the phone to ‘Dudley’ to explain what the problems were. “Don’t you worry”, he said, “I’ll call the boys and get them to turn round. I’ll call you back.” Now it has to be said that my other half has a slightly short fuse; and when she’s being messed around, she does tend to mention it. I was surprised, then, that she put up with the fact that Dudley didn’t call back that day or the next. I called him two days later and was a good full minute into a monologue before he stopped me in my tracks and asked: “If you could just give me your name?” I gave all the details I could and he promised to call me back. You can probably guess how the next week or so pans out. He never called, so I started emailing. No response. I called again, getting a little testy by this stage, but Dudley is better than that: after two minutes of explaining my problem, he once again said… “If you could just give me your name?”

You have to understand that I’m really and truly not gullible. I am not a natural customer service victim. Dudley is gifted. He was able to defuse me completely by explaining that emails are not really ‘his thing’ and that ‘the girl that does them’ isn’t in. Now, I like a Luddite as much as the next man, but I was starting to wonder how he managed to take the orders in the first place.

Numerous phone calls and emails later, and three appointments for which Dudley’s boys didn’t show up, I emailed a simple statement giving him seven days to send me £320 for two joiners to put right all the problems, or I’d claim against him in the County Court.

I actually received a call from Dudley today. He made an offer, I countered it, and he has promised to call me back! I live in hope…

The whole episode highlighted to me the two areas where smaller businesses are so weak in this country. Firstly, we are hopelessly inefficient at winning new business: Dudley sticks his sheds on eBay and hopes for the best- not having thought through how he’s even going to answer his own emails. Secondly, we are prepared to put a monumental amount of effort into doing nothing rather than deal with a customer complaint proactively. Dudley’s only real choices, had he faced up to it, were to either come and fix the job or pay me to get someone to do it.

Dudley’s genius is in dealing with people. He remained calm and understated throughout, indeed sometimes so calm that I wondered whether there was a pulse at all. He had superb people skills, but he achieved nothing other than a delay. If he’d got behind the complaint straightaway, he would have had a happy customer and two more sales: neighbours either side of us having reached that certain age want sheds too. Not surprisingly, we told them to go elsewhere.

There is something intrinsically British about this. Great things, truly great things, come out of sheds, but getting the shed in the first place underlined for me  how we so often fail to get the vital basics right.