Why are smaller publishers so incommunicative?

[jeffd]

Subject's not big enough for my questions: why are small publishers so incommunicative regarding online orders?  

When I order from amazon.com I get an email as soon as I make my transaction confirming it's been entered.  I get a second email when my credit card is successfully billed.  I get a third email when my product ships, letting me know it's on the way.

When I order from large game publishers it's the same thing.

When I order from smaller shops I tend to get the first email and then nothing.  Anywhere from one to three weeks goes by without any real communication - eventually I get my order.  Maybe.  Sometimes I have to follow up in email.  And yet my credit card was billed right away.

What would it take to get RPG publishers to be more mindful of communicating with the customer about their order status?  And why do RPG publishers tend to run the credit card when the order is made instead of when the order is ready to ship?

JD

[Brian Leybourne]

Simply because small publishers cannot afford the computer systems Amazon has to send you all those emails, and don't have the staff of the large companies.

Most small publishers probably have one single person processing orders, and that's likely not his/her only job either. They're busy!

As for billing you before they ship the order, I don't believe that most of them do that, but some certainly do and I personally think more should. Large companies can afford to ship product and then worry about getting your money (even if it means having to chase you because your credit card was cdeclined or your cheque bounced, or whatever) but small companies, existing on a shoestrong budget, usually can't.

Brian.

[RaconteurX]

Small publisher = no full-time staff or dedicated shipping department. If they could afford the email automation which most distributors and large publishers possess, they would probably send multiple emails as well.

[Adam]

Many publishers also contract with a warehouse staff elsewhere who handle the shipping and suchlike. For example, GoO will ship direct orders to Canada from our offices, but all USA and I believe international orders get shipped from our USA-based warehouse.

This means that if you email one of us to say "Hey, what's up with my order?" the person who processes the email [Mark, the poor bastard :)] has to get in touch with the shipping department, wait for them to get back to him, etc.

Best,
Adam

[Luke]

I think you are being rather insensitive to the plight of small publishers.

First off, it was small companies that started personally responding to each order and made such customer contact commonplace on the market. Larger companies then picked up the trend and automating it.

When I receive an order I send out an email confirming that i have shipped the order. Usually this is done the next day.  In the letter I always ask for the person to send me an email when the game arrives safely.

So let me turn the question back, why do so few customers respond to their email?!

kidding, of course.
-Luke

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Jeff, as you can see, this thread is suffering from being too general. Is there a specific small publisher you've received the silent treatment from? And is this a general phenomenon, repeated across several publishers?

If the answers are "yes" and "no," respectively, then there isn't much we can accomplish in the discussion at all. The Forge can't really help with one-on-one conflicts.

If they are "yes" and "yes," then I'd like to know the details of what exactly has been repeated from case to case: are we talking about automated responses to orders, about responses to one-on-one emails, about tracking shipments, or what. Without that, we have to guess what the issue is, and that doesn't work.

I assume the answer to the first question is "yes," because otherwise, the whole issue goes away.

Best,
Ron

[jdagna]

You know, I think he's highlighting a very significant problem that everyone should consider.  Customers value good communication to an amazing degree.  I have two clients I host web sites for who have been loyal for several years not based on the product or the price (they could get a slightly better package for about a third of the cost) but based on the fact that I stay in close communication and am willing to chat with them.

Obviously, all sorts of problems can enter into the process that may slow things down or limit communication.  Obviously, most small press products are shipped by the person who's also the writer, the owner and the accountant and is generally in over his/her head.

But, seriously, most people will appreciate an e-mail saying "I'm pretty busy and my warehouse will be a little slow, but here's what you can expect."  They'll certainly prefer that to nothing (or to an overly-optmistic or uninformative response).

As far as what you can do, JD... I guess it really depends on who's done this and how often (as Ron asked).  One thing you could do is specifically request to be notified of each step in the process, either by sending an e-mail alongside the order, or by using a comment field on the order form, if there is one.  There really isn't any way to teach good customer service to an entire industry... especially since most companies have fairly lousy customer service.  And this includes Amazon - just try to do anything they don't have a CGI script for, and you may discover a whole new appreciation for small press.

[jeffd]

Hey Ron,

The answers are indeed yes and yes.  

First off yea I can see how I came across as insensitive to smaller publishers - wasn't my intention at all.  Rather I guess I'm trying to see if there's anything that can be done to ease communication.  I've been burned more than once with internet transactions (it's why I shy away from ebay now) so I'm probably a bit more paranoid than most.

Generally when I order something on the internet from smaller publishers and distributors (this isn't confined to roleplaying games, a lot of stores I've order miniatures from have the same thing going) the process looks something like this:

1)  I place an order
2)  I get an email confirming my order has been placed
3)  My card is charged
4)  Anywhere from one to three weeks passes.  
5)  During this time I send an email out regarding the status of my order (usually at the 7-10 day marker).  9/10 times I get the news that the item shipped a few days ago and I should look for it.  Sometimes I get silence or informed that what I ordered was out of stock or that the publisher was away at a con and not filling orders that week or....
6)  The item arrives.

Addressing the silence is beyond the scope of this post and isn't really the problem.  

The problem isn't so much the vagaries of the mail system as me sitting around with my card balance increased by thirty dollars wondering if the book is even in the mail.  #3 is the part I don't like because I'm out money and I don't know what's going on or what the status is unless I go ahead and reach out.  It's frustrating to me to email only to find out that whatever I ordered is on back order.

What I'd like the system to look like is this:

1)  I place an order
2)  I get comfirmation that the order was recieved
3)  I get notice that my order has shipped and a rough ETA.  At the same time (or rather immediately beforehand) my card is billed.  Of course nothing should ship until this happens.  If there is anything wrong (out of stock, on backorder, away at a con) I should hear about this and be given an ETA of when I can except things to return to normal.
4)  I get my order whenever.

I'm sensitive to the fact that most publishers aren't going to be able to afford a full featured modern inventory tracking system.  However, what I'm talking about really isn't that complex - heck if you track orders through excel you can probably write a script that automatically sends out a mail whenever an orders status changes to "shipped" or whatnot.  

JD

Hello,

Jeff, as you can see, this thread is suffering from being too general. Is there a specific small publisher you've received the silent treatment from? And is this a general phenomenon, repeated across several publishers?

If the answers are "yes" and "no," respectively, then there isn't much we can accomplish in the discussion at all. The Forge can't really help with one-on-one conflicts.

If they are "yes" and "yes," then I'd like to know the details of what exactly has been repeated from case to case: are we talking about automated responses to orders, about responses to one-on-one emails, about tracking shipments, or what. Without that, we have to guess what the issue is, and that doesn't work.

I assume the answer to the first question is "yes," because otherwise, the whole issue goes away.

Best,
Ron

[Clay]

Some of this is due to the messed up world of credit card processing.

In case you weren't aware, credit card processing requires accounts and services to be purchased from all kinds of unpleasant people. First you have the bank account. While some banks are nice to small businesses, a great number of them aren't very interested in dealing with small businesses, since the recordkeeping overhead is large compared to the revenue generated for the bank.

You must also acquire credit card processing services. This is a separate service from the bank, although most banks will act as the go-between. Unless you are very lucky, you must also acquire an online credit card processing service.

Now the credit card processing services can have some pretty interesting rules.  At least one business I know of has a credit card processing service that requires immediate processing of all credit cards, without storing the numbers.  They get particularly stuffy about taking those numbers online and storing them in a database. No complicate that with the fact that at least some prominent online processing services require that you take the number and authorize it immediately, but don't process the transaction until shipment time.

So what's a small business to do? I finally recommended going with PayPal for this customer. Although they have the merchant account and credit card processing service for their face to face customers (where it is justifiably hated, I might add), handling the online transactions so that nobody got cheesed was going to be a nightmare.

So that's the situation from the supplier's end.  Many of them bill immediately, just as soon as they know they have product at all, because they don't really have any other option.  They'll ship it later, when they can spend half a day packaging product.

[Gold Rush Games]

'Tis true. Many small publishers (like me) are one-person companies with that one person wearing a dozen or more hats. Sad, but true. But rest assured that we small publishers do what we can to respond to inquiries and we certainly appreciate your support. :)

[Michael Hopcroft]

Have you ever tried wearing a dozen hats? It gets awkward. they keep falling off, which is sort of what happened to me while I was handling orders of physical books.

Hiring someone to do the job, if you can afford, it makes things a lot easier on the customer, but sometimes I wonder if small publoshers have a shot at ever becoming the sort of middle-sized publishers who can do that. It seems to be that this business is sort of stratirfied and that there is a sort of "glass cieling" that publishers face based on whether they have outside resources to draw upon. I'm not conivinced that any company that makes RPGs its sole or main business is making a profit right now.