BlogSmall business, Marketing, Promotion and Web Design

The toll-free number we have provides quite a comic relief sometimes. Today it was “Dave” from “some-Indian-company” but with US phone number (starts with 202, will check the call log later). “We do programming, web development and web design and we are very good. We wanted to offer you to outsource your work to us”.

No, guys, you are not good. There’s a good reason why Porsche costs more then Kia. It’s the same reason why your work costs less - it’s the quality of the end product. Thank you. Not interested.

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Thank you! Thank you, Joel! I am much younger then you, I am much less experienced in ways of business, but finally I’ve found another business owner saying same thing I was saying since same 2001…

If you’ve ever had to outsource a critical business function, you realize that outsourcing is hell. Without direct control over customer service, you’re going to get nightmarishly bad customer service — the kind people write about in their weblogs when they tried to get someone, anyone, from some phone company to do even the most basic thing. If you outsource fulfillment, and your fulfillment partner has a different idea about what constitutes prompt delivery, your customers are not going to be happy, and there’s nothing you can do about it, because it took 3 months to find a fulfillment partner in the first place, and in fact, you won’t even know that your customers are unhappy, because they can’t talk to you, because you’ve set up an outsourced customer service center with the explicit aim of not listening to your own customers.

That’s why both the 866 number and main company phone number are tied to my line. If there’s a problem - I must know about it first. Hopefully we’ll never be big enough to loose customers, especially - due to bad customer service.

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Sometimes I wonder, what makes people take the job, promise to make something, after the allotted time tell you that you didn’t promise them enough pay. Not only that is stupid, it is also very non-professional. Since you’ve agreed to the terms - it is expected that you will abide by them. How would it look if you’ve done a job, but then I would say that you didn’t do it good enough and just wouldn’t pay? That would be wrong, indeed, so why do people think that if they spend your time and then tell you “you’re not paying enough” you would offer them more? Just because they are so great that they can’t even accomplish simple design? Amazing.

Another wonder comes from message boards. You post a message to hire a freelancer. Those who have been turned down (or even those who thought they would) start telling others that you are not professional. Who cares? Do they think they are the only ones who can design web sites? There’s a good word that perfectly describes these actions and the word is “masturbation”. Those who want to get paid - they ask for terms. They may like the terms or not, but that’s a whole another story. Weird people, weird indeed.

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