MYC and Customer Service

Danielle, owner of Fibre Space, pinged me about Ravelry threads and comments tonight.  Apparently there is a lot of discussion around the Metro Yarn Crawl (MYC) this year.  There was also a thread on a LYS closing in the area.

So I spent a good portion of my evening reading and responding to these posts (again, no knitting for me tonight).  Thankfully, Danielle had responded to a comment regarding why we have not participated in the MYC the past couple of years.  She basically nailed it very accurately.  The Crawl is too close to our Pop-Up event.  This is part of the reason why we have had a few more SALE events over the past couple of years, just held at different times.

There was another section on LYS Customer Service.  Some shops got bad reports from Ravelers. Thankfully, The Knot House had all good reports with the exception to the fact that “one shop doesn’t even answer the phone with the shop name”.  I laugh about this because the shop number is Mom’s cell number, and she answers “this is Cathy”.  She answers it night and day whether we are open or not.  Why?  Customer Service.  Yet, one customer didn’t see it this way.  Which goes to show how the best of intentions can be misunderstood.  We have had a couple of people complain about our customer service, and I can recall one time  when I explained our position on “fixing” someone’s mistake when they came in demanding help when they were taking a beginning knit class from another shop in the area.  But most of the time Mom and I (mostly Mom) are always willing to help with anything anyone needs help with.  Once in a while you might catch one of us on a bad day.  Are we allowed that?  I think so.  I think we have the best customers around.  I truly do think that.  Matter of fact, everyone loves Mom so much, sometimes I get annoyed.  But I don’t have the patience she does… so I guess she does deserve a gold star.  But even Mom has bad days.

I have a couple of points here.

1.  Please let us know (preferably privately) if we are slipping or if you have had or know someone that has had a bad experience in our shop.  We are not mind readers…
2. Keeping the doors open, providing fresh interesting products with a smile is harder than it might look.  I thank people like Danielle that cares enough to let me know about these Ravelry threads and comments.  We all have to help each other if we are going to keep making this work.
3. Thank you to all our customers, our regulars, our customers that visit us when ever they are in town, and our customers that shop on-line.
4. Don’t start reading Ravelry threads when you should be knitting.  You will just get yourself all worked up.

Thanks for listening!

Oh and date correction on the MDSW Pop-Up – May 5th – May 7th! Friday Night, Saturday, and Sunday.

~Heather