Customer Care: The Color of Success

I failed in some of my duties as Master Craftsman this week. I should have been helping my apprentice understand how to communicate with the customer on important details and decisions. In this case the now fully sanded cabinet needed to be re-stained—but in what color? My apprentice simply chose a color he thought would be close to the original cabinet color and went with it. Me, I think the antique piece is considerably too dark. And it is too late to change the color since the stain is all soaked into the wood.

Color Me Diligent

There is some kind of principle muttering and puttering around the edges of my mind concerning this event. There likely are lessons here that are transferable to any trade.

I believe we tend to be lazy sometimes or at least lack diligence in our work. I should have advised Tim to get approval from the customer for the color used prior to applying it. After all, we have a stain sample board in the shop that could easily have been used to confirm a correct color.

Everyday Choices & Taking Care of Your Customer

There have to be a million choices made every day by small business managers that are similar to this. Color, fabric type, quality of a part, decisions that a customer ought to have a say in should not be guessed at and supplied by the worker and then fobbed off on the customer as ‘well, its done now—sorry.’

Once again there is a moral question about doing what is right for the customer. As the master craftsman I believe it is my duty to teach that right morality and wisdom to my apprentice. He is under my care, and needs to hear Godly wisdom on how to handle normal issues of the day.

The Apprentice Lands His First Contract

This week marks the first contract for furniture labor sold by my apprentice.

Fixing The General’s Water Damaged Furniture

About six weeks ago Tim and I were working at a customer’s house (The General—a retired Marine Corp general). The General’s house was flooded due to a frozen water pipe above the upstairs ceiling. Water washed everywhere including directly down on the top of a nice antique cabinet from the circa, 1920’s. The cabinet was totaled and the General decided to give it to me. I barely accepted the piece because it was so badly damaged that I was uncertain I could ever get the money out of it needed to justify its repair. But we hauled it back to the shop.

I soon gave the cabinet to Tim with the instruction that if he could sell it, or wanted to keep it for himself, I would instruct him in its renovation. It would be his first independent project.

If the Key Fits!

The story took a strange but happy turn soon thereafter. My faithful apprentice was stripping and refinishing an old pie safe made sometime prior to 1890 (there was no plywood in it). The pie safe had a door with lock but no key and none of the keys on my sample key ring fit the lock either. Tim, on a whim (or an urge from the Spirit of God), decided to try the key from the 1920’s cabinet on the older pie safe—and it worked!

This is the stripped and refinished pie safe.

The Apprentice Becomes the Contractor

After contacting the pie safe customer with this news and conversing with them a few times Tim was able to contract with that customer to rebuild The General’s former cabinet for a price of $700. It is, admittedly, not a lot of money for the hours Tim will spend restoring this cabinet, but it is the birth of new skills that will help him become independent in this trade.

This is Tim’s excellent work on the rescued china cabinet!

Now Tim is branching out on his own in terms of skills, including how to contract work, pricing, materials ordering and more. And, I have the privilege to be his mentor all along the way.