Esprit 100 or Takahashi 106 ???

[Tim]

10 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

 And they can can actually be contacted by telephone...

I cant speak for other businesses, but as a retailer, making sales anywhere between 50 pence and 50 grand, I would MUCH rather people contact us via email. This way they can ask concise questions appropriate to their needs, and both parties have a record of the "conversation" and transaction. There is  no ambiguity.

Many of the suppliers I deal with now have installed telephone recording equipment to protect themselves against claims such as "but your guy promised me that you would   etc etc..."

Congrats on the Tak Skipper Billy Curious as to your job now, sounds a  bit like our gardening based workplace.

[Skipper Billy]

29 minutes ago, Tim said:

Congrats on the Tak Skipper Billy Curious as to your job now, sounds a  bit like our gardening based workplace.

Thanks !

Yacht charter company, chandlery, RYA Sail training school, rigging services etc  www.alba-sailing.co.uk 

[Spikey]

14 minutes ago, Skipper Billy said:

Thanks !

Yacht charter company, chandlery, RYA Sail training school, rigging services etc  www.alba-sailing.co.uk 

You must know my buddy Hughie Balfour then.

 

[Pig]

Congratulations Billy, I am sure you will be well pleased with the Tak, I know I am with mine ?

[Gasman]

+1 for the Espirit range, love my 120mm but it's set up purely for spectroscopy so can't show any images unless you like squiggly lines ?.

Steve

[Skipper Billy]

1 hour ago, Spikey said:

You must know my buddy Hughie Balfour then.

I do - he is a regular customer in our shop.

[mikeDnight]

4 hours ago, Tim said:

I cant speak for other businesses, but as a retailer, making sales anywhere between 50 pence and 50 grand, I would MUCH rather people contact us via email. This way they can ask concise questions appropriate to their needs, and both parties have a record of the "conversation" and transaction. There is  no ambiguity.

Many of the suppliers I deal with now have installed telephone recording equipment to protect themselves against claims such as "but your guy promised me that you would   etc etc..."

Congrats on the Tak Skipper Billy Curious as to your job now, sounds a  bit like our gardening based workplace.

Im getting long in the tooth and have witnessed many desirable qualities and practices being erroded from society, so i am bitter and twisted as a result, but i know im far from alone in my views. Not being able to speak to a knowledgeable person over the telephone is just another move to dehumanize a transaction, but I suppose it saves having to employ knowledgeable people. It seems that customers are merely cash cows to be milked and human interaction is just an inconvenience for many companies and organizations. Cashierless banking, Self checkouts at supermarkets and painful automated telephone answering machines wasting thousands of hours of customers lives each year are just a means of eradicating human interaction that is so valuable from a customer perspective. Having to send an e-mail then wait for a reply, which will almost certainly require another e-mail and yet further waiting for a reply and so on, is soul destroying, when a quick phone call and an instant transaction takes only a minute or two. I've never yet had any issue with a vendor over the telephone that couldn't be easily resolved, and the warm, friendly customer relations that inevitably blossoms, is worth its weight in gold! 

 

[GavStar]

4 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

Im getting long in the tooth and have witnessed many desirable qualities and practices being erroded from society, so i am bitter and twisted as a result, but i know im far from alone in my views. Not being able to speak to a knowledgeable person over the telephone is just another move to dehumanize a transaction, but I suppose it saves having to employ knowledgeable people. It seems that customers are merely cash cows to be milked and human interaction is just an inconvenience for many companies and organizations. Cashierless banking, Self checkouts at supermarkets and painful automated telephone answering machines wasting thousands of hours of customers lives each year are just a means of eradicating human interaction that is so valuable from a customer perspective. Having to send an e-mail then wait for a reply, which will almost certainly require another e-mail and yet further waiting for a reply and so on, is soul destroying, when a quick phone call and an instant transaction takes only a minute or two. I've never yet had any issue with a vendor over the telephone that couldn't be easily resolved, and the warm, friendly customer relations that inevitably blossoms, is worth its weight in gold! 

 

Mike, I’m with you here (and I consider myself a tech generation person having had email since the start of my career). 

My line of work is customer service oriented but corporate rather than retail. I have had to drum into my younger colleagues how important it is to create a direct personal relationship with our clients - a phone call is much better for this than an email. Also when things don’t go quite right email exchanges can be easily misinterpreted - a quick call often sorts things out immediately and results in a happy client.

In my opinion, we receive too many emails on a daily basis - the younger generation (I guess I am getting older ?) seem to much prefer to fire off an email than having a nice personal chat.

Having said this, FLO’s customer service is excellent! And they do respond to emails quickly which means I can look through the lack of direct contact.

[Tim]

7 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

Im getting long in the tooth and have witnessed many desirable qualities and practices being erroded from society, so i am bitter and twisted as a result, but i know im far from alone in my views.....I've never yet had any issue with a vendor over the telephone that couldn't be easily resolved, and the warm, friendly customer relations that inevitably blossoms, is worth its weight in gold! 

Oh, I totally agree with you, we are an old old business, and still keep the handwritten records of transactions and little notes to customers from the 1950's. We have the luxury of an actual outlet, a real place to visit, and so when people do phone, I invite them over, to discuss face  to face. I try and drum into our staff, even the saturday and sunday boys and girls, the importance of establishing a relationship with every person that walks through the door, look them in  the eye, smile, make them feel that they have had a one to one interaction. We have customers that have become firm family friends this way. Sadly though, we are harking back to old fashioned business ways, and it is hard to go further into it without verging on the political. I will say this, it isn't easy to make any money doing things the old fashioned way, the economy is not set up for it  :/

[jock1958]

23 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

RVO are great to deal with, so I doubt you'll have any regrets. And they can can actually be contacted by telephone, as can Ian King and True Technology. 

I’ll second that for Ian King, really nice guy to deal with on the phone and cut me a good deal on my FC100 DL ?

[25585]

1 hour ago, jock1958 said:

I’ll second that for Ian King, really nice guy to deal with on the phone and cut me a good deal on my FC100 DL ?

Ditto that for True Technology. Nick is a true Tak-mage. Knows everything & gave me a good deal on my DL. 

WRT telephone v email, my job from 1990 until 2016 was telephony as well as written. To give the best customer service you need to speak to people. How you ask questions, what the answers are, what else you need to know & the customer might need to know or tell you, to sell & recommend products & services is best done face to face or voice to voice. This also avoids the barriers of poor written expression, description & sadly illiteracy/inumeracy. The more specialist a product is, the more communication. Our forums here are an example of to & fro written enquiries asking & ascertaining what an individual wants & needs. 

As a customer, I like to ring for instant purchase or deposit payment for a product. Skipper Billy hunted for his 106. I do for certain eye pieces, lenses & other collectibles. Web sites are not updated fast enough, but a phone call to a store can get a check made of if an item is in stock in store, especially clearance items. 

Where email is the only way is for international shopping, to check on availability. But shopping in the UK, speech is better customer service. 

 

[FLO]

14 hours ago, mikeDnight said:

It seems that customers are merely cash cows to be milked and human interaction is just an inconvenience for many companies and organizations. Cashierless banking, Self checkouts at supermarkets and painful automated telephone answering machines wasting thousands of hours of customers lives each year are just a means of eradicating human interaction that is so valuable from a customer perspective. 

Blimey! That sounds grim. 

I am aware this thread is a 'Esprit 100 or Takahashi 106 ???' discussion so my apologies to Skipper Billy. 

I began working in retail over thirty years ago in a showroom at a small family run photo-shop. This was before the internet, forums, Twitter and Facebook! There were no computers, at least not in any of the businesses I knew. Cameras were loaded with film, portable video cameras were carried on your shoulder with a recorder in a back-pack or on a trolley. I think it was the year the comedian Ernie Wise made the first public mobile phone call in the UK. Shops closed on Sundays. My role was making tea, restocking shelves, serving customers and repairing cameras. Roughly half my working life has been spent in showrooms, the other half in an office/backroom. I have seen and experienced retail from pretty-much every angle. 

Retail today is very different and I have learned a number of fundamental truths over the years. In particular, what we as customers say is rarely what we mean and ultimately we get the retailers we deserve. We said we wanted Sundays to be a family day, but when a few rebellious shops broke the Sunday Trading laws we made good use of them. We say we value smaller local produce suppliers, but shop at supermarkets. We say we value showrooms, but use them only to make purchasing decisions then order online where it costs less. We say we value healthy vibrant city centres, but drive to out-of-town shopping centres. We say we value face-to-face customer service and phone conversations, but shop at Amazon. I could go on... My point is if we truly valued all these things then we would have them. 

Regarding FLO specifically and her preference for email: FLO was once only me, a phone and a website. The phone was my favourite method of communication but as the company grew it became clear we would have to move to something more manageable and scalable. Most customers made it clear they preferred email. It was also clear many of our phone conversations were not with FLO customers. It was with people who had bought a telescope at, say, Amazon or a photo store then phoned FLO for help and advice on how to use it. We helped where we could but clearly we would rather have been serving FLO customers. With email it is easier for us to know if the telescope being discussed was genuinely purchased from FLO and so prioritise those communications. There are a number of other reasons email works so well but Tim has already mentioned most of them in his earlier post. Email works better for us and our customers, at least the majority of them, and if we had not focused on email then FLO would not have grown to the size she is today. 

We are very open about our preference for email and have invested a considerable amount of time effort and money into making our online communications work.

No system is perfect but we always do our best  

HTH, 

Steve 

[FLO]

PS: The retailers who claim they favour phone. If you dropped a modern fully functioning helpdesk package into their lap free of charge (they are expensive) they'd adopt it in a heartbeat. Of that I am sure. 

[25585]

Steve, while I appreciate your perspective, perhaps web sites are not customer oriented enough. 

Skipper Billy knew what he wanted, found a retailer with his scope in stock, and bought it PDQ. 

But say "Cabin Boy Jim" wanted a "small stowable 4 inch telescope", and wrote to you asking how much. Would it not be much much easier to have a spoken conversation, when you could in a (hopefully) single dialogue, explain to him makes, models, prices and also advise him in what else he might need for using a given telescope? "Jim" may be better at verbal than written communication. Taking time to talk could secure a sale that might otherwise be lost. A loss for him & unlikely further enquiry, a loss for your business & future custom. 

Grapevine/online still counts. SGL membership loyalty to FLO, including mine, is from the forum & personal experience. But outside, browsers, adverts etc it's a confusing & great choice of kit. A human voice advising, guiding, can only add to customer-friendliness, both ways. 

[FLO]

@25585 Has it occurred to you you have asked questions of FLO here at SGL and received responses, not just in office hours or on weekdays but out of hours on Saturday and Sunday. 

44 minutes ago, FLO said:

No system is perfect but we always do our best  

HTH, 

Steve 

[25585]

31 minutes ago, FLO said:

@25585 Has it occurred to you you have asked questions of FLO here at SGL and received responses, not just in office hours or on weekdays but out of hours on Saturday and Sunday. 

HTH, 

Steve 

Yes I have & I know you do Steve  

But my point was in respect of the general public's needful enquiries, not anything personal. We all here think FLO is 5* service  

[paulastro]

I have no gripe at all with FLO, and have always found they provide a good service and email responses.  Their after care is also excellent.  Having said that, I too find it irksome at times that you cannot speak to anyone - or at least not easily.  Also, it does sometimes take a few emails whereas a quick phone call would have avoided any confusion and been quicker.  I also have gone elsewhere on occasions when I have needed a quick response and not had the time to keep checking my emails for when the response arrives.

I would also point out  that 'customer care' is about the customer first and foremost.  Any argument about what is best for the retailer is irrelevant to the customer if he does not think he is getting the service he should. 

I work part-time for a large retailer and know a lot better than to tell a disgruntled customer that the way we work is convenient for the business - irrespective if this is communicated verbally or by email !!

[Pig]

I have to admit I have never had to wait very long for a response from FLO and I am Mr impatient ?

[25585]

Only working in the public sector can you say "best for business" because that means less government spending = taxes etc. 

This afternoon I rang 2 UK stores and sent an EU one an email. All had stock advertised on their site, which had gone as been discontinued. The phone calls clarified that had I ordered & paid, a long wait then refund claim would have resulted. 

Very glad to have FLO, RVO, WSC, Harrisons & TH who are all good in the UK. Not tried Tring yet. 

 

[RayD]

Just to clarify a point here in that phones are not banned at FLO.  On 2 occasions that information was best relayed to me by phone, Steve has called me on my mobile.  I personally tend to prefer email contact as responses are often more reasoned and detailed.

I tend to agree with Stephen Fry who put telephones in to room 101 as the most rude and disruptive form of communication there is because, whilst it may be convenient for you to make that call at that particular time, it may not be the ideal time for the recipient.  It's like someone standing in front of you, poking you and saying talk to me now, now, now.

I've never felt that the lack of phone number has hindered my experience with FLO.  In fact I have always found email responses to be extremely quick, detailed, helpful and above all there so that I can read it again, rather than trying to write it down during a call or remember it afterwards.

There is no perfect way as what suits some will not suit others.

[Tim]

1 hour ago, RayD said:

There is no perfect way as what suits some will not suit others.

Aint that the truth! Nowt as queer as folk, as they say.

[pi_co100]

is that Esprit  better than the Takahashi after all? 

[Tim]

1 hour ago, pi_co100 said:

is that Esprit  better than the Takahashi after all? 

 

[25585]

1 minute ago, Tim said:

 

There's no replacement for displacement.

[RayD]

That's brilliant.  I once saw a tiny little Nissan Micra do a similar thing in Essex and it transpired it was a fibreglass body on a tubular frame fitted with not one but two x 220hp Hyabusa engines!  Hilarious.