When I left ID4, I had a bunch of my project files that I took home with me, and out of boredom, I decided to take them out and roughly calculate how many project I had taken up during my 4.5 years at the Interior Design Firm.
I know there isn't a lot because of how picky I am with the clients I choose to work with and how little money I had made, so over the past 4.5 years there, I calculated and realized I had only closed a total of 25 projects, that's on average about 1 project every 2 months, and the total quotation for all 25 projects is only about $700,000.00. Just for comparison, the Interior Design firm that I had interviewed for had a annual sales target of $600,000.
My average profit margin is about 15%-20%, so that means for my entirety time there, after splitting the profits with my company, I have only earned a total of between $42,000.00 to $56,000.00 worth of commission, that's very very little, I am now earning 3 times that amount monthly, so I am grateful for that, it's a lot less stressful and even though I am spending more time at work than at home like I used to with this 5 day work week schedule, I do feel more relaxed nowadays because work ends when I leave the store, and even if I have to deal with work related stuff on days I am not working, they are usually minor issues that are easily resolved with a few text messages, that being said, my current company it has it's own set of problems that I have to deal with, like a very messy company structure, and the most annoying one for me are the entitled moronic customers that anyone working in retail would face.
Speaking of which, one of my colleague recently left the company for greener pastures and all his existing customer contacts were disseminated to everyone in the store, I was unfortunately given 3 and one of them had a huge $90,000 order that was apparently facing a bit of a delay.
I didn't bother reaching out to that particular customer ,or any of them to be honest, because according to the update written by that ex-colleague of mine in his sales report, this $90,000 customer had already been told of the delay, so I figured I didn't have to reach out until her items have actually arrive to schedule a delivery date, I just didn't see any point in reaching out to form any sort of relationship.
My job with this customer is to just settle her incoming shipments and schedule a delivery date for it, that's it, if she decides she wants to purchase anymore items from us down the road, I will probably just direct one of my colleagues to her instead.
Anyways, a few days after I was assigned to her, she calls up my main office to complaint about a lack of follow up from the company, that complaint was then brought to my attention and it turns out, she was complaining about a lack of follow up, not because no one told her about the delay since my ex-colleague already did, but because she wanted to cancel a few items from her order and there was no one she could probably reach out to to put in that request.
Her cancelling the items now is like asking Foodpanda to cancel your delivery after the kitchen has prepared the food, the rider has collected the food and the food is en-route to your place, you can't just do that. I then told her at first we couldn't cancel the order because not only has it been fabricated for her, it is already in the cargo on the way to Singapore. She then insisted that she had already gotten a few replacement chairs because the wait had been too long for her, which is literally not our problem, and her furniture isn't technically delayed, it is still within the back order period that had been shared with her prior to her purchase.
So to use Foodpanda as an analogy again, you order Foodpanda, the app says the food will take between 45 minutes to 1 hour to reach your place, you get hungry after waiting for 45 minutes, so you go and prepare instant noodle, you get full from the instant noodle and decide you no longer want the Foodpanda order anymore, so you request to cancel it despite knowing very well that the food is on the way to your place and will reach after a slight 10 minutes delay.
Whose fault is it?
YOURS!
You know food is coming, in fact, it is already on the way, common sense would dictate that you have some snacks like potato chips to try and tide you over until your meal reaches your place, just small items that will satiate your hunger but not make you full.
If your dumbass immediately goes to a bowl of instant noodle, then you are a fucking moron for not being able to plan ahead properly.
I don't know what the fuck this customer's train of thought is, you already place a huge deposit for chairs that are worth hundreds and thousands of dollars, if you need a replacement while you wait for those to arrive, maybe get a cheap IKEA one first that you can easily discard or giveaway to friends and family when your expensive designers pieces come! Like I really don't understand how her mind works.
Anyways, this customer's order was a bit more complex because she ordered 2 different brands from us, one was arriving on time and the other was going to have about a 2 week delay. At first I didn't want to let her cancel the items because it's not a very good move to make to allow customers to last minute cancel their order because they are so impatient, I was contemplating about telling her that her item is still within the stipulated back order time frame but if I pull that card on her, she can UNO Reverse that logic back at me and insist that she will cancel the pieces from the other brand that is actually delayed.
So after thinking about it and discussing it with my supervisor, we decided that we could actually display the pieces she wanted to cancel in the Showroom, it was about $4000 worth of chairs, which is a relatively paltry amount against her $90,000 invoice.
Letting her cancel $4,000 worth of chairs to make her happy is better than having her demand we refund her for $40,000 worth of furniture from the other brand that got delayed.
Anyways, she was quite happy about it. She then requests for me to get her items delivered to her place as soon as possible once it arrives, so I kept that in mind.
A few days later, half of her item finally arrives in Singapore, so I reach out to her to arrange for the final payment to be made so I can start to schedule a delivery for her, told her I had blocked out a date for her first but can only confirm the delivery once the final payment has been made, and her reply to my message was...
"Actually I would also like to cancel a few coffee tables from the order."
...FUCK YOU!
You give them an inch and they take a mile.
I will say however that we desperately needed coffee tables in the Showroom because we are severely lacking those, so my supervisor and I were actually more than happy to let her cancel those orders, but FUCK YOU nonetheless.
Anyways, I let her cancel the order for the coffee tables and then proceed to reiterate that she will have to schedule the payment soon in order for us to commit to the delivery date I had blocked out for her, she just kept replying with "OK", but doesn't actually process the payment.
Not really sure when she would actually process it, but I had to send her a gentle reminder today that if she doesn't make payment by today, then her delivery date will be postponed, and she just replied with "OK", don't reply with an "OK", a better response would be a screenshot of the bank transfer.
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