Possumblog

When I took marketing...

...the professor had a favorite saying, "Marketing is everything, and everything is marketing." Meaning pretty much what it says--anything you do or say about your product has an impact on it, and it pays to make sure you do or say the right things, or else you won't have happy customers.

A case in point.

We've recently had a lot of babies being born at our church, and I mentioned that with these additions and with the increase in young couples visiting, it might be nice to upgrade the nursery classroom furniture, which up until recently was a homemade table with holes cut into the top and padded wooden seats bolted underneath. Although it has great sentimental value to all the kids who grew up there, and for the guy who made it, it really looks a bit slapdash, and it's really too low for comfort for the teachers, who can't get their legs up under it.

So, I looked through a classroom supply catalog, marked one I like that had eight bright yellow plastic seats and sat up nice and high so a teacher could actually sit up to it. We ordered it, it came, we put it together, threw away the boxes, and put it in the classroom.

The big debut came a couple of Sunday mornings ago, and as I was in the middle of distractedly zipping around to make sure everyone was in class and all the teachers were there, I got stopped by not one, but TWO of our elders, who proceeded to tell me that everyone was complaining about the new table because babies wouldn't fit in it.

::sigh::

At the moment I had other fires to put out, so I said I'd handle it as soon as I could and contact the manufacturer about a possible fix. Since we'd already thrown all the packing away, the hope of simply returning it for credit didn't look like a doable solution at the moment, and although it seemed as though someone might have thought I could simply wave my magic wand and make the table work, it was going to take more than a couple of days to fix things. If they could be fixed.

Now, not having witnessed the difficulty people were having in stuffing their little bundles of joy down into the chairs, I can't say for certain if it was really as big of a problem as everyone was acting like it was, or not. There is always the "it's new, therefore bad" potential, and maybe people were just unfamiliar and that's all it was. Because these aren't big fat kids going into these seats. They're babies, just old enough to sit up by themselves, up to about 12 months old. And, well, the table is even called a Toddler Table.

Yesterday I finally got around to visiting their website, and although it does say the seats are for kids up to 24 months, they don't guarantee EVERY kid will fit. Which is fine--who could guarantee such a thing? Still, though, these kids aren't gargantuan---they're just regular-sized babies. I thought I would see if possibly the company had some slightly bigger seat inserts available, or maybe something deeper. One problem of fitting the kids in is that the little legholes in the seats are very shallow, making it necessary to bend the tyke's legs oddly to get them in and seated. A deeper seat would help out a lot.

Anyway, I wrote them this note on their website contact form--

Dear Sirs:

Our congregation recently purchased one of your 8-seat tables for our nursery (newborn to 12 months) class. We thought that since the table was listed as a “Toddler Table” in the catalog through which it was purchased, and that since it said it was suitable for children up to 24 months, that there would be no trouble with infants fitting into the chairs.

However, we immediately ran into complaints from parents that the seats were too small for their infants, none of whom are over approximately nine months old.

We obviously had not anticipated this situation, and were wondering if your firm has seat inserts that are larger or deeper that could be retrofitted to the table, or if there is any other way in which the seating space can be increased?

Thank you for any assistance you can give us,

Signed by me.

Got my reply back today--

The seats cannot be increased in size. We do sell a Junior Table which holds four children and is recommened for children up to 40 lbs. There is a picture of the Junior Table on our web site.

I am sure that you read the same reports that I do about Americans and our increasing weight. Today, some children are heavy for their age. Sorry, that I could not be more help.

You know, Tom, it's really not that you couldn't be of help, it's that you did it in a way that was both condescending and insulting.

Tom, despite the fact that I can read, and the fact that the newspapers seem to have gotten on a big kick about obese adult Americans, I also know the size of the babies involved. What point were you trying to make, Tom? That although your firm realizes that babies are bigger now, you don't feel like accomodating them? That customer dissatisfaction--whether valid or not--is their own fault for having such fat kids? You want to talk science? Exactly how were your seat sizes determined? Did you use any sort of anthropomorphic model based upon a given percentile of the intended user population? Or did you just sorta wing it?

Everything is marketing, Tom, and marketing is everything. We're going to see if we can return the table to the vendor, but if we can't, I suppose we'll just be stuck with a table everyone complains about. I will make sure to give them your message, Tom, and point out the company's label on the front of the table, and your firm's phone number, and encourage them to give you a call. You can explain your views to them all you want.

Now then--so what was it exactly I looking for by way of an answer?

Well, I never really expected that they'd be able to accomodate my request. I mean, if they had deeper or bigger seats, I figure they'd be on their website. Wouldn't hurt to ask, but I didn't really have much hope of help.

What I WAS expecting was something along the lines of, "We're sorry that you're having difficulty. We make every effort to design our tables to suit a wide range of child sizes, but as we note on the website, we aren't able to guarantee every baby will fit. We do have a table that is made for larger children, and we'll be happy to work with the supplier you bought our table from to work out an exchange. Again, our apologies, and we thank you for using our product."

That's all.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at October 13, 2005 10:42 AM