Have you ever seen those old gasoline station commercials, where a car pulls up and a team of attendants rush out and service the car? They fill it up with fuel, wipe the windshield, check the tires, etc. Or maybe you've seen it in an old movie or something. This is what customers expect, for some reason.
Post production houses don't work like that, dear clients. We don't sit around twiddling our thumbs until you, specifically just you, come in through that door. We will not stop everything so you can have everything you want in two minutes and drive off into the sunset.
Things go on before and after you arrive. You say your video is only five minutes, so it shouldn't take so long for us to do? That would be true if there were no other jobs running ahead of yours. We will not stop those other processes to accommodate you.
Every holiday season, customers will come in with a few days left to go and ask you to bend over backwards to get their projects done on time. They'll even admit that it's their fault they procrastinated. There are some who are reasonable, and then there are some who are not.
Last week, three people didn't keep their scheduled editing session with me. The first one called ahead about a half an hour before. She had micro-cassettes that she wanted transferred to audio cassettes. Not CDs. Tapes. She explained that she wanted the sound cleaned up because there's noise on it. I said we don't specialize in that and that she should take it to an audio place. She asked what we did. I said, we do video. And by the way, our company name has the word "video" on it. So obviously she didn't show, but I wasted my time setting up the tape decks and the i-mic and everything.
The second one was supposed to come in on Monday. The very hour that she should have been there, I received an email from her that she wanted to change the time. I rescheduled her two days later for Wednesday at 10am. She didn't show. So my whole morning was spent blogging, twittering, facebooking and everything else but working. I wouldn't have minded normally, but at this time of the season, that only resulted in a pile up of all the other projects. Not to mention that I had other clients begging and pleading that I squeeze them in. I refused them so that I could give this one the proper attention.
Later in the afternoon, a messenger dropped off a mini-DV tape. No note or anything. An hour later I received an email from the no-show that she wanted a DVD of it. So it turned out that she didn't even need to edit after all. Meanwhile, all the clients who needed to edit had been turned away.
The third one wasn't so bad. It was the last day before the Christmas break, which was Thursday the 23rd. It was a repeat client who was scheduled for 10am. I was wrapping up my own personal video gift for my wife, so I didn't mind having the free time. Also, I had pretty much wrapped up the other projects. As long as the guy didn't come in late and demanded to edit, I didn't have a problem with it. Later in the afternoon, the client called and apologized. He said he simply overslept. Mainly he wanted to reschedule, but it was just refreshing when the customer actually acknowledges that missed appointments hurt your business.
And then sometimes they show up. This one guy came in for a session and then told me he decided not to edit anything. He just wanted to transfer his two betacam tapes to DVD. He wanted me to pop them in the deck so he can tell me the in and out points for each. After going through the tapes, he decided he just wanted both from start to finish. He also wanted format conversions from NTSC to PAL.
And then he asked how much it would cost. So we added them up and he couldn't believe it. He argued that one of the tapes is only 10 minutes long. I said, sorry but that's how our prices are structured. He kept complaining. I wanted him to be happy. (Basically, I didn't want him to change his mind and decide he wanted to edit after all because I had a big project to finish.)
So we talked it over and decided that since it was the holidays, we would give him a nice discount. So he was happy. For a while.
He wanted to know how long it would take. His two tapes totalled 70 minutes so I said it would take at least that long for it to be finished. At least. He looked surprised. Apparently this old man who has edited for many, many years was taken aback that his 70 minutes of footage would take at least 70 minutes to convert. Long story short, he couldn't have it the same day.
So he complained that he was from out of state and that he would have to travel to the city again. So I said, why don't you let us run your job and FedEx it out to you. He said he didn't trust FedEx, especially at Christmas time. He said, "Let me give The Other Company a call." I don't know if he expected us to stop him or something. No, sir, please don't take your business elsewhere, sir.
So he called The Other Company. Obviously, we could hear his questions, but having dealt with The Other Company, and even having referred clients to each other, we already knew the answers. "Can you convert two betacam tapes totalling 70 minutes to an NTSC and PAL DVD?" Yes. "Can you have it done today?" No way. "How much would it cost?" A shitload.
So he decided to stay with us. He wanted to schedule with us to run his job. I explained that we only schedule for editing sessions. For conversions, it would be first come first serve. He asked if we could make sure we're not busy on the day he would return. We said, no we cannot.
I suggested that since he had his mind made up on coming back, we can run his job so that when he came back all he had to do would be to pick it up. He wouldn't have to wait around while it's converting. He said he didn't want to leave the tapes. Apparently, he didn't trust us with them.
So I shook his hand and said, "See you next week."
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