Marcus doesn’t need defending. He’s not the winery in question here, just one that responded saying “given the choice between the vineyard, cellar and office he will always choose vineyard, winery first. The most important thing is that the wine is correct or there will be no need for customers.”
This harkens back to the Joseph Swan thread where a guy loses it on WB and trashes Swan customer service because his email was not returned in what he felt was a reasonable timeframe.
People go on vacation and disconnect. People have families. People get sick. People have emergencies. Emails go to spam folders. When I go on vacation I ignore all business communication. I am on vacation from work!
Spring break is when winemakers can spend some quality time with their kids. Wines topped, bottling coming up, no pressing cellar work. Pack up the family and disappear for a few. But as is the nature of the internet there is a platform to express displeasure with anything and everything. I was recently hospitalized for a week and missed a couple weeks of work. I did not return any work correspondence during this time. When I went back to work I had a number of customers upset with me becuse they felt I was ignoring their needs. Boy did they feel embarassed when they found out I almost died and was addressing my own needs for a change.
My suggestion to the OP before jumping to customer service conclusions is to send the winery a note asking them to contact you when they are available to discuss future shipments and ways to eliminate your issue.
I think my edit makes more sense. It’s absolutely absurd to suggest that because someone wants a response to their emails or phone calls drinking wine isn’t for them. Drinking wine needn’t be a lifestyle, and it needn’t be done in any particular manner. Further, it’s totally possible to drink wine, enjoy wine, and expect a level of customer service commiserate to that received in other consumer settings. Tons of great retailers out there. Tons of producers who provide service as well I’d imagine. And while I’ve no doubt that the producers being discussed here are good people and all, statements such as Markus’s suggesting that one shouldn’t drink wine if they also want customer service simply don’t make sense to me on any level. No wonder people find wine pretentious when they’re told that an expectation of customer service is self-entitlement and that the producers choice of “rhythm” takes precedence over reasonable expectations of retail interaction.
No, it’s not. And if you engage in direct sales, you have a responsibility to do more than take the order. Reasonable inquiries should be ordered in a timely fashion. Now, we can debate what reasonable is, but Bruce wasn’t complaining because no one picked up the phone on the second ring.
It’s hardly like Bruce performed a hit…he never named the winery, so I’ll take him at his word “Two emails, and 1 phone called not returned. Over a week.”
Over a week? That’s too much. And if you really are going on vacation, then you should change your outgoing voicemail and put a notification on your email. Takes about a minute and a half to do so.
That may be true. But if that is the case, perhaps it is a mistake for that farmer to get into the retail business on top of his all-consuming farming.
“Spring Break” is also shipping season. I’m sympathetic to small winemakers who sell their wine direct to consumers and their need to take a break and not be online 24/7. But if you are going to take people’s money – whether it’s in wine, or any other business endeavor – you owe it to those people whose money you take to be responsive. At a minimum, if you’re going to be out-of-pocket for an extended period (say more than 1-2 days), you should notify your customers somehow (“out-of-office” auto-response email, answering machine message, SOMETHING) that there will be a delay and that you’ll be back and available on some certain date.
I don’t think anybody expects these small agricultural operations to provide LL Bean-level customer service. I also don’t think it’s too much to ask anybody taking money from customers to answer questions/requests about shipping, especially when it involves a somewhat perishable product. The vast majority of the direct selling wineries I’ve worked with have offered fantastic service. But I’ve had wineries ship wine to me ship wine to me without warning in the middle of a blizzard. I even had one winery fail to ship wine at all during a Spring shipping season and ignore my calls for weeks, only to ship the wine during a heat wave in mid-June with a note saying that my package had gotten overlooked in a warehouse.
I agree with the general sentiment of your post – that in an era of instant gratification and 24/7 digital connection that businesspeople have the right and NEED to completely and totally unplug from their customer base and their unending needs. Americans take the fewest amount of vacation hours in the industrialized world, except the Japanese. Or as you state, sometimes it’s a family or medical emergency that will cause a business owner/employee to fall off the grid. All well and good …
BUT …
if that’s the case, all one needs to do is leave a simple message on their voicemail or email autoreply. It’s just common courtesy and a smart business move IMO. It’s the not knowing what the deal is that causes unnecessary strain on both the customer and the business. Who wants to return from a break with an inbox filled with annoying/needy customers?
If I got a GONE FISHIN’ email from a winemaker, I would totally understand, praise him/her for enjoying life and taking a needed break and I would totally chill out. I don’t expect instant service 24/7 (I know that many obnoxious people do), but I don’t like a black hole of communication from someone who is engaged in some form of commerce with me …
But if that’s the way winemaker does business, that’s totally his/her right. Then it’s on me to decide if it’s worth being a customer.
I never inferred such either. We don’t know the reason for the lack of response so it’s all assumptions at this point. Not worth getting our panties in a wad over.
It was 2 wineries. Two emails and a phone call to each. No response or any sort of auto-reply.
The shipments have shown up-wine intact and properly protected in shipment. That’s the most important thing, One with a hand-written thank you note.
Was curious what others had to say, which was the actual point of the thread-thanks all for your input.
Next spring I will be buying a bunch of wine-will see what I will do with these 2 wineries-my guess is that if they taste good (I will drink 1 of each this year) and make sense price-wise I will buy again.
I agree with you but I think you missed my point. I get emails back to folks, but you will get great service buying my wines from Avalon, Sec, or Vinopolis. I really appreciate people reaching out to me directly and MOST of the time I can swing civilized service. Just not always, and I would rather you buy my wines from someone who can give you great service all the time instead of me hiring someone or having to sweat bullets not to drop the ball during bud break or whenever.
…and honestly, I offer direct sales but I don’t promise to return emails in a timely fashion. I offer a unique experience that only a person who spends ridiculous amounts of hours with a very specific set of grapes can offer. When someone visits they get that knowledge. If someone spends a morning with me and wants to buy my wines on site, I accommodate them. However, if shipping is more important to a customer than working through the wines with the winemaker, buying retail makes more sense.
I’m not acting entitled. Dennis K.'s post about cost is what this post is about. I don’t have a managers skill set. Winemaking isn’t about ego, it’s just doing your job. My post only says, for the OP, cut the little guys slack and buy their wines from retailers who will serve you as you desire.
I had a repeat customer bitch me out for forgetting to ship his wine to DC on a Friday, from Oregon, so it would not spend a weekend in a hub on the east coast. He didn’t tell me when I took his order, after a 90 minute tasting at the winery, that this was an issue. He had asked me to do this the year before and assumed I should have remembered. A good retailer has that covered, I don’t. No ego, just reality.
No retailer could give him the time or tasting I did, but what mattered to him was the ship date. So he should buy from someone else. Again, 90% of the time, I am great about ourlogistical process, the other 10% of the time our people cut me slack. Am email asking when the wine shipped I can handle, but that isn’t the OPs question. Either way, if you want smooth service for great wines, I am happy to have you taste with me and buy from a retailer. I’m not trying to play egotistical prima donna, I am just pointing out that retailers earn their cut and I will let them have it to keep a customer happy.
i can understand if you to just make wine but if your going to sell it then you have to do all aspects of selling, you cant have it both ways. Im sure your margins are better selling direct so again you have to provide the service level that retailers provide, for us the customer the wine is generally the same cost at the retailer so yes we do feel somewhat entitled to good customer service and in this day and age communication is expected in all walks of life so not returning messages several times in a row will always get the seller in trouble be it a small winery or a huge corporation
as Scott pointed out. We take customer service seriously. 99% of emails to me get answered pretty quickly. Before we shipped the WB Day package of our top wines, I sent an email to each person that purchased the package to give them some insight into the wines, what was most ready, what needed decanting, what to expect from the wines. Our 2012 Heritage bottling is young and structured but approachable now for those who don’t mind some tannins. The 2013 is not. I wanted buyers to know what they have and proactively tried to pass on necessary information.
why sell direct? I love what I do, if someone is going to take the time to come to the winery I will try to meet them and show them the unique aspects of our wines. No retailer can come close to matching this experience. No retailer will open and offer the range of samples that I do(our tastings are appointment only, and I rarely charge for them.) So why is that thrown out of the conversation when someone asks to purchase and I say yes?
Retailers simply don’t match our experience, so I just don’t get why suddenly I have to match their shipping specialty for 100% of visitors. Also-this is why I suggested retailers as an option for those who need great shipping service rather than great visitor service. Rather than lose a customer, I will give them the avenue that best suits their need in procuring our wines.
Most of our customers, IMO, prefer getting to come by and get a first hand look at what’s happening and what our wines are like. No obligation to buy at all, but most people do, or they join the wine club, and (again IMO) if asked I think they would prefer to keep the experience they had over perfect shipping communication.(again-we attempt to always do both)
Also, please remember that the more complicated my direct sales gets, the more likely visitors will end up getting stuck with an employee rather than an owner for their visit. I’m not being egotistical, I just have spent 15 years focused obsessively on our wines. I can’t train someone else to that level. If I have to hire someone to handle shipping, that isn’t 40 hours a week in work but being available for email response is, so most likely they would be a tasting room person and I get to go back to the cellar. That’s easier for me, but not great for the visitor experience.
3)IMO, if you choose to email or call a small winery to ship you wine, there is a good chance that wine may be unique and/or of better, or far better, than average quality(often at a very fair price). Both of those things require extra time and energy to pull off. Would it not be in the consumers best interest to protect that? And isn’t it easier if you simply email the source and have them ship you what you want than finding a third party to get it for you and ship it? I have the luxury of great support for our wines in Portland, but there are many up and coming wineries in Oregon right now and many of them without that support. Most wear too many hats and most are underfunded while they are starting and growing. Cutting them slack is protecting the range and quality of wines available to all if us.
I do understand the idea of responsibility to a customer. I am just not sure how this thread got away from “cut them some slack” regarding small wineries. My first post starts by saying that we work hard to give people the best service we can and Scott’s states that he doubts there are many who haven’t gotten good service from us. We hold ourselves to a high standard, but buying my wines from a retailer is simply a sure way to insure the shipping service you want. I love having people buy direct but I don’t want them unhappy because it’s a week I am slammed in the winery or vineyard for 16 hours a day(a too regular occurrence when vintages are 40-50% bigger than our usual harvests.) For many others buying direct is a pleasure and they understand(and enjoy) the hiccups that come with buying from real people. They should have that option too, rather than me being forced to not sell direct to prevent a shipping miscue(which does still happen with retailers too).
To me, it’s pretty simple - if you are a winery offering to sell wines directly, you better be prepared to respond to consumer inquiries, etc in a ‘timely manner’.
Now this will ‘vary’ depending upon size of winery and size of staff, and I have, at times, been a bit slower than I’d like to get back to folks (bottling week/harvest time/traveling). Seeing that I am a ‘one man band’, some things do ‘slip through the cracks’, but that is not an excuse and it does not get me out of my responsibilities of what I should be doing.
That said, to me, that is no excuse - it is just ‘bad practices’ on my end. Consumers have a right to get responses, and I would think after two emails and a call that some kind of reply should have been forthcoming.
I do hope that you have better luck hearing from these companies in the future - and by the way, though you’ve received your wines, did either of them actually ever get back to you?
Marcus, I think limited cellar door sales isn’t really where the posts here take issue. The concern is if someone sells wine in some manner online, including through this site. That is a very different transaction than a point of sale purchase, and comes with a different set of expectations.
I think Michael summed it up. The tasting experience is obviously good for the consumer and hopefully leads to the winery selling them a few bottles on the spot, in this case everyone is a happy camper. When you sell to a mail list the expectations do change and i agree that a small winery should be given some slack to respond but this is limited to a day or two and one or two attempts max, a week and three attempts is just not acceptable.
I think 99% of customers and winerys strike a balance perfectly fine, i know the 15 or so wineries i deal with always respond quickly and ive never had any response issues so im not sure how wide spread this really is, it is just that extreme cases prompt discussion that can get very dogmatic
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