First4Figures - Cowboy Bebop

[FriendlySamurai]

Thanks for the response and will do. How are people getting a hold of Alex? Are they still running QC posts in the group? Havent been on there in a while.

Ive only ever had one qc problem (Mugen) with them and cs took care if it quickly and smoothly. Rubs and scratches arent as definitive as breaks though so hopefully it all works out with this one.

[I and I]

Originally Posted by FriendlySamurai

Thanks for the response and will do. How are people getting a hold of Alex? Are they still running QC posts in the group? Havent been on there in a while.

Ive only ever had one qc problem (Mugen) with them and cs took care if it quickly and smoothly. Rubs and scratches arent as definitive as breaks though so hopefully it all works out with this one.

No, CS posts aren't allowed in the group anymore. The main problem with CS is that Brenda left and the new guy(s?) isn't fully trained yet I'd guess. Haven't had to contact CS for a while now, so it's all hearsay from me
But just open up a ticket on the website and take it from there. If you feel their response isn't up to snuff, contact Alex through Facebook PM. Should you not get any response (he probably got a lot of PMs), just PM one of the admins and they'll pass it along to him

[MechWestern]

Just got my Spike EX. He's great, definitely in for the whole line. So we've seen Jet and Faye teases. Are they going to do an Ed/Ein combo?

I just don't want to see it left off like the Champloo line...

[SAB380]

Originally Posted by MechWestern

Just got my Spike EX. He's great, definitely in for the whole line. So we've seen Jet and Faye teases. Are they going to do an Ed/Ein combo?

I just don't want to see it left off like the Champloo line...

There is no way they'll do the three and not do Ed/Ein.

[SONICobra]

Also received my ex yesterday, very impressed. Paint apps are super clean, has pretty good presense for being a compact statue. Not sure which arm option i like best

[morty76]

My Statue came with a couple scuff marks on the back very similar to Friendlysamurai's 2nd and 3rd picture. Tried to fix on my own and now I have 2 dark splotches on the back. The sideshow box the statue was shipped in had a lot of damage. The statue still looks great from the front though had to mess with the cigarette a bit. I've contacted Sideshow about an exchange so I'll see what happens.

[DeadGhostKnight]

Alex posted this statement regarding CS.

Hey guys - I want to take a bit of time out to connect with you guys on a few things. First, some background. I’ve been very grateful for the support you’ve given us over the last few years - I really appreciate you guys! That has meant that F4F has expanded quite a bit since then, going from a team of just 3 people 5 years ago or so, to now over 55 people and counting.

Part of the challenges of expanding is learning to delegate. To let go of things that you used to be much closer to. Right at the beginning, I was handling design, prototyping, production, photography, marketing and packaging. Kanako was handling logistics and customer service. My partner John was in charge of finance and licensing. Things have moved on. We now have departments and teams handling different areas of the company. Where I used to be rolling up my sleeves and getting right in the mix of everything, my week has evolved to meeting each team one at a time. It’s a great overview, but a lot of the small things can get slip by unnoticed.

That’s the thing about delegation. It’s very easy for things to get lost in communication. I found that it’s not something that you can easily spot straight away, but rather something that happens over time. It’s also something that is really hard to pin point.

There is one area in particular that I feel that my vision for the company has been lost. And that’s customer service. My vision is to make sure that our customer service care is solid, robust and a pleasure to deal with. However, it’s been clear that our customer service has turned into a curate’s egg - good in parts, bad in parts. This is not what I want. I want excellent customer service, every time.

Over the last 6 months or so, there has been feedback in and out the club, directly to tickets and private messages to myself that highlight areas that we need to improve. Here are the major ones I want to home in on and talk about what I plan to improve on all open and future cases:

Issue One
Problem: Dismissive of gray area defects or offering disproportionately small compensation.
Solution: Identify and agree common defects with standardized compensation templates. That way, it doesn’t matter which customer service officer replies, everyone is working from standardized forms.

Issue Two
Problem: Not knowledgeable enough of the collectibles market, such as offering impractical advice to customers.
Solution: This is something that will disappear over time, but when new customer service officers join, they must not give out solutions they think that will work such as “glue the figure to the base to make the figure flush with the base”. All advice being given out by new officers must be run by the CS manager until the new CS officers are confident in an appropriately knowledgeable response.

Issue Three
Problem: Robotic or abrupt responses to customer tickets.
Solution: Add more care to the language used in the tickets.

Issue Four
Problem: The time it takes to response to tickets taking too long or not following up quickly enough.
Solution: This is something that will disappear over time as our new CS team catches up on open tickets and gains experience and confidence in the way they handle tickets.

Issue Five
Problem: Not reading tickets in full i.e answering only 1 of the 3 questions asked.
Solution: Take more time to read customer concerns carefully and address them one by one.

Issue Six
Problem: Being dismissive of latent defect claims of outside of warranty
Solution: Better understand when we might be dealing with a statue with a latent defect and deal with it accordingly i.e outside the 30 day warranty.

Now these are what I’ve identified and can look to monitor closely. If there are anything in particular that I’m not aware of, please do let me know constructively below.

Things I will want to implement in the future:
1) An ability to escalate tickets when the need arises (all the way up to me if necessary).
2) An ability to rate your customer service experience. So we can make sure that our customers are receiving great service every time, all the time and not just in the short term.

There are also, some customer service related issues that is actually tied mainly to our IT team, such as points not given out for things like Majora’s Mask preorder day and Bowser validation day. This is something that we will be able to tackled in the next few months as we look to welcome some much needed new members to the IT team.

There are a couple of closing points I’d like to make. First off, I want to apologise that we find ourselves here. I will be in close contact with the CS team to make sure that we get back on track. I want to apologise to those anyone who has not had an ideal experience with our CS team.

I also want to thank those who pointed out these issues to me in the lead up to this post and especially to those who have been very vocal about it outside the club. There have been some rather passionate people out there who have been efficient in pointing out our flaws. It’s easy to just dismiss it as unjustified opinions. However, there cannot be smoke without fire and as I looked more closely, it was clear that our customer service level was found wanting. I’m not arrogant enough to try and ignore this.

F4F is my life. You cut me and I bleed F4F. So when I see complaints against the company, it’s quick for me to take it personally. Instead, I am humbled and we will work hard to regain your trust.

Thanks,

Alex Davis
First 4 Figures

So they are tackling it head on as i knew they would, so hopefully FriendlySamurai you should have no problems at all.

[DeadGhostKnight]

Originally Posted by SONICobra

Also received my ex yesterday, very impressed. Paint apps are super clean, has pretty good presense for being a compact statue. Not sure which arm option i like best

Nice! Congrats man! First F4F piece? It's a great statue for $350 imo.

[FriendlySamurai]

Originally Posted by DeadGhostKnight

So they are tackling it head on as i knew they would, so hopefully FriendlySamurai you should have no problems at all.

Yeah I think Alex read a bunch of negative reviews some people posted from offsite and took it to heart. I put my ticket in but safari screwed me and didnt post it so I had to resend it all with firefox just yesterday. Ticket is in, this time for sure. Still waiting to hear back.

[eternalblue02]

Originally Posted by DeadGhostKnight

Alex posted this statement regarding CS. So they are tackling it head on as i knew they would, so hopefully FriendlySamurai you should have no problems at all.

Thanks for this post Dead. It's good to hear.