Turnaround Time?

[Monday Isa]

Hey Kale,
As much as we are all entitled to our own opinions, the beginning part of your statement is very childish. Your post would be good had you not written that.

back to topic
Last year I had a delivery time of 3 weeks and got some side effects from that health wise and quality wise. This year I've extended it to 4-8 weeks and have had 1 customer complain about it taking to long at 7 weeks :/ I clearly told her 4-8 weeks at the initial meeting. I'm sticking to 4-8 weeks as I'm not stressed out from it anymore.

[Kale Fitch]

Sometimes I come off a little harsh and I apologize, but I do take offense when someone is talking down on me or my profession when they DO NOT know what they are talking about.

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Kale Fitch

Sometimes I come off a little harsh and I apologize, but I do take offense when someone is talking down on me or my profession when they DO NOT know what they are talking about.

No one is talking trash about you or your profession. I certainly have never said that ALL wedding videographers are giving poor service. Quite the contrary - many, probably most, are or they wouldn't be in business very long. But some are not, and one of the factors that would enter into that judgement would be if they made their customers wait for delivery for an unreasonably long time. 3 months or more - not a problem. 6 months to a year - way too long no matter how busy you are.

[Scott Shama]

Wow... It's comical to me reading judgments from people who preface them by fully admitting they have no clue what the subject they're judging involves...

Unless you've worked full time as wedding videographer you should probably keep your opinions about turn around time and customer service to yourself. :) You might as well be hypothesizing about the existence of aliens...

I'll offer one analogy to go along with the whole cabinet thing...

A couple wants cabinets... they look at the work of a few cabinet makers. They decide that only one of the cabinet makers produces cabinets they like... He says it takes a year to get them installed... at that point the couple has to decide if they want to wait the year or have someone else, who's work they don't like as much, make the cabinets. It's the customers choice. It's that simple, end of debate. No one's putting a gun to the couples head and saying you WILL buy cabinets from me and you WILL wait a year. It can't be bad customer service if the customer knows what kind of wait they are in for.

Just pulling some random delivery deadline out of your butt doesn't mean that anything longer is unreasonable or bad customer service... It just means you won't be hiring me because your imaginary deadline is more important than the quality of product you receive in the end.

[Josh Laronge]

Originally Posted by Steve House

6 months to a year - way too long no matter how busy you are.

Steve,
You must be the the worst teacher/consultant in the world. Or, at least, the most stubborn. You are ignorant of the wedding videography business. You have never been in this business. You have been constantly trying to fit wedding videography into a business model that it is not. On this thread you have been told over and over valid reasons for 6 month turn around times. Yet, you refuse to listen and constantly respond by implying bad business practice for a turn around time that you have arbitrarily decided is too long.

Can you not learn from others, especially those actually in the business? Do you know everything to a point that you are always right? How good of a teacher/business consultant could you possibly be if you won't listen to those who are actually in the business? I pity your students/consults.

If I, or other wedding videographers who posted on this thread with valid reasons for a 6 month turn around, were to hire you to consult about our business you'd put us out of business. Great consulting, thanks for the help!

[Steve House]

I continue to be amazed at the hostility the simple statement that timely delivery is one of the aspects that defines good customer service has aroused. Retail service businesses are not so niche-specialized that they exist in separate universes from one another. The concepts that define good customer service applies to every service business no matter what the product. Good customer service means you set your target delivery times to meet the customer's desires instead of expecting them to adjust their expectations to yours. You are there for the customer's convenience; he's not there for yours. What is so disturbing about that concept to you?

[Anthony Smith]

oh dear,
there are alot of videographers here, perhaps we just want to tell other fellow videographers that it takes 6 months to a year so we can give out our own finished product quicker and get more business for ourselves.

peace :)

[Kale Fitch]

Steve I don't think you get the point everyone is trying to make and I doubt you ever will. This thread is pointless, to understand our timelines you would have to be in our shoes.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Kale Fitch

Steve I don't think you get the point everyone is trying to make and I doubt you ever will. This thread is pointless, to understand our timelines you would have to be in our shoes.

I think it is important to make a difference between videographers that only do weddings and nothing else and others that do weddings but also other video (corporate, event...)

If you only do weddings all your camera work concentrates on a very short period and you need to take on as much as you can to get through the slow periods like the winter when almost nobody gets married. This will result in long waiting times and hiring extra editing persons will be a very expensive cost if you only intent is to shorten the wait time. But if the client has no problem with that waittime when they are told in advance that should be OK, right?

Now even if I do understand all weddingvideographers point of view I tend to agree with Steven, I never let my clients wait this long and I do know what I'm talking about since I do video full time and for a living. For that reason I don't bet on one horse and do other types of video as well, like events or simple commercials. In that way I don't have to take on every wedding that passes but by doing other, equally paid video jobs, that take me 1/5 of the time to edit a wedding I manage to keep the waiting time below 2 months and I can survive from it.

[Travis Cossel]

Originally Posted by Steve House

6 months to a year - way too long no matter how busy you are.

Why? Why isn't 5 months and 3 weeks too long?

Steve, I think you are one of the most arrogant and stubborn people I have ever encountered. You admit you have no experience in the industry, and you are willing to just ignore what successful professionals in the industry are saying. All you are doing is repeating the same argument over and over, with no experience or facts to support it. Do you also give advice on how to build nuclear weapons in a timely manner?

I have lost all respect for you at this point. Multiple times I have put the following question to you:

If I have determined that it's going to take 6 months to created an outstanding product, and my clients are perfectly happy with waiting 6 months for such a product, and that is how long it takes me to produce the product, and my customers are overjoyed when they receive it, then how am I providing poor customer service?

I can only assume you refuse to answer this question because you know the answer would invalidate your entire argument.

[Travis Cossel]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

Now even if I do understand all weddingvideographers point of view I tend to agree with Steven, I never let my clients wait this long and I do know what I'm talking about since I do video full time and for a living. For that reason I don't bet on one horse and do other types of video as well, like events or simple commercials. In that way I don't have to take on every wedding that passes but by doing other, equally paid video jobs, that take me 1/5 of the time to edit a wedding I manage to keep the waiting time below 2 months and I can survive from it.

Noa, that's great if you want to have a 2 month turnaround and your clients are happy with it. But what happens when a videographer in your area starts offering 2-week turnaround? Does that mean you are now providing poor customer service even if your clients are still happy with waiting 2 months?

One of the major points here is that not every wedding video is created equal. Some videographers invest very little time and effort in their projects, while others invest substantial time and effort and create a much more personalized and unique production. The point is that you can't make a blanket judgement on ALL videographers and say that they ALL have to finish their productions in "X" number of months in order to be providing good customer service.

It's amazing to me that Steve supposedly teaches customer service skills for a living, and yet doesn't understand the concept that some customers are willing to wait longer for a better product. We might as well start saying that if Steve's course currently takes 6 weeks to go through, that it's taking too long and should only take 3 weeks and provide the same level of learning. Nonsense, right?

[Scott Shama]

Originally Posted by Steve House

I continue to be amazed at the hostility the simple statement that timely delivery is one of the aspects that defines good customer service has aroused.

The point is that your opinion of "timely" is just that... your opinion... Based on, apparently, not single thread of experience in the field which you've formulated it about...

[Scott Shama]

Originally Posted by Travis Cossel

One of the major points here is that not every wedding video is created equal. Some videographers invest very little time and effort in their projects, while others invest substantial time and effort and create a much more personalized and unique production.

No, they certainly are not... And it's definitely been my experience that the ones who gloat and harp about incredibly short turn around times typically aren't producing a product anything like what we deliver.

[Noa Put]

That's why I stated that as long as the client is happy with that waitingtime there is no problem, only I can speak from experience that some of my clients don't mind long waiting times and some would not accept 6 months or longer.

In the first case in the eyes of the clients I would be providing good service as they have understanding for the reason why it takes longer, in the second case I"m not providing good service in the eyes of the client.

I have had clients calling me after 3 weeks being disappointed that it took so long and in their case I said one month waiting time, did I provide a bad service? no, because I said a month in advance and they were OK with that at first. But it seems not all brides are that patient and at the end they will tell everybody I didn't provide a good service.

For me it's not realistic having a 6+ months backlog because it will have a very negative impact on all my other, non wedding, projects. I don't think I would be even doing business with a company telling them they had to wait 6+ months because I take on too many projects at the same time. That is my problem, not theirs to fix.

With weddingcouples you actually have a big luxury to have them wait untill in suits you best, something that companies won't accept and they for sure will, or not hire you, or (if you don't tell them in advance) be very disappointed and nevr hire you again.

Don't get me wrong, I know how the weddingbusiness works and I know how demanding it gets. That's why I don't rely on weddings alone because of the heavy workload. In that way i can deliver all my projects in a reasonable period of time. What is reasonable, well that is different for everybody. For me it's max 2 months for weddings and max 2 weeks for companies.

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Scott Shama

No, they certainly are not... And it's definitely been my experience that the ones who gloat and harp about incredibly short turn around times typically aren't producing a product anything like what we deliver.

I would only agree with this statement if those guys would handle the same amount of weddings as the "6+ months turn around" guys take on.
But if they just produce a few weddings a year you can have fast turn around times and still deliver a great product.
And what about if they have 2 dedicated editors on the job? If you are a 4 person business with 2 cameraman working on camera and 2 doing full time edit with the other 2 joining in editing during the week. then it's the same, again fast finished and great quality. Because they have faster turn around times they can take on more bookings as well.
It all depends how you structure your business, at the end the last example I gave will probably earn as much per person as a one person business, only the last one will have to do it all by himself, like i do and if you depend solely on weddings alone is asking for very long turn around times.