Shopsmith Forums

edma194 wrote: ↑Tue Mar 07, 2023 12:42 pm I worked for a company with a world class service department and I know that in addition to providing immediate response and access to experts there was still an experience hurdle for support personnel to overcome, and that just takes time. It also requires some dedication to providing the personnel the time and resources to gain that experience.

Ed,

What you describe sounds exceptional, but it also sounds $$$$. Since SS came out of bankruptcy (the 2nd time) and given the present marco-economic environment, coupled with the extensive aftermarket of used SS machines and parts, I am not sure there is sufficient margin at SS to provide anywhere near the level of support you mention. Probably why the PowerPro is so expensive since so few of them are actually sold and the rest of the business doesn't have the sales volume to support the company. I still think the best one can hope for is for SS to start to emulate what other woodworking tool/machine companies offer which is customer service to handle orders and basic pre-sales knowledge, but a product (NOT design) engineer on staff to answer more difficult customer questions - without charging per 15 minutes of the call. This is what their peers are doing, in my experience, as I mentioned on the other thread.

I've had them be very prompt in responding to recent email questions and as RFGuy noted, their profit margin must be pretty thin, so I am thrilled that all the parts still exist for my recent bandsaw rebuild, much less that they were able to answer my questions. We should all feel very fortunate that they are still in business, much less with a full inventory of parts to keep our machines and accessories alive. I imagine in many cases those parts are sold to rebuild old secondhand machines people have picked up cheap on Craigslist - it's great that we can keep this stuff alive but that's hardly the business model for success for SS.

RFGuy wrote: ↑Tue Mar 07, 2023 1:30 pm Ed,

What you describe sounds exceptional, but it also sounds $$$$. Since SS came out of bankruptcy (the 2nd time) and given the present marco-economic environment, coupled with the extensive aftermarket of used SS machines and parts, I am not sure there is sufficient margin at SS to provide anywhere near the level of support you mention.

It is currently a much, much larger company than RLF, but that concept of service and support helped get them to that size. They have around 100 full time support engineers on staff now worldwide, maybe more if they can find them. Obviously we can't expect that level of response, where you were guaranteed to be on the phone with an engineer in 5 minutes or less, but it's not that hard to process orders, write down questions, and respond to emails even if just to acknowledge receiving them. If their current staffing can't do that then the supervisors, managers, and executives need to be working late to pick up the slack and get it done. If they can't process orders then they're not a business.

Now the company I worked for sold service contracts. That eventually became the only official access to service and support, although the Director of the support division insisted that all customer requests be handled. Support personnel didn't even have to try to convince the client to purchase a service contract, they would simply inform sales to follow up on that. And being able to brag about your 5 star customer support helps sell product. Shopsmith could make their warranties into service contracts that can be extended as other tool companies do now. I think for the price of a complete machine it would be worth a little more to extending the warranty to include quality support also, and the same could be said for many of their other products. But at a minimum they have to find a way to process orders in a timely manner. If they can't do that before long there won't be any orders to process,