How *NOT* to do customer service

1. Start by telling your customer the work is not good enough. That the resolution will make it pixellated and that will look terrible.
2. Then say that the image has "keylines" that have to be removed and "crop lines" added "outside the trim area" - without explaining what they are
3. When your customer naiively asks what these mean, instead of explaining it - tell her that you haven't yet received the artwork because the only files they received don't have these things
4. When the customer says she sent files through and asks what is needed to change them into files that will meet their requirements (giving a detailed guess at what that might be), tell her again that you need these things - without explaining exactly what is needed or confirming that what she suggested is actually what you needed - even if she's later proved correct. Tell her that she is running out of time to get this done...
5. When your customer calls, make sure your receptionist (or colleague) answers, and that she tells your customer that you are with some other important client... and get *her* to also tell your customer that the artwork isn't good enough and go on at length about how it's such low resolution that it'll look all pixellated and low quality that it'll look terrible. Make sure she promises that you'll call her back before close of business.
6. When your customer has received no calls or emails and it's near close of business... and calls you. Answer immediately and...
   1. Begin by telling her off again at the low quality of the images (due to the resolution).
   2. When she mentions she thought you'd be calling her back, tell her you have *so* many other clients and you're very busy, you know...
   3. When she asks if you'll please just explain what she needs to do to add the crop lines - don't explain, tell her that you were expecting to speak with a designer who should already know these things.
   4. When she suggests that not all clients know the industry jargon of printing businesses and again asks for you to explain what to do, tell her to go and look up "crop lines" in the dictionary
   5. When she says that sometimes in your industry you have to deal with people that aren't specialists (she gives an example that if you'd asked her to set up a website, she wouldn't expect you to know what Rails, MySQL or AJAX were)... then tell her that you simply don't have time to explain to your customers how to add crop lines to an image, and that you only deal with designers that already know what crop lines are...

background...

We're launching our new startup this weekend (ie tomorrow) and needed new business cards ASAP. So my colleague called around the local while-u-wait business card dealers and found one that was willing to print and ship in time for tomorrow.

I'd quickly thrown together some business card images that were the exact size/shape required. They aren't brilliant, but they'll do for the weekend after which we can get some better ones done up.

I have a day-job... so while I'd love to go out and find out all about crop lines and trim-borders and whatever... I need to actually spend the day making money for my employer...

When I got off the final phone call and calmed down for a few minutes, I managed to find some time to go look it up. Apparently, all I need to do is exactly what I suggested in the reply to the second email - ie, expand the image size and add borders a little larger than where the old image-shape used to be... this would have taken him all of one minute to explain - just as it did me just now.

I recommend that you *don't* purchase from Kall Kwik 781 in Eton Street, Richmond