For those who don’t know much about publishing — I assume that’s most of you — a large part of running a magazine is scheduling. Nearly everything we do is planned.
Posted behind my computer on the wall in my office are three calendars. The first calendar is a reusable weekly calendar. Your basic Sunday-to-Saturday template. That’s where the meetings and appointments go. Then I have the 12-month calendar — like the ones they used to sell (and maybe still do?) in the kiosks at the mall. The events go there. Finally, there’s a spreadsheet. Our magazine production calendar. Every date I need to know to get this issue to you on time.
I bring this up because this month I had to deviate from my calendar wall. I had to update our editorial schedule.
I had to address Amazon.
It makes sense. The e-commerce giant is growing by leaps and bounds and at every aftermarket event I attend, more people seem eager to discuss Amazon and its impact on our industry. It’s become too big of a story today to wait until tomorrow. So, we didn’t.
This month’s feature on e-commerce was written with Amazon in mind. The sidebar is all Amazon. But before you bail on this piece and jump ahead to that article, I need to tell you this: If you’re concerned about e-commerce you need to stop focusing on Amazon.
Amazon alone isn’t going to put you out of business. It likely doesn’t even know you exist. The only way Amazon or any e-commerce distributor drives you out of business is if you permit it.
It’s true. It might happen unintentionally, but you have to consent to losing your customers to e-commerce.
Here’s how it’s going to go down. Your customers will continue adopting e-commerce. (Yes, they’re already using it; don’t kid yourself.) They’ll start small. Shop supplies. Chemicals. That legacy part they called you about last week and you couldn’t find.
Eventually they’re going to realize how easy it is and they’re going to want to do more of it, especially with the stock orders and the low-price, high-volume products. But those are products they’ve always bought from you so they’ll hold back at first. They’ll keep calling and ordering from you every week even though they know ordering online would be faster for both of you. They’ll keep the routine going.
Then you’ll mess up. Hopefully it’s a small error.
They’ll order 30 widgets and your counter person will hear “13” on the phone. You’ll fix your mistake promptly but that seed — already planted in their head — will start to germinate: “I wonder where I can buy these online?”
The frustrating part here is the customer will be pulling for you. They know you stock everything they need and your same-day or next-day delivery is better than anything they can find online. They know your customer response is the best.
But buying online is not about customer service. It’s not even really about price. It’s about convenience. Your customers are busy and online purchasing saves time they desperately need. They want to rely on you for that the same way they’ve relied on you for everything else over the years. But they won’t wait around forever for you to figure that out. Remember the Platinum Rule: Treat customers the way they want to be treated.
If you can’t or won’t do that, eventually they’ll find someone else. They have to; their schedules are busier than mine.
