Customers paying and picking up.

[whitewater]

So we just expanded to the to take over the whole first floor to our building. I have a much larger office and a showroom.

So when people come in to pickup their orders they will go to our front desk and pay. But our garage door for pickup is on other side of the building. I do not want to carry boxes through, it would be a pita.

Should we have them pay, and then just tell them to drive around to the side of the. building and pickup? What do you do if they want to look at the shirts first?

Just trying to make it flow.

[mk162]

Why not put a payment system in at the warehouse door?  Like a tablet with a card reader.

You could also notify customers when there order is ready if they need to go to the front door or the back door.(not that a lot of them would follow this).

Or, better yet, if a customer is there to pick up an order you can page out back and have an employee bring it up. 

Just spit-balling here.

[Sbrem]

All of the above, keep customers happy. Some will ask, "Should I drive around to the dock?" others will be put out, so we deal with it. Our dock is far from our offices, where the front door is, we just try to adapt. Our regulars will call and ask, while others have a routine to go to the dock entrance, wireless doorbell there so we know there's an arrival.

Steve

[3Deep]

If the order is not a big order bring them up front, if the order is very large say 30 40 boxes bring one box up front for inspection and then have them drive around for loading.  We don't have a loading dock so we bring orders up front and sit ready to go orders on one side of the room, we have an inspection table also up front.

[TCT]

Why don't you just make them pay in full before even starting the job??? That eliminates any reason for them to go to the front door, plus is just smart business...

[farmboygraphics]

I didn't know you could use those two words in the same sentence :-O

[Prince Art]

Why don't you just make them pay in full before even starting the job??? That eliminates any reason for them to go to the front door, plus is just smart business...

Chiming in to say we've done this since our early days, and it eliminates a LOT of headaches. It may not work for certain types of customers; but if those are part of your customer base, you can still have a general "pay in full first" rule, and make it so that terms / post-payment are something a customer has to qualify for.

It really hasn't been hard for me to explain our payment policy to people. We're doing custom work for you; if you don't pay, a bunch of shirts with your logo on them is worth $0 to us - we can't simply return them to stock. Phrased with matter-of-fact courtesy, most people understand, and I haven't experienced pushback  due to it. (If they need extra reassurance, I add that in the unlikely event we were to deliver goods that don't meet the order specs they've agreed to, we would replace or refund.)

[Scobey Peterman]

My suggestion would be to get a 2 wheeler and move the shirts closer to the office.  It might depend on how many cases of shirts they have.