Paintedfigs.com - High Quality Miniature Painting at the Lowest Rates on Earth
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| The Next Order So you liked what they did for you. They communicated a lot, their payment scheme put you in the driver's seat, their prices were cheap, and the work was great. Suddenly, you look at the lead and plastic around your house and where before there was dullness you see vibrant figures leaping off carefully painted and flocked bases. You've found a painting service and they rock! End of story? Not quite. Consistency: Don't be a Sucker It is easier to get a customer to make a repeat purchase than to convert a new prospect. Many companies recognize this, and give their customers a higher priority than their prospects. Others don't really understand the value of account management, and take for granted that once they've wowed a customer, that they're set with them. You'll know that you got caught to one of these services when you find your order getting delayed -- and no one cares to warn you of this. If they warn you, then they are being mindful of your needs and your order. If you're told once its already late, or worst you don't hear at all, then congratulations -- you're not important anymore. If you're lucky, poor service is all your getting. If you are extremely unlucky and are saddled with someone unprofessional, the work will even be substandard. It's one thing to get stepchild treatment from a painting service that values you less than the next "kill," but its truly unprofessional outfit that sends you sub-standard work. This shows poor craftsmanship, poor brand building, and downright unprofessionalism. They may be artists, but they have chosen to engage in business. Whenever cash is involved, it is your right to expect to be treated in a professional manner. Relationships: Are You a Name or an Account? Sooner or later, my customers start telling me about their various painting escapades, especially the bad ones. I like to joke that a painter is like a mistress, they know all about your dirty secrets sitting in up in the attic or entombed in jars of Simple Green. Now that you've found a painter who paints and works with you well - ask yourself, is there any evidence they actually care about you? Some may feel this is irrelevant. No one in a DVD player factory needs to know anything about the person who finally receives their work. But if you had a factory filled with signed pictures of happy customers and framed snippets of their emailed praise, how do think that would effect the morale of the staff? And what would it do for the quality of the work they do if they knew exactly who was going to receive their work, and that they tucked their kid in at nine? Trust me, it makes a difference when your customers are real people. A great sign that you are a name and not an account, is when your service offers to painting or make things for you for free. If you're sending someone a small army to get painted, they shouldn't see it as a problem to offer to a paint that limited edition Games Day figure you keep talking about that you've never had time to do anything about. They may tell you they would love to put a picture of it up on their site, but really, they just want to say thank you for picking them over the next act. At the end of the day, business is about relationships. The beautiful thing about service businesses is that they are intensely personal, and allow for great relationship building. Don't be surprised if you find yourself advocating your painter to your friends, or sending them random links you find interesting. You've built a good relationship with them, and you probably know a great deal about each other's lives. Business, especially the service business, is all about dealing with people. If a painter doesn't like meeting and talking to people, they're simply not going to have the same passion to serve you as someone who does. Professionalism: Do they Get that this is Business? When things goofed up, who paid for it? When it was partly your fault that things went wrong, did they rush to blame you or did they start talking about a corrective plan? Did they report problems they were running into and tell you what they were going to do about them, or did they just try to cover them up? I've known painters who would ask a client how they wanted something done, and then try to tell them that they should accept a different paint scheme instead -- because they had already begun painting the figures, regardless of the client's interests. If you are going to give people money to do a job, you should expect them to be professional about it. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that the key to affordable miniature painting is working with jokers. If anything, that route will cost you more in the long run, and you are very likely to end up something that is not what you want. Whether they are huge studio or a part-timer on bartertown.com, you should expect them to be professional. Pride: A Sure Sign of Craftsmanship A good sign that you have found yourself a dedicated painting service, is that after a while you see your miniatures turn up on their site. Services that frequently add pictures are proud of the work they do and have nothing to hide. This is a tribute both to their patrons, and makes staff proud. The kind of pictures you find also tell you a lot about their attitude to their work -- odd ball, and funny galleries suggest people who don't take themselves too seriously and don't mind a bit of fun (watch out for the odd gold tooth on your figures -- there's an easter egg somewhere). This suggests a happy workplace. Galleries that are all stunningly good suggest true craftsmen who are highly committed to excellence. Micro Arts studios comes to mind, a Polish group that consistently does some of the best conversion work on the 'Net. Above and Beyond: Are They Up To It? Few miniature painting services begin with a group of people sitting down and deciding that they will offer a wide range of services to cater to various market segments and deep needs. At best, they will focus on a particular market, for example people looking for basic tournament quality armies, and go from there. As they do more and more business, they will run into a gamut of requests. Some of these requests they will turn down -- it is outside of the mission of people who offer an express army painting service, to do Non Metallic Metal work on a large number of miniatures. Other requests they will honor -- conversion work, more extensive assembly, Vallejo paints. These little steps mark their natural increase in skill and general painting lore. How willing they are to make these extra steps can become quite important for you. If they don't offer green stuff casting to better adorn your figures -- are they willing to try it? If they only do simple dirt and flock basing, will they pull out the plasticard and sprue ends to build you urban rubble? These are not unfair requests -- they can always bill you more for additional services. Their willingness to entertain odd ball requests is both a measure of their interest in providing good customer service, and a measure of their interest in doing creative work. We had a De Bellis player who asked whether we could do him a terrain piece. We found out more about what he wanted, researched what needed to be done, and said sure. There was an additional charge for the work, but Navin got to drop by a friend's office the next day and say "guess who gets to build a temple to the Monkey God." The project was fun, and we blogged its work in progress: http://paintedfigs.blogspot.com/ . |