Hi @twiesner, awesome response to the question! It always great to get feedback on ideas here on Talk. We are currently working on an Infill article for the knowledge base but if you have any suggestions of things you would like to have included (other than what you have talked about above) please let me know. Cheers, Ben
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The real question here : what actually caused the bad review? in quite a few cases we did objectively see good reasons for these objections- how?
Or was the communication with the end customer poor?
Or was the Hub not good at it?
Do you have examples where experience and communication was good and strong, but it did not prevent the customer issue?
Lets take the example of poor tolerances. Key here is, did the hub know there would be a tolerance issue? Did they communicate that to the customer? If the customer still paid, then it would be disingenuous for the user to give a bad review.
Nothing new in this. Print contains part A, which is supposed to fit into part B. Customer is not aware that will not happen without some corrections on tolerances. If HUB knows it, and explains it, then the customer is at fault.
Now, lets take an example where there is no part B. If it is a part where the HUB should have mentioned it, then its on the hub. I have had a few of these, where I have had to ask “what is this for?” or how close does this need to be?
Point is, on these ones you looked at, were there good or poor communications?
In situations where the customer complained about the price of the support material, after paying extra for the support material and removal, I am not sure there should be a legitimate customer complaint. And if 3dhubs can figure out how to pre-price support without a human seeing the model, that would be some fancy software.
Look at hubs with a lot of prints and good reviews. Count the average words exchanged before the order is accepted/paid. You might have evidence of what works, as opposed to trying to fix the unfixable.
I think, the more you try to automate up front, as opposed to demanding good communication between hubs and customers, the more poor reviews you might see. Once you set a tolerance that is acceptable, many customers who would have been thrilled with their raspberry pi case, would suddenly see a reason to be unhappy…
On the topic of support, something needs to be done here to make the customer aware of this. It is very hard, if not impossible, to pre-build cost for support into the price of printing for the initial quote the customer gets. If I try to build the cost in, my prices inflate significantly and make my Hub far overpriced. If I don’t, I get complaints from customers about having to pay for support.
It would be very difficult to try and incorporate this into a cost quote, but something as simple as a pop-up informing the customer that support costs will most likely be charged and are not included in the quote here (like you would do with shipping) would at least prepare a customer for this. Supports are an inconvenient necessity of 3D printing, and should be treated as such.
Hello Enza3D
i agree with you.
but maybe this can even be extended to a general notice to the customer, that there might be additional costs. Now with the new delivery cost Setup, most of the times the customer knows the final Price right away. which is great.
but sometimes the part is too big, Needs to be split into more pieces, Needs Support, Needs other kinds of adjustments to be printable. This is impossible to include automatically. But i think your idea of a notice, that the shown Price is stiil an estimate is good.
I also get many orders from “first time hub users” when you see that number, you know already you Need to take some more time to explain. But the time is absolutely worth it, because if it goes well, the customer will most probably come back for another order later.
With so many new users, i think the Ratio of complains is really great. once they got some experience the order process will go smoother. the Ratio will get better over time…
@Enza3D Couldn’t agree more!
I wonder if the software could look at the overhangs, and suggest “This model may require support material, which may or may not incur additional charges.”
Or, for every customer->
“Some models require support material, additional modeling, and other work which may incur additional costs.” or something like that.
Hubs already has to implement some kind of slicing software to generate the print estimate, so it should be able to identify features like overhangs somewhere.
A general “memo” to the customer when a print is uploaded that the quote generated is just that, a quote, and not reflective of the final price would be fantastic.
@Enza3D I guess there might be an issue if the print isn’t correctly orientated when uploaded. I’ve had a couple of orders where the STL is “upside down” or on its side. I don’t know, but it might be impossible for software to check orientations - maybe not, I don’t know how smart it is.
You’d have to be very careful with statements like that though; they’re likely to scare customers away. We all want to know exactly how much something is going to cost us - it’s a principle of good sales marketing - so any message suggesting the initial price may change would have to be worded very carefully.
For a start, ideally, there should be no message at all unless the Hubs software can detect a likely overhang. If there is a risk of support requirements, I’d suggest the message should be more along the lines of “Please discuss the printability of your model with your chosen Hub” and leave it at that, not mentioning any potential price change. If the Hub decides they need support and wants to charge extra for it, that’s then a discussion between themselves rather than being something that instantly says “you’re likely to get additional charges”.