One issue that we keep seeing over here at Milzy Motorsports is the overwhelming amount of update requests we receive on a regular basis. In this modern world we live in, much of everything we need is right at our fingertips, especially with companies like Amazon, Door Dash, and the like near instant gratification, and catering to even the most micro-managing of customers. Some pizza companies even show you real time position of your pizza's delivery progress. While these businesses and their practices may be what customers are used to and expect nowadays, this is just simply not feasible for companies like us to be able to meet these exceptionally high customer service needs, especially without drastically affecting the bottom line, the price of the items being sold. Milzy Motorsports is not a huge company, in fact it's usually just a few people that are responsible for the bulk of the operations here. I, Mike Miller, owner of Milzy Motorsports LLC am responsible not only for working on most of the vehicles here, designing and engineering new parts, dealing with vendors, doing most of the fabrication here and all of the TIG welding, etc, but I also am the only one who does the customer service. This is the limiting factor with our customer service. I can only do so much as one person. I'm getting paid to provide parts and work on cars. I do not get paid directly to answer e-mails. I answer hundreds if not thousands on a weekly basis, but every minute I spend doing this is a minute I am not making progress on someone's parts or project. When I have brought this to someone's attention over the near 20 years I've been doing this, a common proposed solution by the customer is always "well maybe you need to hire a secretary". We have actually tried this also, and it did not solve the problem. I am the only one here who can answer each and every question that gets asked through e-mails and phone calls. It is possible that another person could answer some of the questions, but not all, and the fact is that the questions they could answer are already on the website, either on the product page or on the Policy page or other pages listed on the website. The other issue having a secretary or other employee answer the phone is that most people that call don't want to speak to anyone but me, especially not an underling who doesn't have many answers, so invariably the conversation will always lead to the following back and forth ...

"Is Mike there?"

"No, he's busy working at the moment, can I take a message?"

"Just have him give me a call when he gets a chance."

When I think about this conversation, the first thing that comes to mind if that my voicemail handles this exact conversation free of charge, while a secretary/employee does not work for free.  So in order to pay for this person, we would have to raise our prices in order to generate the extra profit in order to have this person do a job where they spend their time answering questions which can easily be found on the website, and basically delay a conversation between the customer and me which eventually is going to happen anyways, a job which my website and my voicemail respectively can handle for free.

One way or another, we have to solve this issue over update requests. If I answered every update request as they come in, not only would I spend every minute of my working life doing update requests, but since I am the one who is usually directly or indirectly involved with the actual progress the update request is about, than this whole process is literally keeping me from doing the actual work I'm supposed to do. On top of this, while I am busy answering these updates and not getting anything done, the bills for the shop and payroll go on like clockwork, and need paid regardless.  The question also comes up who should charged for this extra work? Should we raise the prices of every product, effectively charging every single customer for this extra service? Or should we only charge the customers who need the special service for the costs associated to that. I think if you're going to need to implement a system like this, that would be the fair way to do it, but what about an entirely different solution that doesn't require charging people more money? I think a better way to do this would be to eliminate the update requests, which I believe can be achieved with a balance of my company doing a better job of managing the customers' expectations, and the customers doing a better job of voicing those expectations before the purchase is even made, so with that in mind, this is new system of policies we will be implementing when it comes to Updates and Lead times:

Estimated typical lead-times will be posted on website for each item. If an item is missing an estimated lead-time, contact mikem@milzymotorsports.com for current inventory information.

If you have some sort of a deadline at or below the estimated lead-time, or within 50% over that lead-time, contact mikem@milzymotorsports.com before ordering to make sure we can fulfill your order in time for your deadline. Failure to do so means we cannot guarantee that the order will be fulfilled before your deadline.

For most parts orders, it is standard protocol that as long as we feel we are on pace to get the product done within 150% of the estimated lead-time, we will not contact the customer with play-by-play updates of current status of the order. Instead we will work on fulfilling the order, and the "update" will be the tracking number when the item ships.

To help explain this 150% lead-time value, what we mean is this: Let's say a particular part has an estimated lead time of 2 weeks. 150% of 2 weeks is 3 weeks.

If within this period, you would like an update on a parts order, we will offer the customer one free update within this 0-150% lead-time period. All update requests will need to be made via e-mail or through the website's messaging system, although it should be mentioned that e-mails will typically have a faster response time than through the website's message system.  If you call our number and leave a message, we can use this as another method to add your name to the update request list, although keep in mind this creates a little bit of a delay between when the message is left and when we check the messages and add the name to the list, so e-mail is always the fastest method.  This system will serve multiple purposes:  it will ensure there is a written record for the update request and create a subsequent timeline; it will funnel all update requests into e-mail, making it much easier to quickly and efficiently respond to each one; and it will also eliminate the human error element of the current system where relying on memory or small notes as reminders of a pending update request can result in that update request getting forgotten or neglected.

When the update request is made, we will respond to it, add it to the update request list, and will reply back once we've looked into the status of the item(s) ordered and have a full detail on these items, or within 10 business days, whichever comes first. This 10-business-day limit is in place to ensure the customer receives a response in a reasonable amount of time, even if this response is not as detailed as we'd like it to be, as very large updates require hours to complete, and a multitude of vendors to contact, each with their own response times and delays.

If we find that production is going slower than the 150% lead-time period, we will contact the customer to let them know this, and to evaluate what needs to be done about this, whether this be simply waiting more time, shipping partial orders in separate shipments, cancelling the order, or other solutions. All of these solutions will be governed by the Policies set up in the Policies section of the website.

When we fulfill the update request, this will either come in the form of an e-mail response or a tracking number sent to the customer.  In most cases, we will refrain from calling customers as part of an update as their would not be a written record of this conversation and what was said.

Now outside of the standard updates mentioned above, which are free of charge, if any customer needs more customer service than that, please contact mikem@milzymotorsports to let us know about these needs and we will calculate a cost to fulfill them.

To go hand-in-hand with the new lead-time and update policies in regards to catering to customers who need more than the standard level of customer service, we are working on a system of "rush orders", which will consist of different levels of rushing such as upgrading to expedited shipping, lower than usual production runs, and even rushing via working overtime. Once the system with the subsequent levels are in place, each higher level of rushing will have a higher cost to the customer, and we will be implementing this with some sort of an escrow/debit account through milzymotorsports.com which will allow customers to put money in the account, and have us spend these funds at our discretion to achieve the most time saved per dollar within the parameters of the rushing level the customer has chosen. I want to be very clear that this rushing system will not be put in place to jump one customer in front of another, slowing down the progress of the second customer's order. The only way that this could change the sequence of the priority is if the customer opted for the top of the line package, in which case we would work overtime hours to complete the work early, without negatively affecting the lead-times of all the other customers who did not pay for any such rushing charges. We will post details of this new rushing system on the website once we are ready to implement it.

In the mean time, if you're calling about an order or project that you've been making payments on, and you're not paid up to date, please be prepared to settle up on the amount owed to that date if you choose to call for an update.

These policies are hereby updated as of April 26, 2021. Any orders made on or after this date will use these policies exclusively. Older orders will not be legally bound to these policies, but we will use them as a guideline for these orders moving forward.