The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
VLBMS
Tuesday - August 01, 2006 04:03 PM in
We're getting ready to go to SpeechTEK in a week, and we decided that it was time to replace our grey booth backdrop with something a little more colorful, a little more eye-catching, and a lot easier to ship. So we had a set of three giant vertical banners printed and bought a set of lightweight collapsable stands: total weight about 20 pounds.
The only thing remaining was to find a way to pack the banners to transport them to the show. We wanted to check them as luggage on the plane, rather than having them shipped separately. I built some shipping tubes out of four-inch PVC pipe each of which fits one banner plus its stand perfectly.
Just a couple of problems.
One is that a four-foot length of PVC pipe with endcaps screwed on looks like nothing so much as the world's largest pipe bomb.
Strapping three of them together yields something that looks like a battery of crude rocket launchers. Amid jokes about calling our banners the VLBMS (VocaLabs Ballistic Missile System), I slapped on some stickers in a friendly shade of bright green to explain to the TSA that the PVC pipe contained nothing more dangerous than printed vinyl.
The bigger problem is the weight. It took about 40 pounds of PVC pipe to encase and protect our 20 pounds of banner, and the total package is heavy.
So today, I took a couple hours to search for something better, and I am pleased to report that those of you attending SpeechTEK next week will not have to worry about the bomb squad paying a friendly visit to Booth 507. Instead, we will be toting all three banners inside a very nice case designed to carry fishing rods. It weighs about ten pounds, and even has wheels.
But if you carry it on your shoulder, it still bears some faint resemblance to a Stinger missile.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Just a couple of problems.
One is that a four-foot length of PVC pipe with endcaps screwed on looks like nothing so much as the world's largest pipe bomb.
Strapping three of them together yields something that looks like a battery of crude rocket launchers. Amid jokes about calling our banners the VLBMS (VocaLabs Ballistic Missile System), I slapped on some stickers in a friendly shade of bright green to explain to the TSA that the PVC pipe contained nothing more dangerous than printed vinyl.
The bigger problem is the weight. It took about 40 pounds of PVC pipe to encase and protect our 20 pounds of banner, and the total package is heavy.
So today, I took a couple hours to search for something better, and I am pleased to report that those of you attending SpeechTEK next week will not have to worry about the bomb squad paying a friendly visit to Booth 507. Instead, we will be toting all three banners inside a very nice case designed to carry fishing rods. It weighs about ten pounds, and even has wheels.
But if you carry it on your shoulder, it still bears some faint resemblance to a Stinger missile.
Posted by Peter Leppik
Posted at 04:03 PM by | | | |