A few people asked why CS has at times involved a minority of people who received late responses or who fell through the cracks and did not receive a response to a certain message.
We were operating thin like everyone else in this years industry wide sales downturn and have been completing a facility move of 2 facilities into one larger building. Thats a complicated process that has involved a team of electrical people doing lighting, machine drops, power upgrades, compliance work like emergency lighting and electrical code updates, air plumbers, a team of machine settup people, a team of warehouse shelving people, a couple of building upgrade contractors, cctv & security system installers, a team of riggers, etc.
The guys who normaly do work like tech support may have been trying to cover that while physically moving and organizing the facility. On the manufacturing side we are standing up a new 8 axis machine and that learning curve is underway and consuming some time. I personally used to be one of the major tech question people (and that's nice to talk to a product development person for a technical answer when it's possible). I'm not able to be involved in that anymore, and we've had a few employees tasked with answering tech questions for almost 2 years now- one had personal family issues develop that required him to resign somewhat recently.
41f sales were up maybe 400+% and that creates a current time mountain of tech questions (we receive about 200 correspondences a day right now). A lot of times the questions being asked have been answered by a video tutorial for the product the customer hasn't bothered to watch, and we try to answer them anyway.
We have 4 positions posted and have been looking to plus up customer service, but we dont see the cs position as one we can plug just anyone into so filling it has been tougher than it would probably appear on the surface. The difficulty we've had in staffing that position and the PR bath we've taken on it, has convinced us to integrate a software system supporting CS, and behind that to compile a technical q/a database and eventually an online FAQ to make that department less burdened, and more readily scale-able in the future. For whatever reason it seems unskilled work in the area is readily available but the 4 positions all involve skills, knowledge or something of that nature.
The good news is that we are nearing the end of the process and work is on its way to being smoother and more productive than ever before. We have management, marketing, design, cnc machining, vibratory finishing, abrasive finishing, assembly, welding, laser marking, painting, packaging, shipping & recieving and warehousing under one roof. We are excited because we know how time is lost between multiple locations.
As far as cleaning up misinformation and speculation on the industry forum- it just doesn't make sense to leave a post up with someone suggesting the company has evaporated, when we are larger and are doing more than we have ever been or done before. The company isn't going away, and we will get on top of this stuff, but we can't hit a magic button for quality hires, we aren't in a major firearms state for the technical question staffing addition and the whole country has an admitted shortage of skilled laborers.
On the rimfire suppressor, it has been designed, tested, manufactured, and is ready to ship, but we don't have the marketing material put together to introduce the product. The team is not over-sized for the state of the industry and that has slightly delayed the product release. I regret that, but I also see the sales / marketing point which is; to release without that material isn't a positive or productive way to handle that. The move and the logistics of working with a handful of different teams of contractors has taken a service toll and these slight delays are what that toll looks like.