In this industry, there’s no slow season.
The dock doesn’t close. The conveyor doesn’t wait. And the inbox doesn’t care what you were in the middle of when it filled up.
We know what that looks like from the other side, because we’ve watched it on a hundred floors. A plant manager who hasn’t opened a non-urgent email since Tuesday. A maintenance lead whose phone is the only thing they answer, because that’s where the call comes from when a line goes down. A director of operations who reads LinkedIn at 9 PM and nothing at all between 7 and 6.
So we asked our customers a question we probably should have asked years ago: where do we actually find you?
The Problem With One Channel
We’ve been reaching out by email, and it’s been working. People read it, people reply, people call. But “it’s working” is not the same as “it’s working for everyone,” and the gap between those two is where good relationships quietly go cold.
Some people are on LinkedIn and nowhere else. Some pick up the phone on the first ring and treat email as a filing system. Some respond to a text in thirty seconds and to an email in three weeks. That’s rational triage for someone whose day is interrupt-driven from the moment they badge in.
When a vendor insists on one channel, it’s broadcasting and hoping someone hears. The cost shows up later: the part you needed on a Friday that you didn’t know we stock, the upgrade path that would have saved a capital line item, the audit that would have caught a wear pattern before peak.
That’s the real version of this: we don’t want to be the thing you miss.
What We Asked, and What We’ll Do With It
We sent our list four options (LinkedIn DM, email, phone, text) and asked them to pick one. Answering took one click. That was the whole ask.
Whatever someone picked, that’s how we’ll show up. That’s the whole commitment.
It’s a small thing. It’s also the kind of small thing that tends to predict the bigger ones. A company that can’t be bothered to ask how you’d like to be contacted is probably not the company that returns your call at 2 AM when a sorter is down and peak starts Monday.
Why It Matters More Now
We’re building something bigger than a conveyor company. Century, Attabotics, LaFayette Engineering, and Mesh Automation each solve a different part of the distribution operations puzzle, and increasingly they solve them together on the same project. (Here’s who does what.)
That means more to tell you about, and more ways to be useful, which also means more ways to become noise if we’re careless about it.
We’d rather be careful. One channel, the one you picked, used when there’s something worth saying.
Didn’t get the email? Tell us where to find you, or just call. Rick picks up.
Rick Maldonado, Business Development Manager (908) 205-0625 | rmaldonado@centuryconveyor.com
Want articles like this in your inbox? Sign up for the Century email blast.
