Droid Engineer Archive

I'm a novice DE and the other day I got my first referral from someone. It was just for an R5 unit with medical and storage, but just the fact that people appreciate your work and go out of thier way to let you know... that makes it worthwhile. I love crafting, always have, always will. We all know it can sometimes become tedious, but there are ways to make it fun! Personally, I make profession specific droids and go into town to sell them. Artisan R2's (with weapon/droid/food/chem/clothing/armor)... Medic R2's (with medical modules, storage for stimpaks, armor for the field)... etc etc. That way they know what they are getting ahead of time and they're happy. I don't do a great deal of custom orders, as most of my sales are from my vendor which does pretty well. I love the reaction people get when they love thier droid and are truly appreciative. If I like them enough, I'll even paint the droid frame or trim for free. Its a great profession... needs a lot of work, but its still a great profession Yay for us!

Thats so funny Vampiric_Hoshi!!!!!

I love providing great customer service. I wish I had better droids to sell. though. I get lots of referrals from previous customers 'cause I always answer all questions and work through things with them. (I also include some batteries with each purchase). Ifaithfully answer all customer tells after the sale.

I make lots of sales even though there are DEs who beat my prices. I wonder when I'll hit DE customer burn-out. Lots of my referrals are from other more senior Master DEs who just want the customers out of their hair! lol! Crafters who hate crafting!

Yep. I assume my customers don't really know what they are asking me for. I question and inform them on everything they ask meabout.It may seem bad, but it saves me from a lot of problems.

The only Droid orders I do are custom orders, and although nearly every person I sell to has no idea what kinds of droids there are and what they do I make a pretty good living off of it.

I throw my pitch at what the droids do and then after they have decided on a droid I tell them what it can hold. Which usualy sells me Adv. Probots instead of the regular Probots. But the real money is in the chasis. I had one guy order around 200k in chasis in just 4 days.

I have had some bad customs over the months. I do remember one cleary; she wanted a Probot and she was a medic. I, being nice and all, tell her about the Surgical droid and how it's a medic's droid. So she's like "alright". One surgical coming up. Since she is a friend I gave her a discount on the Surgical for just 4k when I usualy sell them for 7k. SO I fianly get to where she is and then she Tames her droid. She then asks **edit** is this thing?! So I tell her thats her Surgical droid that she ordered. then she goes on and on and on ranting and raving at me that she wanted a Protocol droid. And she demanded her money back and said she would never buy from me again.

Moral of this story: Always double check on what you want, people see different things when they are running away from kreetles to save time.

The latest. Customers now assume we can now make droids already colored to their liking. Get allot of tells saying they want such and such droid made in this color. Explain to them we can not color them till they are tamed. Then another issue, painting the droids. Color pallettes need to appear to the customer as we begin to paint them, or let the customer at least see their droid's color changing before we click ok on our tool.I can not count how many tools I have gone through with customers saying, This shade of color is to light or too dark, can you change it. Or I do not like this color, can you change it to this? I paint all my customers droids for free right after purchase as a thank you for giving me business. But making Droid Customization Tools that require a Control unit, Droid Storage Compartment and resources I do not make any profit on this.

Personally, I only give a free frame or trim paint job if the droid is over a certain price point to cover the resource cost. Usually its around 8k I'll do a free frame paint. I use that in the selling incentive:

"If you buy this Advanced R5 droid and get this extra module installed with better armor, I'll give you a free frame coloring... hows that sound?"

Most often they go for it because they DO want something custom done. In fact if they want the trim done as well they pay the 500 extra credits to have it colored, and are happy about it. Nothing like a cool looking droid!

I did have one customer complain to me that the MSE droid wasnt as big as an R5 or R2 unit. I explain to him that the MSE "mouse" droid was small because it gets its name from how tiny it is. He said "oh, I guess you're right" and he left. Recorded proof a customer admitted he was wrong lol

Another neat idea for all the novice and master DE's in the house tonight,is something I like to do to show my appreciation of good customers that give you more credits than your asking price: MSE's! Hell just the plain ones with nothing added in them. They're cheap to make, so get a few crates of them done up... and give them as complimentary gifts or as a selling incentive! Free MSE with every Advanced R5! Today only! Watch your sales go up