Business was booming and Leland Rodriguez was miserable. His high-end Christmas ornament venture, begun in his garage three years ago, was shipping worldwide but communication between his call center employees and warehouse workers was sluggish. And that was leading to delayed shipments.
"There wasn't a smooth flow between orders coming into our call center and effectively getting those orders to the people pulling product from warehouse shelves, packaging product and finally shipping," he remembered. "It was incredibly frustrating. We run a seasonal business and Christmas ornaments arriving at a customer's location December 26th just won't cut it."
In the early days of business Rodriguez handled everything himself. He'd take the calls, package the delicate ornaments, manufactured in eastern Europe, and FedEx them to customers. But when business heated up he rented office and warehouse space and hired operators to handle calls and others to package.
"Those orders would sit on someone's desk for hours, sometimes a full day." Rodriguez said, "and guys in the warehouse never knew about them." That's when he turned to brightly colored miniature flags to facilitate communication. Four x six inch rayon flags are nestled in a base on each operators' workstation and indicate an order has been received and needs to be filled.
"It's a simple system, but it works," he said. "An order comes in and the green flag goes up. A liaison warehouse worker checks every half hour and gathers up the ornament orders. And if an operator doesn't have an order, then they 'fly' a red flag."
The flags are inexpensive and have proven to be highly effective - and a real money maker. "When orders arrive promptly at customers' doors they are going to remember us for next Christmas," Rodriguez said. "And they are going to tell their friends about our great service. Those little flags have meant big dollars to us."