Mike Leitzel is the president and owner of A&L Wood, a pallet manufacturing company in Mt. Pleasant Mills in central Pennsylvania. The company, which also manufactures timber mats and supplies some industrial lumber, operates a log yard in Dushore in the north-central part of the state.
Pallet Enterprise: What is one of the hardest business decisions you have ever made?
Leitzel: The decision to leave my previous job and move into the family business, eventually taking on the risk and responsibilities that my dad had handled for the previous 40 years. Prior to owning A&L Wood, I lived in Colorado. I enjoyed living there, and I enjoyed my job. My job was very risk-free. When you’re an employee, you don’t have a lot of risk. There are a lot of benefits to that. When you decide to own and operate a company, you live and die by that decision. You have all the risk. It’s kind of a scary thing, making a decision like that.
Luckily, I’ve been blessed to be surrounded by an excellent group of people who are not only very adept at running the business but are simply great to be around day in and day out. I can’t stress enough how grateful I am for that.
Pallet Enterprise: What is the most important lesson you’ve learned about customer service?
Leitzel: I think, at the end of the day, you try your absolute best to bring value to the customer. You look at your track record. You make sure you’re hitting really high on delivering for your customer. But there are going to be times when you mess up. You have to immediately figure out what went wrong and what you’re going to do about it. Don’t cover it up. That will make things worse.
Customer service is part of a broader overall balance. You’ll be in a position sometimes when you just can’t please everybody. When you’re in those spots, you realize how valuable partnership relationships are. Our customer base now is amazing. In the last couple of years, we weeded out a few, those that had a “my way or the highway” attitude. We can almost always come up with workable solutions for our current customers.
Pallet Enterprise: How do you go about your work day to stay productive and on target?
Leitzel: I try to use lists. I rely on my iPhone and list apps. Taking time out from your day to devote time to things that require some thought is getting harder and harder. We’re being bombarded with information all the time. The window of time you have to think about things is very limited. But you have to carve out that time to assess everything that’s going on – whether you carve out that time at work or at home.
