Customer and Vendor Relations

October 1, 2017
UNDERSTANDING OTHERS' NEEDS

Companies that sit at the top of the supply chain understand they have customers and they understand they have vendors.

What some companies fail to understand is they are vendors to their customers and are the customers of their vendors, as opposed to being a middle-man, reseller or distributor.

Some companies see their vendors as partners who supply products and services that contribute to their ability to provide a product or service to their customers and clients.

The same expectations they have of their vendors are the same expectations their customers have of them. In addition, they behavior they don’t like out of customers who complain should not be the same behaviors they exhibit to their vendors.

The same goes for internal customer -supplier relationships.

Within a company, one department or person supplies a product or service that allows another department or person to do their job. The same relationship rules a company enforces externally should be the same esprit de corps. Departments have reputations just like customers and vendors. The brand of a person is his or her reputation. The reputation of a group, team, department, division or company is their brand.

If a department or employee is difficult, when working with others, it impacts the reputation of that department, as a whole.

The key to successful product and service delivery is listening to feedback and complaints.

As the vendor, a company must understand the good and the bad. Take compliments and use them to improve. Take complaints to eliminate negative elements. However, the absence of a negative does not translate into a positive element, necessarily. If someone says they don’t want the door knob on the left of the door so it opens to the right, the solution is putting it on the right side so the door opens to the left.

However, if the customer doesn’t like “ding” on the microwave, does it mean they want a different sound, silence or the choice to select their own sound like they do with cell phones? What if they don’t like the configuration of an interface? The combinations are endless.

The end customer may not care about the relationship with the company because they can go somewhere else. However, the company does care about the relationship, because they want the financial patronage of the customer.

End customers don’t care about supply chains. Their relationship is with the reseller or distributor. However, there are fewer vendors than there are resellers and distributors. Therefore, the company needs to manage its vendor relationships better to get more favorable prices and terms. Burning too many vendors will have a devastating effect on the company’s ability to conduct and stay in business.

Many thriving companies want to improve their market position by satisfying their existing customer base which translates into satisfying potential customers. Successful companies have a strong healthy track record of managing their customers and vendors. This is not by guessing their needs, thoughts and reactions. They ask.

This doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It may be painful. If a company wants to know what product or service is most in-demand, look at sales data. However, if the company wants to know what the customer likes, dislikes and would like, the company has to survey the customer. The data leadership gets will be invaluable and – sometimes – quite surprising.

When customers feel a company hears their voice and concerns, it establishes a relationship. Communication is healthy in any relationship.

  • One method of surveying customer:
  • Is the company tracking this type of issue?
  • Is it a customer complaint or suggestion?
  • Is satisfying the customer a matter of removing, replacing or correcting the issue?
  • Does the product or service require improvement?
  • Does the company need to investigate the issue?
  • Does it require further action?

Surveys, complaints and feedback are helpful, because it they may highlight a defect with a supplier that the company may not be aware. This may stave off potential law suits, loss of brand reputation, sales or other negative results for selling defective products or low-quality services.

Other areas a market/customer survey can bring to light are dissatisfaction with a product’s performance or delivery of service, availability, quality of resolutions, customer service, delivery services, billing and return policies, and brand related comments, such as friendliness, trust, empathy, ease of working with them, perceived value of product and service, level of care and treatment.

If the companies want a more favorable relationship with their vendors, they need to survey how well it is for vendors to do business with them.

INSIGHT

Attending to the needs of a relationship helps to strengthen that relationship. As with all relationships, companies should never assume they know what their internal and external customers, and vendors are thinking.

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