Reach Out and "Touch" Your Customers
Customer to you: "Why is it taking so long to get my deal done?"
For you procurement pros, does that sound familiar? Remember the good old days when you had a 30-day contract turnaround time metric and customers seemed to be OK with it? Today, if I told my customers it would take around 30-days to do their deal, I would have a mutiny on my hands. More and more it seemed, the faster that my staff and I pumped out deals, the customers would want their deals done even faster. Is it because I kept raising the bar and my customers' expectations continued to inch up, too? Is it because my customers had unrealistic expectations and could give a hoot about getting a good deal?
I don't think it's any of that. I blame the Internet. Yep, I think the Internet is the basis for my customers wanting deals done faster and faster. Sounds crazy, but here's my rationale... If you went to Amazon to order my Contract Negotiations Handbook (here's the link in case you need it--hint, hint), you would know the availabilty of the book, you would be able to purchase the book using a very customer-friendly graphical interface, you would get a confirmation e-mail from Amazon, and then Amazon would update you via e-mail as to the delivery status of the book. If you wanted to get a better understanding of the delivery status, you could click on the tracking number and pretty much know when and where the book was--and when you would actually get it. The same goes for a fair majority of the storefronts on the Internet. This is what your customers and my customers are getting used to, and the purchasing process of the Internet is coloring the lens that our customers are viewing us through. In other words, our customers are wondering why we're so hard to do business with and why it takes so long.
What I've discovered is that it's really not the speed that matters so much to my customers--it's the "touches." The storefronts on the Internet frequently "touch" their customers with information. Dell is a great example of this. I just recently bought a new computer from them, and I received e-mails from them that basically took me through the stages of the entire build of my computer. At pretty much any moment, I was able to track the birth of my little computer up until the day that it showed up at my home. It's that and not so much speed that matters to customers--I think... I've experimented on my customers to see if my theory of "touches" shakes out and it holds to be pretty true:
So, as a result of the above, I require my staff to send out status reports to their customers and VERBALLY (either in-person, phone, or voice-mail) communicate the status as well. That has to happen before Noon on Friday. For one of our more significant commodities, we have a weekly standing meeting to discuss status--customers can attend or not attend (it's up to them). Whenever possible, I ask my staff to communicate VERBALLY with their customers, and not through e-mail. Also, my staff have an objective in their performance review to have an informal face-to-face with their major customers (such as coffee or lunch, which my department pays for) every quarter. At the end of last year, we held a customer appreciation event, with catered food and major prizes (donated by our vendors) including trips and a laptop, and with a short presentation on what the VMO accomplished with the customers over the past year. We even gave out awards to the customers who had partnered with us to save significant amounts on money. The point of all of this is to "touch" our customers as much as possible without overloading them.
The good news is that our customers seem to be less time-sensitive and we now have better relationships. Plus I think we have partially neutralized the effect of the Internet. As purchasing pros, one thing we always need to keep in mind is that we're what is standing between our customers and what they want. And sometimes we have competing objectives: our customers may not care how much they pay or risk they take on, but we do. But, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, those customers are why we have jobs and we need to serve them accordingly. "Touching" those customers is a great way to keep them happy and satisfied.
For you procurement pros, does that sound familiar? Remember the good old days when you had a 30-day contract turnaround time metric and customers seemed to be OK with it? Today, if I told my customers it would take around 30-days to do their deal, I would have a mutiny on my hands. More and more it seemed, the faster that my staff and I pumped out deals, the customers would want their deals done even faster. Is it because I kept raising the bar and my customers' expectations continued to inch up, too? Is it because my customers had unrealistic expectations and could give a hoot about getting a good deal?
I don't think it's any of that. I blame the Internet. Yep, I think the Internet is the basis for my customers wanting deals done faster and faster. Sounds crazy, but here's my rationale... If you went to Amazon to order my Contract Negotiations Handbook (here's the link in case you need it--hint, hint), you would know the availabilty of the book, you would be able to purchase the book using a very customer-friendly graphical interface, you would get a confirmation e-mail from Amazon, and then Amazon would update you via e-mail as to the delivery status of the book. If you wanted to get a better understanding of the delivery status, you could click on the tracking number and pretty much know when and where the book was--and when you would actually get it. The same goes for a fair majority of the storefronts on the Internet. This is what your customers and my customers are getting used to, and the purchasing process of the Internet is coloring the lens that our customers are viewing us through. In other words, our customers are wondering why we're so hard to do business with and why it takes so long.
What I've discovered is that it's really not the speed that matters so much to my customers--it's the "touches." The storefronts on the Internet frequently "touch" their customers with information. Dell is a great example of this. I just recently bought a new computer from them, and I received e-mails from them that basically took me through the stages of the entire build of my computer. At pretty much any moment, I was able to track the birth of my little computer up until the day that it showed up at my home. It's that and not so much speed that matters to customers--I think... I've experimented on my customers to see if my theory of "touches" shakes out and it holds to be pretty true:
There was a deal I planned on working night and day for a week to get it out of the door. By the third day, as I was feverishly working the deal, my customer was on the phone wondering what the heck was going on and what's taking so long. That customer had assumed, because I hadn't "touched" them, that I wasn't working their deal--even though I really had been working on it night and day. On another deal, I didn't work on it night and day, and instead worked on it as other priorities permitted. It took about three weeks to get it out of the door. My customer didn't call me once or complain about how long it took. The difference was that I "touched" that customer almost every other day--even if I didn't have a question or any new status. I just let my customer know I still had her deal in mind. I would send an e-mail, say something to her if I bumped into her, I would leave a voice-mail, I would call, etc. It sounds like a lot of work to communicate frequently, but it was a lot easier to do that than to try and reverse some negative thinking that may have resulted if I hadn't communicated so frequently.
So, as a result of the above, I require my staff to send out status reports to their customers and VERBALLY (either in-person, phone, or voice-mail) communicate the status as well. That has to happen before Noon on Friday. For one of our more significant commodities, we have a weekly standing meeting to discuss status--customers can attend or not attend (it's up to them). Whenever possible, I ask my staff to communicate VERBALLY with their customers, and not through e-mail. Also, my staff have an objective in their performance review to have an informal face-to-face with their major customers (such as coffee or lunch, which my department pays for) every quarter. At the end of last year, we held a customer appreciation event, with catered food and major prizes (donated by our vendors) including trips and a laptop, and with a short presentation on what the VMO accomplished with the customers over the past year. We even gave out awards to the customers who had partnered with us to save significant amounts on money. The point of all of this is to "touch" our customers as much as possible without overloading them.
The good news is that our customers seem to be less time-sensitive and we now have better relationships. Plus I think we have partially neutralized the effect of the Internet. As purchasing pros, one thing we always need to keep in mind is that we're what is standing between our customers and what they want. And sometimes we have competing objectives: our customers may not care how much they pay or risk they take on, but we do. But, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, those customers are why we have jobs and we need to serve them accordingly. "Touching" those customers is a great way to keep them happy and satisfied.
Stephen
The same could be accomplished via a true workflow tool that gives preview to where the original sourcing contract effort request might be. As we know the true effort is tracked via different milestones just as a project would . Certain tasks could be also catergorized and simply check marks or drop downs selections are used with a comments section to what issues our progress are being made.. temper comments in standard fashion, so not to go into to great of a detail.. You could also use the system to have approvals and financial sign off's if required.. In a high volume organization meaning 50 to a 100 contract request a month it is a way to manage the process. .. In lieu of having such a system a sharepoint or portal where a excell sheet is updated will allow the same courtesy.. It was a painpoint in a prior job that turned into corporate accetable practice.. Best of all it worked. eventually it was configuerd to act just the same as a requisition and with or at Contract sign off the po kicked out to match..
charlie
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Good point. I'm a Sharepoint bigot now, and, if your company can't invest in a contract management system or an automate workflow system, it should be able to afford Sharepoint. A great tool that's easy to customize and use!
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