Reader Feedback, Part 2

In the January issue of Control, our company was quoted in the "Lend a Helping Hand" article. It was great to have the chance to highlight a salient fact of customer service, one we find the vast majority of suppliers completely miss: Ironically, while a good supplier is characterized by delivering reliably to expectations, they have to cause a problem before we can tell if they are truly a great supplier. In a perfect world there wouldn’t be any problems, and flawlessly meeting every expectation would be the only mark of an outstanding supplier. We should all certainly aim for this, but in our technical world, unexpected “opportunities” tend to rear their head with unnerving frequency. As a customer, we are most interested in how a supplier behaves when the proverbial stuff is hitting the fan, when their products or their supply chain are behaving unexpectedly, and they find themselves unable to deliver on our original expectations or their promises. We often find ourselves with “that one application” which meets every spec but where the product or service or delivery nonetheless fails. At this point we get to see how the supplier reacts to their new reality, which has changed in an instant from “Kumbaya” to “Houston, We Have A Problem”. To use a football analogy, while it is important to concentrate on basic blocking and tackling, if you don’t have effective special teams you can lose a game in a heartbeat. Special teams may play less than five percent of the game, but at that moment they are the only players on the field, and it is suddenly irrelevant how good the offense or defense is. Taking the analogy a step further, we all know that special teams are made up of many of the same players who were playing offense or defense moments before. But being able to perform well in their normal position doesn’t necessarily prepare them for the critical challenges faced by special teams. When problems arise, our teams must be ready to play a different style of game where the rules and requirements and even the clock are all handled differently. Breaking this down further, a few questions must be answered: - Can all customer-facing individuals differentiate between nuisance issues and problems that threaten the customer relationship? - Once a critical issue is recognized, are they empowered to escalate it quickly and to the right individuals? - Will these additional people rapidly accelerate, moving at the speed of the customer as opposed to the pace of their comfort zone? - And finally, when it is a cross-functional issue, as is often the case, can departmental walls be rapidly breached to define and deploy a solution that is both good for the customer and acceptable to the supplier? It is during problem resolution that we watch our suppliers most closely. The results are often remembered for years, even decades, because at that critical moment, it affecting our delivery of our promises to our customers, who are watching and judging us in exactly the same way. This is our make-or-break moment, and therefore the supplier’s as well. This is their moment to shine. Service during problem resolution is one of our bedrock criteria as we select and reject suppliers, and we strive to keep this in mind it as we serve our own customers. Wright Sullivan, PE President A&E Engineering, Inc. [email protected]