Business is all about people.
Today I received a barrage of complaints from my customer again,
Well it is not about me this time. It is about a salesman Shirley.
Two months ago, he placed a backpack order with shirley’s company
Shirley works for a Taiwanese-owned bag company.
18 years of history,9 production lines, certificated by ISO9001,BSCI.
This is the first time we cooperate.
They could have received an Grade A on the paper.
Then there is a catch: it is all about the people.
Shirley has a critical problem:
You are not expected to find the term “Proactive” in her dictionary.
In other words, she did not take initiatives during our communication.
Any buyers would want to receive a timely update on the process:
Has the supplier received our payment?
On which specific date our order will be carried out?
What's the production status of our order every week?
To what extent the production is completing; or when the documents for clearance will be delivered?
But Shirley was extremely slow.
She should have said,“ the goods have been dispatched this morning, the B/L will be issued from our agent on Tuesday. I will deliver all the documents to you on Tuesday afternoon by TNT and the tracking number will be enclosed for your reference.”
Unexpectedly，I have to ask her once every two days to keep myself well informed of all progress.
My attention was depleted.
What’s worse, she just turned into an ostrich when they failed to meet the promised lead time, either calls or messages were neglected, holding me back right until the moment I were about to travel to their site.
My schedule was disrupted.
My irritation was compounded.
Now I would only grade B- for this company
Because their software sucks.
It is true that a good supplier is hard distinguish nowadays.
It is not about how old the company is, how many achievements they have accomplished in the past or how many big names they have been working with.
It is all about their people.
A qualified supply chain intakes top-sales who know：
How to be a backup force for their customer.
How to think before their customer.
How to release them from unnecessary worries.
How to fuel them up on the front.
How would you define a good supplier to partner with?