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To the customer, your supplier is you
Posted in Growth
Posted by Oren Harari in August of 2000
I recently gave a keynote speech at a corporate meeting that was being held in a place we'll call Hotel X. I was extremely impressed with Hotel X. The architectural layout was lovely, the locale was pristine, and most important, the courtesy, friendliness, responsiveness and the personal caring of the staff were exceptional. I mean truly exceptional, regardless of whether I was dealing with the front desk, room service, the gift shop -- you get the idea.
I was so impressed with Hotel X that I called my wife right from my room and said: "My calendar next week is wide open. Let's take the kids and come to this place. We'll take two adjoining rooms and splurge!" She agreed, and I promptly dialed the hotel reservation people to do the deal.
I was stunned by the person who answered the phone. In contrast to everyone else I had dealt with, this person was simply a mechanical, detached, order-taker. No enthusiasm. No warmth. No friendliness. Just a coolly polite, bureaucratic recitation of facts ("Here are the available dates, here are the prices"). I found my own enthusiasm steadily dissipating the more I talked to this woman. The last straw for me was her reaction to my desire to reserve rooms from Tuesday through Saturday: "Okay, but we're totally booked for Thursday."
I waited for some indication of empathy, some constructive suggestion. None came. "Huh? What am I supposed to do on Thursday?" I asked. "Do you have any ideas I can pursue?" "No," she responded.
I'd had enough. "I think I'll bag the whole thing," I said. "Okay," she replied matter-of-factly. And that was that.
Well, almost. Since the hotel considered me a "V.I.P." by virtue of my keynote speech, I was asked by a senior manager how my stay was as I checked out. I told her the story, and she was appropriately disturbed. She had an explanation, however. You see the hotel outsourced much of the reservation work. When I dialed the four digits to make a reservation, my call was routed to an outside vendor in another city. The irritating woman I dealt with was not an employee of the hotel.
Here's the lesson: SO WHAT!? Outsourcing is a competitive necessity these days, but the customer doesn't know, and frankly, doesn't give a damn about how you structure your organization. For me, that employee was the hotel, period. When you choose your supplier partners, you had better make sure they hold the same core values and priorities you do. That "fit" is ultimately far more important than the price that vendor offers you. The price is for the commodity transaction, which is all I got from that employee. The value-added comes from the extras, which are contingent on the meshing of values.
In my case, the manager quickly made amends and my family enjoyed a nice stay the following week. But consider: Had I not given a speech in that hotel, I would not have been asked by a senior manager, and I never would have returned.
So: How many customers are your suppliers capturing, or alienating, for you?