A recent article over on Chief Executive had some great tips on How to Deliver Superior Customer Service that apply equally well to Supply Management as Service Delivery. These tips are important because if you figure out what your customers want and how you can adapt your offerings to best serve their needs, you will raise your profile in their eyes. Since the lifetime value of their support is much more than that of your average supplier, this is a good thing. So what was their advice?

1. Always Ask What You Can Do Better
   More feedback means more opportunities for improvement, from the first consultation to the final delivery of product. Remembering that the best way to reduce spend and increase value is to be involved from the time of product or service design, and not after the requirements have been locked in leaving you nothing to do but run a bid between the only two suppliers who can meet the demand, you need to figure out how you can provide value as early as possible — just like a consultant trying to maximize an engagement who knows that a smart customer only keeps her around as long as she provides value. For some customers who understand your value, it might be introducing them to multi-round bids and optimization as an alternative to auctions. For those new to Supply Management, it might be showing them how to speed up information gathering with RFIs. And for those who think Supply Management only comes into play when the need is met, it might be educating them on cost and how you can take cost out. And for those who need to work with a preferred supplier (do to long term contracts or very special needs), it might be teaching them the basics of SRM so they can get more out of the relationship.
2. Bottoms Up
   Customer driven organizations understand and embrace the idea that their success depends solely on the customer’s satisfaction and must be willing to do whatever it takes to deliver on the promise. This means listening, and responding, to the needs of the client organization. If a certain organization makes a request for help on an RFx every six months, have it at the ready when they come back to you at the expected time.
3. Win Back At-Risk Customers
   Sometimes a business unit is going to have a “bad experience” no matter how much good effort you put into helping them. They might come to you with expectations of double digit cost savings in a market where commodity costs are skyrocketing and suppliers hold all the power. They might get the rug yanked out from under them because the new supplier you helped them find suddenly goes out of business when a natural disaster wipes out their primary plant. And so on. Even if this only happens one in one hundred events, these internal customers are at risk because the bad experience will be ten times as memorable as the best experience to date. So even if the overall value the business unit gets is high, there’ll still be some animosity due to the failure if you don’t go the extra mile to make them extra happy on another equally important project. As long as there is lingering animosity, you risk resistance on any future project that brings back memory of the failure. This could hinder your success in the future.
4. Make Your Intentions Clear
   Let them know that even though corporate has given you a mandate to cut cost, your number one concern is to provide them with value, and that since you understand total cost and total value models, you know that if you don’t at least maintain quality and service, overall costs will go up year-over-year even though unit costs go down. As a result, you are there to get them value first and any actions you take or requests you make will be to help the organization get that value, even if sounds like you may be putting your organization or goals first.

It’s great advice, and it only missed one important point (which is as true from a Supply Management perspective as it is from a Customer Service perspective), and that’s:

• Your definition of value is not necessarily your [internal] customer’s definition of value.
  As Lamar Chesney, CPO of SunTrust pointed out in his presentation on Value Perspectives at the Next Practices Xchange^* this spring (as summarized in SI’s post that wanted to know whether you are really focussed on value), what often takes place is an exchange, but never an interchange, of words [that] is fragmented and restricted [in] expression because both sides talk past each other because our view of value (as Supply Management Professionals) is not their view of value (as Finance, Manufacturing, Logistics, Marketing, etc. Professionals). Make sure you understand their definition of value before promising that you can help.

^* The Fall Next Practices Xchange takes place at the Oak Brook HIlls Marriott, in Oak Brook, Illinois on Friday, November 4, 2011.