We’ve all heard the saying, “the customer is always right.” So when a customer and vendor disagree, it implies the vendor is always wrong. I realize this is a customer service driven idea meant to teach us to take care of our customers.
However, I have seen companies blame vendors all too often, without examining their own shortcomings. This is an epidemic in our culture, it’s always someone else’s fault and no one wants to be accountable!
Just this week I had an opportunity to do business with a major U.S. company. A company most everyone has heard of but will remain nameless. To my surprise I lost their business at the last moment. In fact, one of the VP’s had stated just days before, “I am ready to cut you a check tomorrow.” The deal was done, right? Well, not exactly…after a lot of meetings and numerous discussions met with many delays. I was told that we (the vendor) were missing a key component. What’s ironic is that I did countless demo’s and was assured that the deal was done. The missing feature was never mentioned. Then bam, it’s over!
We may have been able to accommodate this last minute need, but we’ll never know! We will continue to do business and press forward and I will examine what I could have done differently.
How can a major company have a year and a half of meetings, discussions, and reach the end of a path only to find out that they didn’t really know what they wanted and then simply brush it off as a vendor problem? It always hurts to lose business, but the vendor isn’t always be wrong.
–Warren