Business practise, 2005 style
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2005-04-03 17:56:14 - Graham EllisIn the "bad old days", businesses had to spend far too much of their time chasing late and incorrect deliveries from their suppliers, and overdue payments from their customers. Perhaps it's just the business that we're in, but things do seem to have hugely improved on this front ... or perhaps we're now able to choose our suppliers more wisely, and explain our terms more effectively to our customers.
The huge improvement, though, still doesn't leave a perfect situation; just occasionally the odd "situation" still occurs and, co-incidentally, I spend much of this morning writing to three organisations who may be inept in their businesses, or may have found that they can get away with things by not bothering to meet their commitments. I've tried "nice", I've tried "nasty" ... and tomorrow morning they'll learn that we won't just forget it beyond that point. There's a great temptation to "name and shame" but I'm not doing that - I don't want to infuriate but rather to bring about payment / settlement in as friendly a manner as is possible considering the corner these twits have pasted themselves into. But what a waste of time!
Funnily enough, seeing the poor showing of other businesses does have its silver lining. I can heartily cheer when I see a piece of gross business bad faith by someone who could be a competitor of ours - what a great way of shooting themselves in the foot. I love getting the business on the rebound - it's usually a very easy sale to make and by treating the customer well we end up with a long relationship that's good for everyone. A poor supplier or customer - perhaps a bronze rather than a silver lining; certainly a great experience to look at say "we don't do THAT do we?" to ourselves.