After the new supplier honeymoon is over, B2B customers settle in for the long-term, day-to-day business of getting on.
That’s when customers don’t want to hear their supplier is doing well. When their supplier’s given “good enough” service and the customer doesn’t worry anymore.
This is a problem for suppliers because when customers don’t want to hear about their suppliers’ good work, customers are only left hearing about suppliers’ failures.
B2B customers are like their suppliers: overburdened and understaffed. Once a supplier is doing “good enough,” that customer’s manager moves on to put out other fires or fry other fish (terrible metaphor combo that).
Although this article, “Performance Reporting as Edutainment,” describes how corporate security departments can better report performance to their higher ups – the same holds true for all suppliers. Whether reporting upstream in an org, or from contracted suppliers to their customer contacts.
It’s worth a read to see a new way for suppliers to tell their customers about “good” performance.
(This article first appeared as a post in LinkedIn).
