The Customer Service Survey
VocaLabs' weblog providing news and commentary on the challenges of providing good customer service.
Company Culture
Thursday - November 01, 2007 02:39 PM in
I get to work with a number of different companies trying to sell our services, and every organization has its own process for vendor selection and contracting. The differences are sometimes striking:
Company A does a complete contracting and legal review process even for relatively small projects. For our project, my best guess is that they spent more on legal fees to review and revise the contract than the dollar value of the contract, and a relatively smallish project took months to pass muster.
At Company B we worked with a key individual who has more authority and influence than her nominal title and job description would suggest. If we can convince Key Individual to kick off a project, all other obstacles melt away.
Company C, like Company A, insists on a comprehensive review and contracting process, but they rely on several "form contracts" for various types of relationships. The first draft of the contract was basically all the relevant forms combined into a single document (which was about 80 pages long!). The remainder of the process was mostly cutting irrelevant parts of the draft, resolving internal contradictions, etc.
Company D gives an unusual level of authority to the manager in the field--whatever his formal authority, it appears he can pretty much do whatever he wants as long as his P&L looks good at the end of the year. Contracting was so informal as to be almost an afterthought.
Company E insisted on formal proposals and a minimum of three vendors competing for every contract above a certain size. Selection criteria were somewhat opaque, but it appears that final selection was based on the personal preference of one or two senior executives.
Posted by Peter Leppik
At Company B we worked with a key individual who has more authority and influence than her nominal title and job description would suggest. If we can convince Key Individual to kick off a project, all other obstacles melt away.
Company C, like Company A, insists on a comprehensive review and contracting process, but they rely on several "form contracts" for various types of relationships. The first draft of the contract was basically all the relevant forms combined into a single document (which was about 80 pages long!). The remainder of the process was mostly cutting irrelevant parts of the draft, resolving internal contradictions, etc.
Company D gives an unusual level of authority to the manager in the field--whatever his formal authority, it appears he can pretty much do whatever he wants as long as his P&L looks good at the end of the year. Contracting was so informal as to be almost an afterthought.
Company E insisted on formal proposals and a minimum of three vendors competing for every contract above a certain size. Selection criteria were somewhat opaque, but it appears that final selection was based on the personal preference of one or two senior executives.
Posted by Peter Leppik
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