Unreasonable Customers

This Saturday I will be working. Yes, you read correctly, working. As all my previous entries, I am working on a 5 days week company, however, this Saturday is exceptional.

This customer is really unreasonable. He is a facility manager for a reputable manufacturing company which would like to outsource one of their facilities and we are keen to take over.

However, it seem this exercise is so "secretive" that we are only allowed to visit the plant on Saturdays when the current operators is not working. To me this is not acceptable.

How can we who wants to take over the facility not able to see the plant in running condition and not allowed to talk to the operators? How can we evaluate the system performance of the plant if we are not allowed to audit a running plant? How do we know if the system is able to run or the specific equipment is in good running condition or not? How do we know what are the daily routine of the operators?

How can you invite people to submit a commercial proposal to operate a facility and not allowing them to know the situation of the facility? It is just like you are trying to rent out a house allow the tenant to view the house physically but not allowing the person to switch on and test all power point and taps to see if the electricity is available or water is connected or not.

This is a very unreasonable customer. The situation is made worse with the ignorance of our sales person who agrees to the customer's unreasonable request. I know sales is very important in the bad economic time, however, being a sales person, it will be your duty and responsibility to explain to the customer the viability of the action customer suggest and not blindly accept what the customer says and be a "Yes Man" all the time.

Another very unreasonable customer is the customers who like to call you at odd hours (odd hours here I define by after 7pm on weekdays) and on weekends. However, on Saturdays I understand as some companies does work on Saturdays, hence, they might not realise that their supplier do not work on Saturday when they call.

I do not understand what the customers are thinking to have call suppliers on odd hours and over weekends. What do they expect us, the suppliers to do at odd hours? Is the matter so important that you need to call people at that time and discuss about it? What will possibly happen if the call is postpone until tomorrow morning? Will the plant be shut down or the factory be closed?

What action can we take if you were to call during that time? 99.9% of the time, the necessary action only can be taken tomorrow morning when the business resume and no action is able to be taken from the time of the call to the next morning. So what is wrong with calling in the morning during working hours instead? Besides not getting your things done over the night, you would have also disturb the person's emotional mind as now he / she have this issue hanging on their mind until the morning. Is that the main intention? How would you like it if this happens to you?

Come on fellow customers, most of us are not for a 24 hours operating company. Hence, please be more considerate. Please do not think that with your few dollars paying to suppliers, the suppliers is obliged to entertain your request 24 x 7. Please respect people's privacy and personal time.

Therefore, to all out there, please be a little more considerate. Think before your put a request to your supplier or call your supplier. Take a peek at the clock or watch before picking up the phone.