Suppliers of products or services are interested in creating delight in their customer relationships for obvious reasons. Customers who are strongly satisfied will return to buy again and recommend the supplier to other customers. Suppliers who know how to manage their customer relationships will do well.

This article is for those who need to revisit the fundamentals of customer satisfaction to improve their business. In fact, this article provides the ingredients and a path to delivering world-class levels of customer satisfaction.

Many suppliers are guilty of falling into a complacent, reactive orientation with their customers and forget the most fundamental principle. ‘Customers want to have a relationship!'

Customers have a set of relationship expectations, and are internally applying them to every supplier they come across. These expectations have a set of underlying principals that every supplier needs to consider if they are serious about creating satisfied customers.

Principle #1 Customers start out with the expectation of a positive relationship.

The customer begins with the idea and belief that the supplier is going to understand and fulfill their needs. Suppliers must understand that the ball is in their court, and the customer-supplier relationship begins with the opportunity to demonstrate their sensitivity to the customer's needs.

Customer's want to believe that the supplier cares. First impressions are critical, as well as the actions that follow and customers don't want to find anything disappointing, where they might have to compromise their needs. Many suppliers sabotage themselves in innumerable ways by making the customer fight to even get a relationship started. Low staffing levels, service personnel who ignore customers or treat them rudely, untrained or otherwise unprofessional front line representatives and many other factors can set the relationship off on a bad foot from the start.

Suppliers need to understand that their role is to have a relationship. Just getting the customer's money without forming a relationship is a cold, impersonal dissatisfying and selfish way to run a business, and customers don't like it. The larger a business becomes, (large box store retailers who focus solely on low price comes to mind) the less ability to maintain close relationships with their customers they maintain.

The impressions communicated to customers of large impersonal businesses is that these suppliers could care less about a relationship with the customer. The human-to-human relationship connection is missing. Trends of accelerating personnel cuts and increasing automation exacerbate this phenomenon.

Principle #2 Only Win-Win Relationships produce total satisfaction.

If the supplier is serious about producing customer satisfaction by fulfilling the customer's needs (and hopefully every business does actually fulfill a customers need), then they should be prepared to have the customer benefit from the relationship. The Supplier has the customer's money. The customer has the product or service.

Both are satisfied, both are winners in the relationship. It may seem egalitarian, simple and obvious, but it is amazing how many suppliers operate with a different model in mind. In a win-lose relationship one of us is satisfied, and one is not. In a lose-lose relationship, neither are satisfied.

Only Win-Win relationships are worth repeating and are sustainable. When the perception of the balance of the relationship is skewed too much toward either the customer or the supplier, satisfaction will suffer, and the customer-supplier relationship will be at risk.

Win-lose relationships are favored by unscrupulous suppliers or monopoly enterprises that have the market cornered with no other choice for the customer. Customers naturally gravitate towards more satisfying relationships with their suppliers.

Principle #3 Suppliers have a right to get their needs met.

The supplier is ultimately motivated by profit. The supplier is counting on all aspects of customer loyalty and satisfaction, which translate into direct financial benefit. Suppliers want to be known as the best and enjoy the benefits of customer loyalty.

Supplier's want to be known for their unique value proposition, and will structure their business and marketing efforts to establish and be identified with their brand or unique niche. The Supplier has a right to make a profit.

In the reciprocal relationship with the customer, the supplier will deliver the product or service and can't stay in business unless there is profit to sustain the business. How much profit the supplier decides to take is a critical part of establishing a sustainable customer-supplier relationship.

Principle #4 Customers have the need (and the right) to be satisfied.

There are ten domains of satisfaction present in any customer supplier relationship to some degree. These ten factors have a different weighting, depending upon the product or service and work as an integrated set to create an overall customer satisfaction value in the mind of the customer.

This value, when measured on a one to ten scale correlates with various satisfaction behaviors hat range from class action lawsuits and boycotts of a particular supplier on the negative end to world class levels of loyalty and unsolicited positive testimonials and faithfulness to a brand that can span generations.1

Each of the domains of customer satisfaction can be managed and measured by the supplier to maximize benefit to the customer and increase loyalty, preference and return and recommend rates:

Quality

Timeliness

Efficiency

Ease of Access

Environment

Front Line Service Behaviors

Inter-departmental Teamwork

Commitment to the Customer

Innovation

1. What Customers Want! Bart Allen Berry 2002 Aquarius Publishing San Diego California

Principle #5 Win-Win must occur at all levels of the customer-supplier chain.

The Supplier is under pressure to resource more than just the front line with customer attention and convenience. Any part of the customer's experience, in any department or with any person must share the same high level of customer satisfaction focus.

The supplier's responsibility is to also provide the ‘behind the scenes' support, recourses and commitment inside it's own organization and between departments to insure smooth fulfillment of customer needs. Suppliers who are outstanding at satisfying their external or end-user customers are often just as successful satisfying their own internal customers such as employees, contractors and their own vendors.

Principle #6 All relationships begin with self.

The Supplier's representative always has the choice of committing themselves to a quality relationship with the customer. Personnel should be recruited, especially on the front line, which have a natural affinity for relationships with customers. Although this might seem basic, it is often overlooked or is sacrificed because of poor training or low wage unmotivated personnel.

The supplier's personnel need to continually make the individual choice and commitment to connect with customers, to solicit their needs, and to do their best to fulfill them. The customer-supplier relationship is fundamentally a person-to-person relationship. When attentiveness, courtesy, respectful servitude, and enthusiasm are the norm, supplier's will be well on their way towards establishing a satisfying relationship with their customer.

If you're in business, the customer-supplier relationship should be getting your full attention. Continuously improving customer relationships means continuously improving the factors which influence customer satisfaction. These principles can be applied to all of your relationships, as they are all customer-supplier relationships at some level. Think on this.