Firing a Vendor, as seen on Television - by Sanju Dabi
Television definitely has affect on people. This incidence is about the time when I had graduated from university as an Engineer and was on first job where I happen to work under a manager who was quite cool and had plans to teach the new graduate engineers about how to deal with vendors and non-technical aspects of work, apart from doing the technical work.
Those were the days when I was learning UNIX operating system and new applications related with Instrumentation and Control. We had lots of projects going on at shop floor of our company and I was given responsibility of installing and configuring SCADA systems. This was for one of the most important clients of our company. The computers were purchased for a well know firm and for any hardware issues we had a support engineer coming to support us at shop floor. Also we were a big client for this vendor. It so happened, that one support engineer “Mr. Gentleman” was assigned to support our projects. He had been quite good at his work and was also supporting clients other than us. Over period of few weeks we had somewhat friendly communication over support issues.
One day I was facing problem with some hardware in a computer that needed a card to be replaced and was waiting for support person to attend this, however he did not turn up till second day. When I was asked about the progress of my work I informed my manager that I was stuck at the moment due to a hardware problem.
To this my boss explained me how to deal with such situation, he told me “Well you need to call them up and tell them that your project is being affected and this call is of priority, you need to get tough with them and give them some firing too, like if the project gets delayed due to the sluggish support from vendor then it will impact all their future contracts” and also he asked me to call him up when support engineer is present to fix the hardware issue. Oh well now this is how I executed this.
I was a bit excited and panicked since this was my first job and first major execution responsibility. I was not sure of getting support and was thinking over and again about the way I should talk to the vendor. What if I speak in normal tone and I dont get support and then my manager gets angry? He will point out that I was not tough with vendor. Definietly a newcomer confusion and felt myself under pressure, so I decided that I should talk like an executive in power. I called up the support department of the computer vendor and spoke with Mr. Gentleman in a tough voice (as you would see in television soaps when people in office speaking on phone with a sharp commanding tone).
I told "Your hardware is not working fine! Because of your sluggish support we are unable to make any progress in our project, we need you now and immediately here! If you do any delay I will see to it that it has direct effect on further orders we place to your company" and that was it.
All he was telling over phone was "Yes", "Ok", "We will do it" and I was not sure of what would happen next and that time I did not realize what a tough language I had used but was feeling that I had done my duty as instructed by my manager.
And this is what happened next. Within next 2 hours we had the support engineer at out shop floor and our problem was fixed. But then I realized that this guy Mr. Gentleman was more nervous to talk with me while at our shop floor. After he finished installation of new cards, I took him for a tea at our company cafeteria and then called up my boss to tell that problem was fixed. My boss was happy and talked with this person in a very cool tone and then I had all my hardware fixed.
Next day I see that Sales Manager of that computer firm (who was also boss of that support engineer) has come to visit my boss and for a moment I thought he might complain about me being tough with his support engineer. But latter my boss told me that the Sales Manager had come to insure that support would be of the quality and timeliness that we required and there would not be any delays.
My manager was not expecting this visit from the vendor firm but he was very happy with me and thanked me for taking extra steps to insure good support and that I was good at dealing with vendors. I was a bit nervous about way I complained to support engineer and for sure would have got a good lecture from my manager if he came to know that.
After this I never had issue with getting support from this vendor and even for a small problem we had support engineer visiting us on the same day. Still I felt quite uncomfortable later for being tough with this Mr. Gentleman over phone and learnt the right way to solve such issue. Later on with experience I realised that tough language should be used only at end when there are no other options left and things are really out of control.
Its not necessary to show anger to get things done and certianly television is not a right place to learn!
Those were the days when I was learning UNIX operating system and new applications related with Instrumentation and Control. We had lots of projects going on at shop floor of our company and I was given responsibility of installing and configuring SCADA systems. This was for one of the most important clients of our company. The computers were purchased for a well know firm and for any hardware issues we had a support engineer coming to support us at shop floor. Also we were a big client for this vendor. It so happened, that one support engineer “Mr. Gentleman” was assigned to support our projects. He had been quite good at his work and was also supporting clients other than us. Over period of few weeks we had somewhat friendly communication over support issues.
One day I was facing problem with some hardware in a computer that needed a card to be replaced and was waiting for support person to attend this, however he did not turn up till second day. When I was asked about the progress of my work I informed my manager that I was stuck at the moment due to a hardware problem.
To this my boss explained me how to deal with such situation, he told me “Well you need to call them up and tell them that your project is being affected and this call is of priority, you need to get tough with them and give them some firing too, like if the project gets delayed due to the sluggish support from vendor then it will impact all their future contracts” and also he asked me to call him up when support engineer is present to fix the hardware issue. Oh well now this is how I executed this.
I was a bit excited and panicked since this was my first job and first major execution responsibility. I was not sure of getting support and was thinking over and again about the way I should talk to the vendor. What if I speak in normal tone and I dont get support and then my manager gets angry? He will point out that I was not tough with vendor. Definietly a newcomer confusion and felt myself under pressure, so I decided that I should talk like an executive in power. I called up the support department of the computer vendor and spoke with Mr. Gentleman in a tough voice (as you would see in television soaps when people in office speaking on phone with a sharp commanding tone).
I told "Your hardware is not working fine! Because of your sluggish support we are unable to make any progress in our project, we need you now and immediately here! If you do any delay I will see to it that it has direct effect on further orders we place to your company" and that was it.
All he was telling over phone was "Yes", "Ok", "We will do it" and I was not sure of what would happen next and that time I did not realize what a tough language I had used but was feeling that I had done my duty as instructed by my manager.
And this is what happened next. Within next 2 hours we had the support engineer at out shop floor and our problem was fixed. But then I realized that this guy Mr. Gentleman was more nervous to talk with me while at our shop floor. After he finished installation of new cards, I took him for a tea at our company cafeteria and then called up my boss to tell that problem was fixed. My boss was happy and talked with this person in a very cool tone and then I had all my hardware fixed.
Next day I see that Sales Manager of that computer firm (who was also boss of that support engineer) has come to visit my boss and for a moment I thought he might complain about me being tough with his support engineer. But latter my boss told me that the Sales Manager had come to insure that support would be of the quality and timeliness that we required and there would not be any delays.
My manager was not expecting this visit from the vendor firm but he was very happy with me and thanked me for taking extra steps to insure good support and that I was good at dealing with vendors. I was a bit nervous about way I complained to support engineer and for sure would have got a good lecture from my manager if he came to know that.
After this I never had issue with getting support from this vendor and even for a small problem we had support engineer visiting us on the same day. Still I felt quite uncomfortable later for being tough with this Mr. Gentleman over phone and learnt the right way to solve such issue. Later on with experience I realised that tough language should be used only at end when there are no other options left and things are really out of control.
Its not necessary to show anger to get things done and certianly television is not a right place to learn!
posted by Sanju Dabi at 10:03 PM
1 Comments:
First of all u should be polite with all people and especially polite in the business world. I think that that harsh tone could made an impression as if you are a nervouse and crasy person who do not think before he is doing something an so on... Sure the problem was solved but you had a bad conscience and this is bad!!! Coz not everybody can fill themselves all right after such disputes.And besides if everybody would behave this way.......it wil be so un sivilised!YOu should use tough tone only after a polite tone did not solve the problem. So, Respect, respect and respect!
Post a Comment
<< Home