During our business careers we forge many partnerships, have you ever thought about why some are so much more successful than others?
Trust
This is non-negotiable. It also needs to be unreserved, unambiguous, and unequivocal. Trust is one of those things that is easy to advertise but a lot more difficult to demonstrate and retain over a long period of time. It is doing what you say you are going to do. It is coming to an agreement and honouring it. It is having contracts that are clear and concise and don’t hide any surprising clauses. It is about trusting someone with your end users, helping you demonstrate products and win new business.
Shared vision
Sharing a vision such as a passion for customer service is important. On a day to day basis it is about having someone to contact and support you, answer queries so you can get back to a customer in a timely fashion. Someone who takes calls after hours like you do, to go the extra mile for your customers. Someone who isn’t dictated to by strict processes and scripts who can help you customise a solution and expedite delivery to meet expectations where possible.
Complimentary skills
Partnering with someone who knows something you don’t is very useful and can help you win new business and expand your own knowledge. Looking for dedicated and experienced suppliers who have access to a wide portfolio of services from multiple suppliers at competitive pricing can be really useful – a one stop shop for all the services your customers may need and don’t currently have.
Often suppliers are also looking for partners with complimentary skills - strong relationships with customers and technical expertise. Partners who are also trusted suppliers of services.
Open and honest communication
Business doesn’t always run smoothly. Technology needs managing, monitoring and upgrading and should disaster strike and an outage occur you want to know what is happening quickly so you can take appropriate action. You want regular updates and when a resolution is found, a full incident report to understand what happened, why and what steps have been taken to make sure that it won’t happen again.
Having and building up personal relationships with suppliers is key. At Jola, as at Griffin, we have forged many successful partnerships and we are always delighted to hear from old friends looking to renew partnerships. If you are in the process of reviewing potential suppliers for internet connectivity, hosted telephony or mobile SIMs, please consider Jola.
