I believe that acting proactively is always better than acting reactively. Sometimes you don’t have much choice of course and a situation overwhelms you. But in many cases you can exert quite a bit of influence yourself. And by thinking for ourselves and taking some proactive steps, we also make our customers happy. This action by Belinda fits in completely with this picture of tackling and taking action. In any case, our customer E. is satisfied!
Belinda contacted a customer of E. because of an invoice that had been open for some time. Contact person K. emailed her, on a Sunday (!) that the invoice had unfortunately not yet been paid by them due to a misunderstanding. The Territory Manager should not have given the order directly to E., but had run it through their subsidiary. As it always goes. Can happen of course. But the bill still has to be paid. So how do we arrange that?
In order for the payment to run smoothly, K. gave two options:
- Or E. would lapse the invoice and resubmit it to the appropriate company.
- Or K. would have E. included as a supplier in the administration of the company to which the invoice is now addressed. Which is quite an administrative thing for some companies.
The next day she would contact them to settle the matter.
Go ahead
Belinda, of course, wasn’t going to wait for that. She let her contact at E. know what was going on. Monday morning she emailed K. back that E. credits the said invoice and sends the invoice through the subsidiary as always. That same day, Belinda received a forwarded message from EK emailing them: Thank you for this response and for the service! A satisfied customer of our customer. Simply by simply acting proactively and thinking along.