What is the most often asked question from customers?
“When can I expect delivery of the product I just ordered?”
They want a date, a reliable date, to expect delivery.
It seems like a reasonable request.
Here is a partial list of the costs of missing the promised delivery date:
- Customers get frustrated
- Customers switch the future orders to competitors
- Revenues decline
- Valuable sales people’s time is diluted from selling to damage control
- Internal company conflict erupts. Sometimes causing shouting matches between departments such as sales, customer service and manufacturing
- Cost of doing business is driven up as the supplier scrambles to ship the late order