I'm no lawyer, but I am familiar with the term hearsay... This is a special topic that can arise when coordinating events... Early in my career I learned the hard way of the importance of a paper trail.
The game of coordination is gratifying in many ways, but it is also a seriously long game of back and forth. Negotiating with suppliers unfortunately isn't a one shot deal. Think of a menu for example, you meet with a caterer, give them ideas, they put together a menu and give you a price, you tweak it, then taste it, then finalize it. A whole lotta' back and forth.
Because of that it becomes very hard to keep track of what was said, and therefore extremely important to have a record of everything. I always follow up a phone call with an email so that I can be 100% sure that if there is ever a discrepancy I can back myself up, OR own up to a mistake.
I once had a situation where I determined a budget for a client for a certain aspect of their event, and put them in touch with the supplier. I spoke to the supplier and said "I am sending you this client, they need your services, here is a basic overview of what they need, and they need it to stay within this budget, can you do it?" They said "Yes". I said "Ok, I am going to put you in touch directly, if they ask for anything that would go above this budget please advise them along the way that anything is possible, but this will cost extra".
Fast forward a few months, the details have been finalized amongst the client and the supplier, and the supplier comes to me and says, what they wanted in the end is not what we initially discussed, it is $X more per person, I advised them of this along the way, we are now at this total.... I check in with the client who says they were never advised of an price increase, and cannot spend even $1 more per person than originally discussed, and of course is not very happy about any of it.
First lesson in the life coaching of myself: Pride is useless. You make a mistake, you own it. In this case, clearly, I should have been present at all interactions between the supplier and the client, because now we are embarking on a game of he said she said and I was never there so I cannot be of any help, and yet, I am of course expected to fix the situation.
There's no clear answer to this one, it is a real pickle because you can never ever call your client a liar, and here the supplier is basically doing that. I went back to the client and said "Here's what we initially discussed, and here is where we are at now, which are very obviously very different scales of items" and the client's response was, "I should have been told, I wasn't too bad". And then of course adds, "Plus my event is now less than 2 months away and I don't feel very confident about anything at all".
Reminding myself that my number one goal has to be my client and their overall satisfaction, the only thing that I can think of to do is be solution oriented.
First- I own my stuff. I tell my client that I apologize, I should have been there, and I wasn't. Though we agreed that you would be put in touch directly, if there was even a 1% chance that something like this could happen, I should have been present. I tell my client that I will do whatever I can to fix the situation, and I completely understand where they are coming from. It's not right to be put in this situation so close to the event, and I truly apologize.
*Lesson in human nature; Owning a mistake tends to calm angry people. Getting defensive and trying to justify or even just explain a mistake will further the anger and continue the argument. The fastest way to simmer a heated exchange is to own your mistakes and swallow your pride, people can only push back so much when your response is "I know, you are right, I'm sorry" (I think men figured this out long ago, only us women don't buy it quite so easily from them :)*
Second- I arrange for a meeting with all 3 parties. This needs to be clarified, and I cannot continue to play messenger, its time for me to mediate.
Third- I let the supplier know that I am not OK with how this went down, my clients always come first, without them I have no business. This situation needs to be resolved, and it cannot become a game of he said she said, so we will go into this meeting with solutions, not arguments. We come up with 3 similar ideas that work within the price range to present to the client at the meeting.
Luck was on my side, and in this case the client loved one of the new ideas even more than the original. (Please insert "phew" emoticon here).
Personal Lesson: I hate when I am wrong, I hate to get in trouble. I will try to learn from this and avoid this at all costs!
Professional Lesson: It is OK that I cannot be everywhere at all times, but if I am going to put a client and a supplier directly in touch with each other, I better make sure to cover myself! Make sure that I am cc'd on every exchange between client and supplier etc... etc... etc...
What are your thoughts?
No comments:
Post a Comment