The drive for a more customer centric approach and focus is even greater in today’s market than ever before. The agility of any sourcing professional to engage, articulate and secure the trust of the customer is taken for granted in today’s competitive business landscape. What sets one apart from the crowd however is the ability to take personal ownership for customer satisfaction, resolving issues and exceptions perhaps occasionally exceeding the customers’ expectations or even delighting them.

Insight, control and compliance are now key attributes that any service professional must bring to the table. The ability to transform and adapt to the customer’s environment while providing a client centric leadership approach to procurement can only enhance the customer’s journey and experience.

Time and again the customer’s expectations are at best mis-managed and at worst not even remotely considered which is tantamount to gross negligence and mis-conduct disenfranchising the customer from the procurement experience and process. Procurement teams, meanwhile, are constantly striving to avoid a ‘business pariah’ label and be accepted within the business community for the benefits they can and do deliver.

Procurement is at times perceived as burdensome bureaucracy, a dark art, that complicates what, in the eyes of the budget holder, is already a ‘done deal’ and something that should be kept at arms length. The procurement professional must embrace the concept of customer service and satisfaction adapting their style to ingratiate themselves to the rest of the business to truly become an asset with widely recognised intrinsic value.

Outside the office doors, as consumers, we demand higher and higher levels of customer service driven by our insatiable need for an easier, less complicated life, so why should our customers be any different. Quick enough to establish robust and rigorous levels of customer service with the supply chain to deliver contractual commitments, procurement should consider establishing a service charter of it’s own to it’s customers, the budget holders, that not only commits to the delivery of tangible financial benefits but also establishes a commitment to customer service and satisfaction.

Only by investing in these less tangible skill sets will procurement dispel the metaphor of Neanderthal man on the hunt wielding a big stick against the supply chain and win the hearts and minds of the wider establishment to truly instil procurement as an integral part of any business community.

Procurement after all is a service not a privilege and our ability to interact and converse with our customers are as vital to realising value from any supplier relationship as any honed negotiation skills. The true value is the sustainability of the relationship and our ability to act responsibly and with responsibility.

Through a higher quality customer service experience we can establish solid and sustainable relationships with our ‘customers’ whether they are internal stakeholders, suppliers, colleagues or within our private lives that will stand the test of time and challenge. It is essential to the fabric of our business, and social, interactions that the more willing we are as individuals to accept and take responsibilities for our actions and the way we behave, the more our customers will value us for our integrity, contribution and insight embracing the procurement service.