Gamified supplier management
At a networking event earlier this week, I was speaking with a number of business owners from different organisations from law firms, to quantity surveyors, consultants etc. and the obvious question of what is gamification came up.
The previous topic of conversation had been about suppliers and how some would deliver and really delight with their service and other were an absolute nightmare. So I used their example to illustrate how they may want to have a loyal supplier scheme with ratings based on the experience of their service. For example a gold supplier is someone that goes the extra mile, delivers on time and on budget for the quoted amount, silver may be slightly less perfect just delivering what they say they will and then unlisted suppliers who you either have had issues with or are considering dropping altogether.
When you describe exactly how a supplier could enter your gold and silver circles, this could be an aspirational proposition and especially when you are in their preferred target market. I would suggest taking it one step further and for those suppliers in your gold circle, you could actively help them receive referrals, which because they are already delightful to deal with should be relatively straight forward.
The one area to watch out for is that you don’t publicly name and shame suppliers, which may potentially lead you down a legal path. However when you focus on the positive behaviours you want your suppliers to display and make it clear how suppliers can apply to be part of your exclusive club you should have enough grounds to accept new members and like with all loyalty schemes they may only be open for new members on certain times of the year. Bad service delivery however can lead to downgrades in status from gold to silver, which again needs to be quantifiable and identifiable and once again I would be caution on how you communicate this status change.
The illustration definitely got people I was speaking to thinking differently.
If you are already following this strategy and would like to be a featured example, we would love to hear more from you.
So I would love to hear from you how you could see this working for your supplier?
