The toxic relationship between customers and tech vendors in ASEAN

A vendor team is building a proposal for a strategic customer in ASEAN. Because they want to do a good job, they have roped in various overlay teams from different business units to put together a proposal. Two weeks went by with countless sync up meetings, collaborative work, late night calls to coordinate timezone differences and dry runs. The team is ready for the call!

The vendor team does a last catch up prior to the morning presentation on Zoom to iron out any last minute changes and make sure there aren't any technical hiccups. Six team members from across the Asia Pacific region dial in to wait for the customer at 9am. The first customer team member to join the call is the Executive Assistant to the Tech Leader. She informed us that the leader would be running late because of an earlier meeting.

She reminded him about the meeting after 5 minutes. 10 minutes of silence ensued and she apologises for the delay with a random reason that he might have worked late last night and may be busy with other things. She requested that we wait for another 5 minutes. At the 25 minute mark, she decides it's probably appropriate to reschedule the session for another day. This is because she still hasn't heard back from the leader and apologises to the team for the inconvenience. It is inevitable that sometimes life happens and we get caught up in higher priority items. However, there are aspects of this experience that are truly unprofessional.

Before I dive into what pisses me off the most, I'll say this.

Customers in ASEAN have this mentality that because they pay for a product/service, they can treat tech vendors like they own them.

This dates back to the age old saying that the "customer is always right" and as customers, they take it literally. It doesn't help that over the years, tech vendors in desperate need have often accepted these bad behaviours as norm.

So why is it so unacceptable you may ask?

Last minute clashes or no shows

We all know that every now and then, we may have accidentally double booked ourselves or missed a meeting to attend to an emergency and etc. However, what is not acceptable is when you do not provide any notification or heads up while everyone else waits on you. In the context of the story above, he could have simply informed the assistant that he apologises rather than being unavailable. I've also had meetings scheduled in ASEAN where the customer has been late to the meeting for 90 minutes.

The team decided to reschedule after 60 minutes but when the customer arrived at 90 minutes, he was upset because we left and did not wait up.

Time is precious to everyone

Which brings me to the next point on "time". Just because the tech vendor wants to sell you something doesn't always mean their time is less precious than the customer's. Making a vendor wait for 60 minutes is an hour of productivity lost. As tech vendors, sales teams have processes and other tasks they need to attend to. In addition, technical folks could understand a new tech to serve the customer better. Tech vendors are also employees of a business. Unfortunately, we do more than just sit around and wait for a purchase to happen.

The tech vendor has scheduled time for various individuals from the region as shown above in the example above. That adds up to wasted productivity for 6 different individuals

While I may be generalising the customer base in ASEAN, the vendor-bashing culture is deeply ingrained in the region. It is an unpopular opinion for sure which I won't get into today, but customers need to view tech vendors in a different light. We are no longer hoping to close a sale just by having a stellar relationship. Many of us genuinely want to work together to improve things for customers through our solutions.

I know it sounds cliché, but it is the year 2023, not 2000. And by the way, the customer isn't always right either.