The Cost of a Bad Supplier
Choosing the right water cooler or water boiler for your company is not always an easy task. Once you’ve established what your needs are, you have to shop around for a reputable supplier and then choose from a myriad of different models and plans. It’s a long-term investment and can seem costly, which is why when choosing between suppliers, people sometimes tend towards the cheaper option, thinking they’ll save money in the long run, but what so many forget is the service element and how that can incur unnecessary costs and lost productivity over time, particularly when a machine breaks down or your office runs out of water.
Imagine the following scenario: an employee discovers the water cooler is broken and spends a few minutes trying to figure out what’s wrong; eventually they realise there’s nothing they can do, so they report it to the office manager – 10 minutes wasted. In the interim, other staff members attempt to use the water cooler only to be disappointed; they then spend a few minutes complaining amongst themselves and struggling to get back to whatever tasks they were busy with – 10 minutes wasted. The office manager puts a call through to the supplier – if it’s a national call centre, research shows that we can spend upwards of 27 minutes on hold waiting for someone to address our problem – 27 minutes wasted. Once the office manager finally reaches the right person who can deal with their issue, they then spend more precious time explaining what’s wrong and why they require a call out – 5 minutes wasted.
If you ever want to know what constitutes bad service, spend some time reading through any of the review aggregators online – it may take days before someone can come out to repair your machine, and if the supplier runs an inefficient service where miscommunication runs rife, it may take more than one visit before your water dispenser is fully functional again. Let’s assume, conservatively, that it takes three days before your water cooler is up and running again. During that time, frustrated employees will spend time querying the progress of the repair and even more time complaining about their lack of access to water – over those three days, there will be at least 60 minutes wasted. Not only will they waste time complaining, but studies show that their general unhappiness will further impact their productivity, so even when they’re not specifically querying or complaining, their efficiency will still be affected.
With a bad supplier, each step along the way is wasted time, lost productivity and eventually lost revenue. If we add together all that lost time, it comes to a total of 112 minutes wasted and if we want to allocate a monetary value to that loss, we can work on the average wage in the UK of £13.94 per hour or 23 pence per minute – which means your company has wasted £25.76 thanks to a bad supplier.
By contrast, when you use a leading water cooler supplier like AquAid, you can rest assured that excellent service and customer satisfaction are of paramount importance. AquAid may be nationwide, but they don’t have call centres; each office has its own administration and delivery department which means your call goes directly where it needs to, and if the above scenario was to happen, they would provide a quick and efficient turnaround that would have you back online in typically 24 hours. AquAid customers spend on average £30 per month or £360 per annum. When shopping around for reputable water cooler suppliers, people will often choose the least expensive option allowing a saving of 5% or in this case £18 per year to sway them, but as becomes evident over time and in the scenario above, that saving is quickly lost to bad service. While AquAid may seem slightly more expensive than some of the entry-level water cooler suppliers, their efficiency and attention to detail will ultimately save you time and money in the long run – unlike a bad supplier, which could end up costing you far more than you’d envisaged.
