1 Alter its outputs. The customer will have specified, either in a formal contract or
in a statement of ‘The Terms of Business’, those aspects of the product (either
goods and/or services) that it regards as critical. A supplier may seek to persuade
a customer to change elements of this specification but, especially in cases
where it is one of a number of firms supplying the same item, this might not be
negotiable. However, it may be that there are aspects of the supplier’s outputs
which the customer does not regard as contentious and therefore it is possible
for them to be changed. The challenge is to be certain that the customer’s
expectations are adequately understood as it is not unknown for customers to
express irritation or worse when some aspect of a supplier’s product, which is
not specified in either the contract or the terms of business, is altered. Such
behaviour on the customer’s part may appear unreasonable to the supplier but
may be the result of expectations based on the fact that “you’ve always done it this
way”. For example, Courtaulds once nearly lost a major supply contract because it
changed from packaging its product in wooden crates and began delivering them
in cardboard packs instead. The specific type of packing was not specified in the
contract and the customer admitted that the cardboard packs were completely
adequate but it had been making a not insignificant income through selling the
empty wooden crates.