Great article, Jacob! Can attest to witnessing the results of yours/LW team's outperformance of service provider timelines many times.
Other things I might add (having done these myself): 1. Find about the current status for each of the steps in their respective staffing and inventory logistics / system. You might find out the specific bottleneck in their fulfillment process and work together to solve directly for that. For example, the solution for #12, the issue could be the drivers / fleet are not available on their routes (presumably always predetermined) and you just offer to use a private courier/pay their on-site staff overtime if it's going to be picked outside of business hours.
2. Continuing on point #6: Escalating to someone beyond the first person with customer service (the mgr/supervisor typically has more institutional knowledge about the company and decision making power to perform workarounds like tip #13 here). 2b. If you're able to get a hold of a manager, you can sprinkle in that you'd go to a competing brand - potentially even name drop them (eg: I've said "LG" to Dell for expediting a monitor purchase). They're incentives are lined up to fulfill your order for business and you can leverage one's loss aversion.
There's bit of tact/grace required here to prevent things becoming adversarial: By doubling down on your state of duress for urgency/delivery (even being apologetic about it), you can claim that you prefer their brand/products but would have to go with a competitor that offers a similar model in the timescale you want.
3. "Sleight of Hand" styled-tip: Some manufacturers have many retail partners that they sell to. These are usually private/small businesses that advertise the same model/unit under a different label and customized SKU # such that querying for either of these two (also things I do) wouldn't return in your local options. They might be able to give you the names of store partners (browse online catalog / just call them).
4. Start with bigger brands/companies first. Bigger companies/brands are more likely to have retail partners or the fixed assets to support expedites (eg: real estate and OpEx for distribution centers). Since they're a larger organization, the tradeoff is to expect to deploy more communication strategies to escalate through call respondents until you get to the decision maker or person that is in a position to help you in real-time.
I've personally seen the most variance on the manufacturing step. Making the thing is usually a lot more variable than delivering it. A model that is only made-to-order for a brand (often smaller/luxury businesses) where the model is produced overseas is kind of a hopeless gambit to get to your doorstep quicker.
Great article, Jacob! Can attest to witnessing the results of yours/LW team's outperformance of service provider timelines many times.
Other things I might add (having done these myself):
1. Find about the current status for each of the steps in their respective staffing and inventory logistics / system. You might find out the specific bottleneck in their fulfillment process and work together to solve directly for that. For example, the solution for #12, the issue could be the drivers / fleet are not available on their routes (presumably always predetermined) and you just offer to use a private courier/pay their on-site staff overtime if it's going to be picked outside of business hours.
2. Continuing on point #6: Escalating to someone beyond the first person with customer service (the mgr/supervisor typically has more institutional knowledge about the company and decision making power to perform workarounds like tip #13 here).
2b. If you're able to get a hold of a manager, you can sprinkle in that you'd go to a competing brand - potentially even name drop them (eg: I've said "LG" to Dell for expediting a monitor purchase). They're incentives are lined up to fulfill your order for business and you can leverage one's loss aversion.
3. "Sleight of Hand" styled-tip: Some manufacturers have many retail partners that they sell to. These are usually private/small businesses that advertise the same model/unit under a different label and customized SKU # such that querying for either of these two (also things I do) wouldn't return in your local options. They might be able to give you the names of store partners (browse online catalog / just call them).
4. Start with bigger brands/companies first. Bigger companies/brands are more likely to have retail partners or the fixed assets to support expedites (eg: real estate and OpEx for distribution centers). Since they're a larger organization, the tradeoff is to expect to deploy more communication strategies to escalate through call respondents until you get to the decision maker or person that is in a position to help you in real-time.