Evaluation of tenders

Beviews are in vogue: participants judge a seminar, the guest judges the hotel room, customers judge suppliers. When the supplier follows up his offer, he wants to know how the customer assesses it. The focus is on products and services, delivery dates and service, and less on the evaluation criteria in the offer such as comprehensiveness, clear structure, explanation of the technology, breakdown of prices. If customers are dissatisfied in these areas, they rarely get in touch. A site assessment is the best basis for the provider to make changes. In order to obtain feedback from the customer, the written questionnaire has become established in practice. In the case of telephone enquiries, the questionnaire can be used as a guide. The satisfaction inquiry makes sense especially if there are frequent queries from the customer due to ambiguities in the offer. Offers are perfect when queries are not necessary.

The questionnaire

Unsolicited and minor offers are excluded from the evaluation. It is the manager's task to convince his team of the action satisfaction control and to ease his concerns that critical remarks of the customer could have consequences.

The form can already be emailed with the offer, but no later than ten days after delivery. If there are several decision-makers on the customer side, each should make a separate assessment. A technician assesses according to different criteria than a businessman. Experience shows that the response rate is a maximum of 30 percent. In the introductory phase, the figure is lower. If the provider attaches particular importance to certain customer offers, he can "dun" by telephone if the response is not forthcoming.

Questions and scaling

A maximum of 10 questions should be offered to fit on one page so that the readiness to respond is not impaired. Questionnaires that take more than five minutes to complete will be rejected by the customer. There are several options when it comes to scaling. While the grading scale is getting on in years, al

The lenient customer as an assessor already looks generously over disturbing factors.

However, most people can cope with it, because the system corresponds to the school grades, which is well known to all. Often you will find the point scale (5 - 1). The scaling with "PLUS" and "MINUS" is also familiar. Smileys have not become established. Currently, the scale is based on the degree of fulfilment in percent. The scaling ideally comprises five levels. In addition, the customer can use exclamation marks to indicate which two points are particularly important to him and thus assign a weighting.

In order to achieve a positive image effect with the survey, the design of the questionnaire is also of central importance. An unprofessionally designed, unclear and not chronologically structured questionnaire does not motivate to complete it. There are some rules for the wording of the individual questions. They should be short (no subordinate clauses). They must be unambiguous, i.e. each question may only convey one aspect (be careful with "and" or "or" links). They should leave as little room for interpretation as possible and be formulated concretely.

So that poorly evaluated offers are not simply deleted from the employee, it is requested that they be returned to the manager. If the employee is the recipient, he usually forwards only the well rated offers to his manager. Customers have an expectation for improvement on the items they rated negatively. Surveys must therefore lead to consequences. Those who receive criticism and do not change anything irritate their customers. If criticism cannot be eliminated, one must provide the customer with an explanation or remove the question from the form. About poorly rated points, the manager makes telephone contact with the customer.

Article designations in the offer

The question for the provider is how to highlight certain text passages in the offer: larger font, bold, italic, centered? And how detailed should unique selling points be marked, e.g. savings effects or novelties? It is attractive for the customer if the items offered at a special price are explicitly marked. Longer rows of numbers should be separated by the space bar after two or three digits for better legibility. In the case of longer delivery times, the note must not be missing that this is an exceptional situation, e.g. due to the season or a trade fair. Without this note, the customer has the impression that the delivery times are always this long. If the offer takes longer than usual, an interim telephone message is necessary. It must not get to the point where the customer has to dun the offer.

Possible valuation errors

For customers, evaluating offers is always a process of perception and requires good judgment as well as the ability to compare with other offers. In the process, various errors occur. One speaks of the "overlighting effect" when the customer draws conclusions about the overall picture from a conspicuous feature in the offer. Example: The unclear structure is transferred to the evaluation point "comprehensiveness". One point outshines all other perceptions. The "sympathy effect" means that the sympathetic supplier is judged generously and positively.

The customer has higher expectations of suppliers and providers with whom he does not maintain an active relationship. In addition, technicians in the customer's company have a completely different perspective than business people and judge offers differently. Although perceptions are subjective, they must be taken seriously by the supplier.

The lenient customer as an assessor looks generously over disturbing factors. Demanding customers take the ideal state as a benchmark and expect a perfect offer. Critical customers expect an immediate change of the negatively ticked points at the next offer submission.