When Your Supplier Cannot Give You a Date

The pressure to invent one

A customer asks when. You do not know, because your supplier has not told you, and they may not know either.

Saying you do not know feels like a poor answer. So a date gets offered, based on what usually happens, to make the conversation end well.

That date is now a promise. When it passes, you have a second conversation which is substantially worse than the first would have been.

The invented date does not buy time. It borrows it, at a poor rate.

What to say instead

Three parts, and all of them are honest.

What you know. The order is placed, the supplier has it, this is where it sits.

What you do not. Plainly: they have not given a shipping date, and here is why if you know.

When you will know more. A date on which you will chase and report back, whether or not there is news.

The third is what makes the answer acceptable. An open-ended uncertainty is intolerable; a bounded one with a check-in date is manageable.

A worked example

A kitchen fitter whose appliance supplier stopped giving delivery dates entirely.

His first instinct was to quote his usual four weeks, because that was what it had always been. Several jobs then ran to nine or ten weeks, and every one of those customers was angry by the end.

He changed the conversation. Quotes said the fitting work would take four days once materials arrived, that appliances were currently unpredictable, and that he would confirm a fitting date only when the delivery was confirmed.

He also called each waiting customer every Friday, even in the weeks he had nothing to report.

He lost some jobs to people promising a date. He kept the customers he had, and several of them said afterwards that the Friday calls were why.

The ones who left for a confident date frequently came back a month later, because the date had not been real and somebody else had now disappointed them.

The Friday call

The single most effective practice in this whole situation, and it is unglamorous.

Contact everybody waiting, on a fixed day, whether or not there is news. Two lines is enough: still no date, chased again today, will update next week.

The value is not information, because there frequently is none. It is that the customer stops wondering whether they have been forgotten.

Most anger about delays is not about the delay. It is about silence, and the suspicion that nobody is paying attention.

Chasing the supplier properly

What actually produces information from somebody who has none to give.

Ask specific questions rather than when will it arrive. Has it shipped from the manufacturer. Is it allocated to my order. Is there a queue position. What would have to happen for it to move.

Specific questions get answers even when the general one cannot be answered, and the answers tell you which stage the problem is actually at.

Ask in writing, so there is a record, and ask the same person each time if you possibly can.

The counter-case

Where committing to a date is right despite the uncertainty.

When the customer has a genuine deadline and needs to know whether to go elsewhere. Refusing to commit is not helpful there; the useful answer is that you cannot meet it and they should look elsewhere.

When you can carry the risk yourself, by holding stock or paying for expedited supply, and the certainty is worth more to you than the cost.

And for small components where the worst case is acceptable, and a conservative date you will beat is simpler than an explanation.

Uncertainty is worth passing on when it is real. It is not an excuse to avoid every commitment.

Putting it on the website

Better than answering it individually forty times.

A short, dated note saying that lead times on particular items are currently unpredictable, what you are doing about it, and that you will confirm dates when suppliers do.

Dated matters. An undated note is stale immediately and a customer cannot tell whether it still applies.

It also sets expectation before the enquiry rather than during it, which means the conversation starts from a shared position instead of a disappointment.

What to stop doing

• Quoting your normal lead time out of habit.
• Waiting for news before contacting anybody.
• Passing on a supplier's optimistic date without saying it is theirs.
• Taking deposits for work you cannot schedule.
• Avoiding the customer because the conversation is uncomfortable.

The third is subtle and common. If a supplier gives you a date you do not believe, passing it on unqualified transfers their optimism to you and the blame with it.

Giving the customer their options

The part that turns a bad conversation into a useful one.

Somebody facing an unknown wait wants to know what they can do about it, and there are usually three or four things.

Wait, with a stated check-in. Take an alternative that is available now, with the difference explained honestly. Cancel and be refunded. Or part-proceed, where some of the work can happen without the delayed item.

Presenting those as choices moves the customer from being a victim of the situation to making a decision about it, which is a considerably better position for both of you.

It also surfaces who is genuinely in a hurry and who is not, which changes how you prioritise whatever supply does arrive.

What this costs and buys

Honestly, because the trade is real.

You will lose work to competitors who quote confidently. Some of those quotes will be honoured and some will not.

What you keep is the customers you have, and a reputation for being straight that outlasts the disruption.

For a small business dependent on referrals, that is usually the better trade, and it is the one that is hardest to hold to while watching work go elsewhere on a promise you know cannot be kept.

Telling somebody the news itself is the harder conversation, and it deserves its own treatment.

Frequently asked questions

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