Getting a Sense of Urgency from your Forwarder

In the shipping industry, products need to move fast. One of the biggest complaints customers have when working with a forwarder or customs broker is that they lack the same sense of urgency that is needed to push the product along. The quick answer would be to move on to another company. True, but while it is easy to move to another service provider at the beginning of a business relationship, it is not always as easy once you have had years of working together. There are established trusts that are hard to duplicate and sometimes it is just a small misunderstanding of what the customer needs. This can be the case when working with smaller companies as much as larger companies because it can many times be traced back to lower level employees or changes in employees who do not know the bigger picture. Unfortunately if there are changes in employees, it just requires further training to get them up to speed. The key to any business relationship is communication. If you are seeing trouble, and you are finding it hard to express it to your daily contacts, you need to protect your interests and let the higher level people know. No matter how many shipping containers you are shipping per month, your freight forwarder does not want to lose you as a customer. It may be helpful to have a new employee working on site a few days a week or even every day temporarily to give them a full understanding. If you are finding that you cannot work with your account manager, ask for another representative. It may take a month or two to fully change over, but in the long run, your service provider is looking to keep you as happy as possible.