Advice for agencies

I recently ran an RFP for social media agencies and was surprised by a few responses and non responses. One company got back to me after the submission deadline and said that if I wanted to do business with them in the future I should email three people as the one I had as a contact had been on holidays. Note that I did not receive any vacation alerts. Sorry but if you want business you're the one that needs to be responsive - in this day of automation there is no excuse and if you are senior enough to be on your website then have someone monitor your email account when and if you take vacation.

Another response was equally absurd. The company indicated they were interested in responding and then another person at the firm submitted questions. I responded to all questions and I used the first/main contact's email. The day the RFPs were due I emailed them asking if they were going to submit something and they said they were waiting my response to their questions which they would have received a week prior. I emailed them back indicating that I had sent them the answers. They then emailed me saying that because I hadn't emailed the "right" person they should get an additional three days to submit. Hey, its up to you to read your email and talk with each other internally.

Needless to say I will never work with either of those two firms because they don't understand how to read an RFP, don't understand email or email etiquette, certainly they don't understand customer service, and they exposed their lack of organization and internal communication capabilities - seriously for a marketing and social media agency if you don't know the basics why would I trust you with my strategy project?

So agencies take note - if you can't practice what you preach you are going to lose business.