Properly utilizing service based vendors?

I work for a government agency that hires various direct-care services through vendors that cover regions of our county. Over the course of a few years I have seen vendors rise and fall based on customer service but am recognizing the trend in a fairly new vendor. I work with hundreds of people doing my exact same job and we make referrals based on word of mouth and familiarity of the vendor and begin referring to only two or three of a dozen vendors.The issue is that there’s no consistency when looking to refer. The county is very large but agencies are happy to grow so coverage becomes inconsistent. As the largest of the agencies fell my team of 18 began unknowingly building up a very charismatic agency that never said no and has a tight system in place for monitoring their accounts. The problem is they’re expanding too quickly and now we’re dealing with service quality complaints. To me it suggests they’re hiring nearly anyone to accommodate the growth. My team alone sees a growth of 30 new consumers monthly who all want these services.What I’m thinking is to coordinate our referrals so we create a stable hiring pattern at each of the selected vendors based on the consensus of the team. Please suggest any models that may be easy to adhere to. We are talking about social workers who have enough on their plate and just want their lives to be made easier. I’m thinking models based on monthly rotations to slow the growth or base it on the vendors dominate region. The letter offers the issue of being limited in service type or availability in a pinch.Am I overthinking this or maybe it’s impossible to focus this sort of thing within a government agency? I find our current approach to cause a bit of stress when I’ve had a month like this where I need a lot of quality providers quickly. via /r/business https://ift.tt/2NCfJmn