Living for Tomorrow with Today in mind!
Are
you thinking of your customer service department when reading this article’s
title? Hey, that’s cool but when we think sustainable customer service, do we
really think about all departments, employees, contractors, distributors,
vendors, regulators and the most important stakeholder of all, which is the
customer??
The
fact is that customer service is a department that has handled many different
functions ranging from credit control to telesales, telemarketing and on
occasion more exotic assignments making its way into the departmental mandate
that defines a ‘customer service’ department. Customer service is defined as “the
process of ensuring customer satisfaction with a product or service.” I
would thus submit that in order to be sustainable over time, a
business needs to secure customer service as an organisational anchor which
addresses the single objective of maintaining a high level of customer
satisfaction with a company’s product range which includes goods, services and
new ideas. This to me is a matter of organisational positioning and
alignment, information structuring around the customer interface and what
happens from there in terms of analysis, definition of actionable tasking of
same in a customer centric manner. The opportunity lies in what customer
service can do, instead of what it does on any given day.
In
order to explore the strategy side further, we need a defined sense of the
following:
Organisational
Goals/Objectives. What are management’s strategic plans in terms of perceived customer
value and how this insets into product life cycle length(s), new product
generation and projected repeat business volumes.
Organisational Structure. Who looks after market
research? Is the marketing department the right place for information
collection and collation or analysis of collated information taken directly
from the customer? Is there any information waste where relevant
information to other areas of the business is discarded in the market research
process? Could a more centrally aligned function manage raw information more
effectively? Does customer service perform a number of roles or is it aligned
directly behind Sales and possibly finance if charged with a credit control
role?
Mandate.
Is the
mandate clear? Does it define or imply customer service is a support role to
other functions; or is it clearly mandated with tasking of its own based around
ensuring customers are satisfied with the company’s product range.
Company
Culture. Does
‘the real company view’ see the customer service department as a 2nd tier
department behind Sales and Marketing departments? Is customer care represented
by professional managers at senior levels inputting into strategy and wider
company problem solving? Are findings in customer care taken seriously enough
to develop actionable tasking to focus or refocus company resources on ensuring
customer satisfaction with the company’s product range? Do other departments
pass off customer care issues to customer care thinking it’s not really their
problem? Does a business intelligence opportunity get lost in the politics of
company culture through lost and/or discarded information?
3rd
Parties.
Does customer care in the remediation of issues, which detract from customer
satisfaction, have access and authority to deal with and/or correct 3rd
parties that are identified as issue makers with customers?
These
are some of the issues that one should consider when thinking about customer
service, what is it and how it can create value for the company in a
sustainable manner. The balance of thought is based around how customer service
could reposition itself through redefinition of customer service as an
organisational anchor within the organisation.
Contextualise
the function/Understand the Organisational Landscape. There are no prises for
guessing, only inevitable failure; so it’s very important that any strategic
review of customer service to be contextualised to the organisational
structure. Customer service’s actual position in the organisational landscape
needs to be understood as does its relative position to other functions both
expressed and implied, so it’s current range of services actually practised are
evaluated for their completeness, efficiency and efficacy in maintaining
customer satisfaction with the product range.
Scenario
Plan. Scenarios
should be run to see the impact on organisational efficiency by repositioning
customer service. Are there redundancies created or eliminated by a
repositioning of customer service and will departments like marketing, finance
and sales need to engage in reorganisation to take on or off load activities to
or from customer service? Also, what planning impacts are identified in these
moves in areas like budget, culture/morale, resource reallocation, etc.
Create
Understanding and Value. A customer service function with a mandate that focuses sharply on the
customer value proposition and resulting satisfaction is one that creates a
sustainable future for the company through an aligned process of information
collection, customer development and the identification of market facing
opportunities and threats. Despite the urban myth, Sales Representatives do not
make as much contact with “their” customers like customer service
representatives can. Quality telephone contact can range from 30-50 quality
calls a day, where as a customer visit volume rarely exceeds 8 per day. Also,
telesales representatives will call customers based on the likelihood of sale
whereas customer service should call customer’s based on the need to maintain a
good relationship with the customer whilst understanding how the customer views
the product range, the company and their experiences with its employees. This
information if collected, collated right and directed into secondary processes
across many functions can be pivotal transforming the life cycle of a company.
The
stakeholder approach. The concept of an organisational anchor is one that has company wide
impact. The process revision should have a strong efficacy level based on a
platform like lean six-sigma where the shortest and most effective process
design is deployed in an integrated company wide manner. This would make anchor
functions widely impacting thus their development requires a company wide
stakeholder approach. Company wide management engagements, employee
engagements, manager/employee ‘buy ins’ through employee workshops on the
principles, design and desired outcomes should be held along with company wide
meetings and presentations designed to spread internal awareness,
transparency and openness on the desired outcomes and where the company is at
in its change management plans.
Customer
Service as ‘Project Managers’ of Customer Relationships and Problems. It’s a good idea to have
the customer relationship ‘owned’ by customer service with account assignment
protocols allowing customer service representatives to become end to end
resolvers of problems big and small interfacing with all functions of the
business in such tasking. The “upstream” catching, defining, analysing and
resolving of issues makes for a big difference in the sustainable mandate of
maintaining customer satisfaction at high levels. It would allow Sales staff
time to develop new business with a new account transfer process to the
customer service ‘relationship manager’ which in turn defines credit control’s
secondary customer ‘call position’ for finance and billing related issues. It
would create better homogeneity of service in the eyes of the customer in my
view.
Professional
Approach/Professional Outcome. The training and education of customer service
personnel varies wildly from organisation to organisation. I personally think a
company should develop a focused training and development approach for customer
service staff where spreading internal awareness of customer service is a
company, not a functional responsibility. This should be part of the training
curriculum alongside external customer satisfaction, marketing, information
management, legal, finance, project management, account management, billing
& systems and negotiation. The resulting investment in professional
customer service personnel would create in my view a long term yield once they
are being led consistently in a consultative manner engaging creativity as much
as analytical prowess.
Support
from the Top. Like all change, it is doomed to failure if it does not have support
from the very top. The change initiatives actively supported by the CEO and the
senior team reverberates through the organisation and increases its chances of
success like no other single element.
We
always fear change for understandable reasons but when we think of how a
mandated function like this can change our company’s fortune for the better,
are we not obliged to at least hear out the proposition and move forward to
explore its potential. ‘Nothing ventured nothing gained’ is the cornerstone of
all successful change ventures and with ‘upstream’ data capture of issues, opportunities
and threats with an effective and integrated process flow behind it, an
organisation can rest well know it has the eyes, fins and tail to swim in the
waters of business life navigating dangers and inviting opportunities as they
go.
Source
Links/Credits:
Definitions:
a)
Customer Service
Credits:
None
#Sustainable
Capitalism, #Customer Service, #Development, #Business, #Growth, #Project
Management, #Strategic Planning, #Strategy, #Organisational, #Organizational,
#Organisational Structure.
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