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Vol 32 - No 03 - May 2006 Editorial The application of technology and systems has been seen for many years as key foundations to that objective, but only recently has the integration of the technology and systems across the business been seen as an important way of bringing sales, service, marketing, and manufacture together, to ensure the provision of a total solution to a customer’s requirements. A highly trained and skilled, dedicated engineer workforce, delivering quality and reliability is another key differentiator, and the systems required to support this level of excellence must have a broad capability. Differentiating a business on service quality and excellent customer experience allows the instigation of and justifies premium pricing: competitors might differentiate primarily on cost, but they will struggle to deliver the service quality and successfully maintain a necessary focus on the overall customer experience. In many businesses today, the existing processes and procedures are generally prescriptive, retrospective and event-based with a constant dependency on manual measures, checks and audits, rather than favouring pro-active, exception management or being output focused. As a result, little authority is devolved to front line staff who, in the main, do not feel empowered or able to act, and perhaps due to the lack of supporting information, often avoid making decisions because of the potential risk of making mistakes. Individuals with little authority generally seek to avoid responsibility, even if it is not always in the best interests of their own business or their customer. It has become more and more challenging for businesses to understand what their operation is capable of when running normally; understanding their capacity as opposed to their performance. A lack of knowledge of capacity is obviously a problem when cutting costs, and will be realised, to the detriment of the business when failing to meet customer demands. In an environment of growth this is an even bigger problem, because quite often the growth will not be gradual but originates with a new contract. If the agreed-upon calculations of resource etc. are based on poor information, the result can be catastrophic just as at the beginning of a contract. Getting the right information from the rest of the business is therefore critical to providing a continuous consistent service to the customer during the lifetime of a contract and enhancing the possibility of renewing the contract. Research has concluded that unless service organisations utilise the technology solutions available to them, they are likely to suffer from rising service cost, falling customer satisfaction levels and increased customer attrition. Given the complex nature of the service operation today, technology system vendors must provide a business platform that will enhance both the customer and the user’s working environment. It is necessary to recognise that the business must be provided with true insights from customer services. Fulfilling their new service role should be an ambition of businesses if they are to retain existing customers and develop new customers cost effectively. Steve Downton MIOM Related Topics:
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