How many times have you called customer support and they transferred you to someone else, and then disconnected you, and then you had to call again, and then they were unable to bring up your file, and when they were finally able to do that, they had outdated information about your problem?
Any client-oriented business is bound to run into one of these problems someday:
- It requires larger inventories and better integration with field service and third parties;
- It must accommodate inconsistent and uncertain demand by establishing more advanced information and product flows;
- It must coordinate all processes across numerous service locations with large numbers of parts and multiple levels in the supply chain.
This is where Service Management comes in. As part of the supply chain management, is the link between the sales department and customers. Its goal is to optimize the service-intensive supply chains, which tend to be more and more complex.
Service Management is usually linked to operations support systems. Systems that use Service Management can include order management, inventory management, activation, maintenance, performance diagnostics and several other types of support systems. A well run Service Management process ensures that these systems are working optimally and error free.
Some simple steps to improve service quality and reduce costs
- The essential step is to bring structure to the business process and understand what is going on, in terms of information flow, in your organization.
- Make sure the business processes are standardized and consolidated.
- Quality Assurance is a high priority initiative: it must be embraced by the entire organization; otherwise your brand and the way your customers perceive you can be damaged.
- Identify the most critical processes that should and can be automated, document them and then create a project plan to address them quickly.
- Be proactive by anticipating problems and dealing with them before they can influence service quality.
- Your best teacher is your customer. Make sure that he/she has a very easy way to provide you with feedback.
To read more about this subjects and also, about the benefits of implementing Service Management Solutions, check out our white paper.
