Is your company a service provider either to another company or end-user customer? If you provide a service, do you have an easy way for the client to get information about sales or service transactions? If you are providing customer service options, are you measuring the “true” customer experience?
Why does a company even offer a customer service option? Let’s consider just some of the reasons companies invest in a customer service infrastructure:
Customer service is about protecting a current sale, creating future sales, or minimizing need for more costly intervention. It’s about sales and profit. Consider this perspective, the only reason a customer is calling/contacting you is because there is something deficient in your current business design/approach requiring them to contact you for clarity of further information. In other words, every customer service engagement is an opportunity to alter the business design and improve cost or profitability. If your focus is simply providing customer service because you have to then you are missing a significant opportunity to create competitive distinction!
Consider a situation using the following assumptions, for illustration purposes only:
In this example the potential per-incident savings is between $30-105. Of course this is simply an illustration and your situation may be significantly better. Let’s be more conservative and say per-incident savings is closer to $10. Factoring the annual rate of service calls and potential cost avoidance represents a significant opportunity to contribute margin.
Customer service is more than simply a cost center. Architecting a sound customer service practice, coupled with knowledgeable and committed personnel, can attract and retain customers for life, willing to buy your services because they know your company is committed to providing ongoing value.
If you find yourself questioning the value of your Customer Service function then we invite you to consider engaging the Service professionals at ASIL. ASIL consultants are Service and Supply Chain professionals with over 100 years experience in various Service and Supply Chain roles. We have a proven track record of pragmatic solutions and welcome the opportunity to serve you and your clients. Call us today and let us help you achieve new areas of profitability and success in this ever changing economic climate.
Spotlight
Lean your Office Email Productivity
Lean Manufacturing Methodology has certainly found a new home in helping to 'Lean Out' many other areas outside of Manufacturing. An example of where to apply the Lean methodology and build a cultural revolution is in the office environment.
A quick way to boost your company's bottom line is to have your employees review the basics of sending office email. I understand that this sounds silly, but hear me out. Each day millions of emails are sent to people that don't care, won't read, and frankly find it a waste of time just deleting them. Ever see someone with thousands of emails in their queue?
Email has gone from carrying vital air and water to a combination of transporting smog and sewage. If that makes you sick, good, it should. The tonnage of garbage moved into the daily email 'plumbing' is overwhelming. From ill conceived messages to the forwarding of email strings to the unneeded tirades, these and more add to the waste.
A quick math check supports that the daily time wasted adds up very quickly and becomes a large impact to the bottom line. Most professional workers spend 20-75% or more of their time daily on systems reading, preparing, or sending email. So much for our paperless society.
Learning what to send, how to send it, to whom to send it to and when to send it can make a big impact on your bottom line. Doing it right requires less time for all parties, which allows more time to address the real opportunities or challenges.
Ever receive email from any of the following people in your company?
The Miner: Always sends a string of emails and actually expects you to start at the beginning and relive their version of email hell. After you finish mining the details, you are expected to determine what should be done. Feel that monkey jump onto your shoulder? Press the Delete key and move on. This person is clueless.
Mr. Shotgun: When in doubt send it to everyone you can think of that may be able to do something. No doubt someone is likely to be foolish enough to pick it up and run with it. We pity the fool. Again press Delete and smile.
Mr. Verbose: Provides too much info all the time. No one can ever validate all the narrative and attachments. The intent is to impress and the outcome is to be oppressed. Recommend immediate deletion.
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Mr. Opinion: Always a comment and never much resolution. Enjoys prolonging meaningless conversations to ensure that their point is heard. This is best evidenced by staying on-line versus going face to face or picking up the phone. Send them a differing opinion to keep the chain going.
Mr. Teflon: No matter what you write or how you write it, it just won't stick. There is always someone else to whom you can assign it or put to task. Ownership gone awry, I think so. Contact Sys Admin and have their account deleted.
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Mr. Sunshine: It could be the worst storm of the century and this person will be singing you bright sunny tunes about all being well. Forward their email to Mr. Opinion, as he will certainly be able to set the record straight.
Bottom line is that you can make a difference by changing the rules and playing a new game. Lean methodology is about building a culture that approaches every day with a perspective of eliminating waste. When you send email be clear about your needs, don't make the reader search to understand, send it to those that need it versus everyone, respond when requested, and for goodness sake cut out the strings. Make it a great day!
Contributed by Peter Pazmany
Industry Trends
- Succession Planning –
Are You Ready for Promotion?
What is likely to happen to your organization when you, as a key leader, vacates your position without succession planning in place?
There would be either no able successor or where there is, the successor is often either unprepared to handle the heavy responsibilities placed upon them; he/she simply does not have the ability to manage the organization in the way it needs to be; or the organization goes into turmoil due to lack of direction or conflict in the ranks. In other words, your business is put at risk.
Succession planning is identifying and preparing suitable employees through mentoring, training and job rotation to replace “key players”. These key individuals could be the CEO, CFO, Vice President, or Director within an organization as well as considering all key roles to ensure continued business as well as personal growth within an organization. Succession planning is a process whereby an organization ensures that employees are recruited and developed to fill each key role within the company. This planning enables your organization to identify talented employees and provide education to develop them for future higher level and broader responsibilities.
Proper succession planning can help prevent a business from being frozen or stalled while a replacement comes up to speed. It also helps avoid conflict among staff when a position becomes available. Without proper succession planning, the future success of the business is left to chance.
Succession planning establishes a process that recruits employees, develops their skills and abilities, and prepares them for advancement, all while retaining them to ensure a return on the organization's training investment. With good succession planning, employees are ready for new leadership roles as the need arises, and when someone leaves, a current employee is ready to step up to the plate. In the past, succession planning typically targeted only key leadership positions. Now, however, is should be considered as a part of a development plan for every position within an organization to ensure personal as well as business growth.
Succession planning ensures that there are highly qualified people in all positions, not just today, but tomorrow, next year, and five years from now.
ASIL, Inc. is skilled in the practices of succession planning and can help your organization become resilient to planned or unexpected staff changes. Contact ASIL, Inc. to let them assess your needs.
Contributed by Michael Singleton
Our Software Products
Click on the links below to view ASIL, Inc.'s MAX Partnering® self paced software demonstrations:
Strategies and Execution - This demo depicts the tools that organizations can utilize to embrace change effectively and implement it successfully.
Self Assessment Sample Questionnaire
- This demo will enable you to respond to a small sample of self
assessment questions focused on change management and create a Heat Map
of your responses to see areas that may need attention. The Driving
Complex Change® methodology addresses the six areas of Direction,
Ability, Incentive, Resources, Structure, and Action that can impact
your effectiveness of change management.
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