Steve Downton, Downton Service Management Consultants Ltd, Noventum Group
This article considers the challenges to businesses managing their service operations in the complex environment that is customer service today. Highlighting the need for effective tools and applications to provide informed management decisions to deliver top class customer service.
The basic business requirements of an after-sales service operation are to raise efficiency and effectiveness, and deliver the cost-effective performance required to maintain satisfied customers. As the performance bar continues to be raised by ever more demanding customers, achieving this level of strategic performance and value creation requires companies to transform their “service-to-profit” supply chain into a comparatively complex “customer-centric service business” network. Taking advantage of the software applications available, and viewing the after sales operation as both revenue generator and competitive differentiator will also be significant contributing factors.
There is a complex network: most service operations will probably be using a legacy tool or something even more basic, to cope with a significantly more complex environment than, for example manufacturing departments have to cope with.Managing the service environment has required a focus on cost containment in an attempt to maintain high margins, and the tools described above were once considered sufficiently capable, however with the growing pressure on margins, these tools are failing to provide the necessary capability, and in most cases service levels are falling. Companies struggle to manage their operation with disconnected, homegrown tools that limit the ability to make sound decisions and restrict the visibility required for future planning.
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