Month: July 2019

Optimization vs. Amplification: Why the Future of Service Success Hinges on This Distinction

How MAKEEN Energy Is Turning Sophisticated Asset Management into Service Growth Potential

Successful Transformation Starts Inside: Leadership Skills that Yield Lasting Change

July 29, 2019 | 3 Mins Read

To Thrive (Or Even Survive) In Today’s Service Landscape, You Must Master the Art of The Experience

July 29, 2019 | 3 Mins Read

To Thrive (Or Even Survive) In Today’s Service Landscape, You Must Master the Art of The Experience

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

I had the good fortune of interviewing Joe Pine, co-author of The Experience Economy: Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage and Co-founder of Strategic Horizons, this past week for an upcoming episode of the Future of Field Service podcast. It was such a good conversation that not only could I not wait for you to hear some of Joe’s wise words, but it was worthy of a written post as well to really drive these points home. Don’t worry, I am not giving it all away – consider this a sneak peek of more extensive conversation that is incredibly relevant to your business.

The premise of Joe’s book is a reality that field service organizations are living out today – customers are demanding more than products, even services – they are demanding experiences. You hopefully have accepted by now that continuing to provide even outstanding service will not be enough – you have to dig deeper to determine how to differentiate your business. Joe would argue, and I would agree, that thinking hard about how you can deliver experiences to your customers is a viable path to differentiation (as is considering how to deliver outcomes, which we get into on the podcast – so stay tuned!). So while I’d argue the entire conversation is necessary listening, I am sharing here my top three points Joe made during our chat and why they are imperative to your business today.

Service is the “what;” experience is the “how.” This distinction was helpful for me in framing the Experience Economy concept in a way that allows you to begin brainstorming exactly how your service operation would need to evolve to shift from providing services to staging experiences. So if fixing a broken refrigerator is your “what,” how do you reach beyond this and add on your own unique “how?” Is this done through some sort of unique branding (Joe mentions the Geek Squad as an example) or to-do at arrival? Is it a personalized conversation during the visit? A hand-written thank you note? Doing some real thinking on what your “what” looks like, and how you can add your own “how” is how you begin moving from service to experience and begin setting yourself apart from the competition.
Understand the difference between service characteristics (nice, easy, convenient) and experience characteristics (memorable, personal, time well spent). This is an important point, because I’d argue that adjectives like efficient and productive are familiar and comfortable to most service organizations while adjectives like personable, relatable, and empathetic may not be. The art of experience is far different from the art of service, so this takes a concerted effort to really change. Yes, your customers value those service characteristics – there is always a place for ease and convenience. But the point is, in today’s service landscape, those characteristics are becoming table stakes. Mastering the art of the experience is where you’ll begin to differentiate, and this takes a different skill set than many service firms currently foster and value.
The subtitle of Joe’s book is Work Is Theatre & Every Business a Stage. To progress beyond services and offer experiences, you have to look at each interaction as being on stage. How do your employees perform? What feelings are your customers left with when that performance is over? Fixing an air conditioning unit isn’t a performance – what are you adding to that service visit to evolve that interaction into an experience that will be remembered? As Joe talked through this, it made me think quite a bit about what this means for field service organizations that are working on recruiting and hiring. As I said, the art of staging experiences requires a different skill set than providing service alone. It’s important to think through what this means for your business – how can you upskill the technicians you have so that they are capable of providing these experiences? What types of training and coaching does this require? What sort of characteristics should you begin looking for in the hiring process?

These are just three of countless great points Joe makes during our conversation. Be sure to check out the full podcast which will be live on August 7^th!

Stay Connected

Subscribe to The INSIDER, our exclusive monthly newsletter, and get a first look at what’s new, what’s next, and what’s only shared with our inner circle.

Most Recent

Optimization vs. Amplification: Why the Future of Service Success Hinges on This Distinction

How MAKEEN Energy Is Turning Sophisticated Asset Management into Service Growth Potential

Successful Transformation Starts Inside: Leadership Skills that Yield Lasting Change

July 25, 2019 | 5 Mins Read

Getting More Value from KPIs and the Balanced Scorecard

July 25, 2019 | 5 Mins Read

Getting More Value from KPIs and the Balanced Scorecard

By Laurence Cramp

Regardless of its exact origins, the fact remains that many organisations of varying shapes, sizes and industry sectors still rely on balanced scorecards to drive their operational performance. Let's consider some of the main takeouts and benefits of the approach:

Measure what you want to manage

Kaplan and Norton's 1992 article opens with the phase "what you measure is what you get" highlighting the need for a balanced presentation of both financial and operational measures. The model of cause and effect does make a big difference but organisations tend to try to shape their performance around the things that the think they can measure or the KPIs that are easily accessible or available in existing dashboard reports. Rather they should be basing their measurement on the outcomes they are trying to achieve. So we would advocate you start with objectives rather than measures - hence measure what you want to manage.

Scorecard measures aren't in isolation

When organisations originally implemented the balanced scorecard, it was assumed that each of the four areas were independent of the others. Over time, however it has become evident that the way they are ordered can be important. If you train your employees and build a pervasive culture of information sharing they’ll make your company perform better internally to deliver better outcomes for customers who will in turn buy more of your products and services.

Don't track too many measures

It’s important to choose a small number of the right measures to track. By focusing on one or two measures per area you'll be better able to focus on the things that matter most. All of your desired behaviours must be considered and a balanced set of KPIs produced that gives equal weight to all factors. Where you would like additional metrics these can be used to inform coaching and individual or organisational performance but should not be included within a balanced scorecard.

Be aware of strategy and operation

It's important to note that the balanced scorecard is not a strategy-development tool. For organisational performance to be more than the sum of its parts (or indeed the sum of its measures) the activities each scorecard area must be linked and comprehensively considered via your organisational strategy. Strategic themes will help your organisation reflect what must be done internally to achieve the strategic outcomes you are targeting; and provide a way of segmenting your strategy into several flavours or initiatives (transformation for example). The balanced scorecard can be useful when developing strategic themes, as a tool to crystallise what is important to your organisation (i.e. what outcomes you want to achieve) and the associated values, ideas, beliefs or actions that might be required to help achieve it. Your scorecard (particularly when developed at a Corporate level) can be shared throughout different departments and business units, and may stimulate individual business areas to define their own contribution to overall strategy execution (in achieving the balanced scorecard).

Get employees involved

It can be all too common to view the balanced scorecard as a corporate, top-down initiative that is all about demonstrating company performance to the internal business, or indeed outwardly to shareholders. Kaplan and Norton emphasise the importance of all employees understanding the strategy and going about their business in a way that contributes to its mission and objectives (and measures). To make this happen you need to communicate and educate your employees and make them feel a part of its implementation (and overall success). Personal and team objectives (that link to the balanced scorecard) also help to reinforce the individual benefits, alongside incentives and rewards based on shared performance.

Keep it fluid

A balanced scorecard, and the strategy it relates to isn't set in stone. As your internal or external operating conditions change your business strategy and measures may also change with it. Companies who get the most benefit from balanced scorecards implement a structured continual process for strategy management, supported by objective assessment of the measures and outcomes they are looking to achieve. Remember that if the strategy is inappropriate or invalidated a balanced scorecard approach should allow for organisational learning as it will be an indicator of where the strategy is underperforming. The performance measurement system will provide appropriate information to help management challenge and amend existing assumptions, so resist the temptation to through the balanced scorecard out with the old strategy!

Don't stop the process

We've seen a number of organisations who kick off a company-wide exercise involving leadership and management staff, workshops, roadshows and events to develop a new target operating model, transformation programme or cost saving initiative, only to halt the process (and the engagement) when it has been designed or initially implemented. We recommend that once developed and fully delivered into your business, you use the balanced scorecard to continue to improve performance and review performance levels and metrics over time. Stick with the process and get your performance management system working like a well oiled machine that is embraced by your employees.

Keep testing your strategy in real terms

There is very little benefit in setting yourself targets that are too easy to achieve (or aren't benchmarked against how your competitors are delivering). Likewise if your strategy isn't working there is no real value in delivering against the balanced scorecard that supports it. Use a range of analytical methods and scenario modelling to keep testing your thinking and use external thinking to avoid getting entrenched in your approach.

Be sure to get senior staff involved

As Kaplan and Norton have been keen to emphasise, a balanced scorecard can represent a fundamental change in your underlying assumptions about performance measurement. Senior managers (who have the most complete picture of your organisation's vision and priorities) must be involved in this to help put strategy and vision, not control, at the center. A scorecard should establish goals and assume that people will adopt whatever behaviors and take whatever actions are necessary to arrive at those goals, effectively pulling your staff toward the overall vision. As a result your senior staff and managers will need to be involved and stay involved to make it happen.

Stay Connected

Subscribe to The INSIDER, our exclusive monthly newsletter, and get a first look at what’s new, what’s next, and what’s only shared with our inner circle.

Most Recent

Optimization vs. Amplification: Why the Future of Service Success Hinges on This Distinction

How MAKEEN Energy Is Turning Sophisticated Asset Management into Service Growth Potential

Successful Transformation Starts Inside: Leadership Skills that Yield Lasting Change

July 24, 2019 | 1 Mins Read

Is NPS Overrated?

July 24, 2019 | 1 Mins Read

Is NPS Overrated?

Stacy Sherman, Director of Customer Experience and Employee Engagement at Schindler Elevator, joins Sarah in a discussion around whether NPS is an overrated metric for measuring success with customer experience efforts.

Click here to read more from Stacy on the Future of Field Service.

Stay Connected

Subscribe to The INSIDER, our exclusive monthly newsletter, and get a first look at what’s new, what’s next, and what’s only shared with our inner circle.

Most Recent

Optimization vs. Amplification: Why the Future of Service Success Hinges on This Distinction

How MAKEEN Energy Is Turning Sophisticated Asset Management into Service Growth Potential

Successful Transformation Starts Inside: Leadership Skills that Yield Lasting Change

July 22, 2019 | 4 Mins Read

Relinquishing Control: 3 Reasons the Build-Your-Own Software Era is Dead

July 22, 2019 | 4 Mins Read

Relinquishing Control: 3 Reasons the Build-Your-Own Software Era is Dead

By Sarah Nicastro, Creator, Future of Field Service

Are you a control freak? I can relate. Feel like no one can do it like you can? Guilty. Want to do it all? Me too. It can be hard to step back and be logical about the areas in which relinquishing control can help us achieve greater success – but with the pressures today’s field service organizations are facing, it is absolutely imperative to do so.

I feel that for the vast majority of our audience, this article will be a moot point – most of you have embraced the fact that technology has advanced to the point where there are providers out there doing it far better than you could (or at least should). But, for those of you out there with a white-knuckled grip on your perceived sense of control that building your own software brings – this is for you. My friend, industry veteran turned consultant, Greg Lush wrote a column for LinkedIn on this topic recently. Greg, who doesn’t mince words, says: “Should you look for software solutions that ‘cover the transactional bases’ and offer the ability to personalize with data perspectives and system workflows? Absolutely. As we round the corner of another decade and come face to face with 2020, you would be hard pressed to find a reason why you shouldn't take this path. Oh, unless my observations are deliberately avoiding the elephant in the room: your ego. Years ago, when the software universe was very limited, building custom software may have been a good idea. However, with the flood of solutions existing and entering on a daily basis, your strategy should be one that embraces, through the use of graphing and other integration tools, the best components to make your solution. Sometimes that means an end to end solution and other times that may mean a symphony of best-in-class software applications. Either way, building custom tools to perform commoditized transactional functions is a bad move, short and long term.” As Greg points out, there was a time where a build-your-own approach was appropriate for some organizations. We’ve simply grown past that point. It would be difficult to argue a situation in which a company’s needs are so unique that they can’t be addressed with the flexibility and configurability that today’s leading software solutions provide. If you’re still spending valuable resources and likely too much money developing your own solution, consider these points:

The pressure is on to innovate. As a service business, you are under the gun to meet and exceed customer expectations that are becoming increasingly sophisticated by the minute. Is a solid field service software solution essential to meeting those demands? Absolutely. Should you spend your time developing it? Absolutely not. You need to focus your efforts, energy, and resources on innovating around your core competencies. Thinking about how you can better serve your customers, and what your next generation of services will look like. These demands are incredibly taking, and so is software development – you aren’t going to win at both and there’s no need to try.
Today’s solutions are more than capable. It’s no fault of your own if you simply have an outdated view of what’s possible with today’s software solutions. Maybe you haven’t evaluated the offerings in a long time. Maybe your organization has a legacy in-house solution in place and that’s just “how it’s always been done.” The software landscape has changed significantly in the last few years – and it’s continuing to do so. There are very sophisticated solutions on the market that meet a variety of needs and are highly configurable, at reasonable price points. As Greg points out in his article, there is nary a scenario in which a businesses needs are so unique that there isn’t a solution on the market that will meet – or configure – to them.
The pace of change is too rapid. There was a time where you could build your own solution and use it, as it was built, for many years. That time has come and gone. Your business is changing too rapidly. Technology is evolving at lightening speed. There are simply too many variables to make it feasible to be able to keep pace with a home-grown solution. You would be in a continuous cycle of re-evaluating, re-developing, and re-deploying. I don’t know of any organizations that have the resources and money to waste on this sort of effort when viable and powerful options are at the ready.

As it relates to software, don’t let your ego or affinity for control stand in the way of making good use of the tools available to you to free your organization up to do what it does best.

Stay Connected

Subscribe to The INSIDER, our exclusive monthly newsletter, and get a first look at what’s new, what’s next, and what’s only shared with our inner circle.

Most Recent

Optimization vs. Amplification: Why the Future of Service Success Hinges on This Distinction

How MAKEEN Energy Is Turning Sophisticated Asset Management into Service Growth Potential

Successful Transformation Starts Inside: Leadership Skills that Yield Lasting Change

July 18, 2019 | 4 Mins Read

It is Time to Rethink your Data

July 18, 2019 | 4 Mins Read

It is Time to Rethink your Data

By Greg Lush

A beautiful fall late morning in Southern California has my family contemplating an afternoon at the beach, just 20 miles away as the crow flies. As I ponder the idea, I remember that the Santa Ana winds blow strong in the fall (from the inland areas to the Pacific), it could be warmer, windier and even a bit smoggy. Quickly I move to the calendar, seeing as it is a Sunday on a holiday weekend the traffic will be tough (not to mention the parking). Of course, now I needed to weigh the overall feelings of my family; my daughter not a fan of the sun, my wife would go to the beach anytime regardless of conditions. Finally, my red Dixie cup may not go by unnoticed as it does on non-holiday weekends — additional law enforcement officers are likely to be present at the beach areas.

In a matter of seconds, my brain assessed numerous points of information to come to an informed decision, consuming both subjective and objective data points. The human brain is an impressive and contextual data factory. Let’s break this down into a high-level data acquisition exercise, taking advantage of modern approaches to data:

Weather service, with location services
Traffic service, with location services, route, and travel preferences
Calendar, with a micro-service connection to U.S. holidays
Police presence, pulling data from social feeds and attempting to establish a probability
Empathy and feelings, a uniquely human computing function

Our context was simple: an afternoon at the beach. Thus, all the data points are seen from that perspective — an exercise much easier said than done. Without a clear understanding of objective, it will be impossible to gather the right amount of data points and, more importantly, the inputs which have the greatest impact on one another. For all the brain's power, the flow of data can be a bit tricky. Four of the five citations were processed in the rational side of the brain. However, your brain first processes the information through the feeling's sides of the brain, BEFORE traveling to the right side of the brain. Now, depending upon the information being crunched, the situation, your personality type, and inputs from other parts of your body, decisions may stall or shoot through the left side of the brain. This is where is gets a bit dicey — in order to contextually maximize the value of your data, you must have a crystal-clear understanding of the objective. In most cases you will need to have access to a team of experts, some of the roles may include: data scientist, data modeler, networking and storage, security and authentication, graphing (modern integrations), code developers, visualization designers, anthropologists, business owners and practitioners. Not always the case; however, rule of thumb dictates that the more human inputs you can wrangle the greater your perspective. Our world is overflowing with data, most of it out of context. Yet, at the cost of storage, strategies should be put in place to grab as much data as you possibly can from numerous sources, structured, unstructured, pulled from your enterprise and from third party sources. While the statistic seems to hover around 97 percent of data is never used, keeping that data for a rainy day, when you are looking for deeper perspective, will be worth its weight in gold. Consider for a moment the gigabytes per hour of data from a Rolls Royce jet engine from Los Angeles to Tokyo. You can bet that this information is sliced, diced and pumped into algorithms and transactional systems. The trick is to make sure that you have chosen tools which can perform some fundamental actions:

analyze the streaming data while being gathered
data lakes for storing mass amounts of data not used today
edge devices capable of local processing to manage data costs
encrypted transaction level mechanisms to the edge and from the edge to the device

Rethinking your data brings about some of the tensions found with other enterprise environments: what is the best time to rebuild, expand, or pivot from your existing approaches to modern data management practices? Regardless of tool sophistication or age, the assessment must start with a multi-year plan on how this data impacts the business. If the data you are collecting cannot lead to some form of action, then I recommend you find another hobby. Producing a color-filled dashboard with all sorts of arrows, pies, and graphs may be nice eye-candy, but what does it all mean? As future decision makers enter the workplace, with their digital-savvy backgrounds and life experiences often fed by young perspectives on the meaning of data, your data outputs will need to provide clear action. All too frequently I find myself in a cold sweat when I think about the future of decision making. Odds are you played the game of “operator” as a child, the first person whispers a phrase into another ear, that person whispers into the third persons ear, and so on. The last person shares the phrase with the group and, almost without fail, it is completely different than the phrase that started the game. Now, imagine data processed in “black box” algorithms spitting out assumptions about the true meaning of the information, watered down by limited perspective. Put the cherry on top, and all this kind-of-accurate data is feeding the opinions of our future leaders. Digital savvy? Sure, with much of their experiences consumed by the outputs of other data elements, feels a little uncomfortable. Rethink your data — your company’s future depends on it.

Stay Connected

Subscribe to The INSIDER, our exclusive monthly newsletter, and get a first look at what’s new, what’s next, and what’s only shared with our inner circle.

Most Recent

Optimization vs. Amplification: Why the Future of Service Success Hinges on This Distinction

How MAKEEN Energy Is Turning Sophisticated Asset Management into Service Growth Potential

Successful Transformation Starts Inside: Leadership Skills that Yield Lasting Change

July 17, 2019 | 1 Mins Read

Bell and Howell’s IoT-Fueled Service Transformation

July 17, 2019 | 1 Mins Read

Bell and Howell’s IoT-Fueled Service Transformation

Larry Blue, CEO of Bell and Howell, chats with Sarah about the company’s evolution to a service-based business and how digital transformation has played an important role.

Stay Connected

Subscribe to The INSIDER, our exclusive monthly newsletter, and get a first look at what’s new, what’s next, and what’s only shared with our inner circle.

Most Recent

Optimization vs. Amplification: Why the Future of Service Success Hinges on This Distinction

How MAKEEN Energy Is Turning Sophisticated Asset Management into Service Growth Potential

Successful Transformation Starts Inside: Leadership Skills that Yield Lasting Change

July 15, 2019 | 2 Mins Read

Lay the Groundwork for Reverse Logistics Excellence by Mapping your Workflow

July 15, 2019 | 2 Mins Read

Lay the Groundwork for Reverse Logistics Excellence by Mapping your Workflow

By Tom Paquin

For businesses competing in the service space, it’s easy to get caught up in managing your workforce, routing, and order management, but just as important is how serviceable assets and parts move both to and from a customer’s site.

Organizations have struggled with mapping and managing Reverse Logistics in the past, but new technologies and a thoughtful understanding of your business makes these processes increasingly manageable, leading to a state of relative maturity among reverse logistics technologies. I’m pleased to say that many organizations already have a good handle on the totality of their reverse logistics sequence, but for many, the complexity of their business and serviceable materials mean that this knowledge is handled across tens of departments. It’s imperative to your organizations’ operational success that all reverse logistics activities be handled in a unified, standardized fashion. This means that returns, depot repairs, part swaps, and so on, need to be coded in the same language, and managed with the same system. Mapping the various tracks through which parts and assets move from a customer through business systems is key. Here is a questionnaire, with some light explanations, that can help you build a profile for your business: What is the nature of your business?

Manufacturer of serviceable assets
Seller and servicer of assets
Service provider
Other

If this first question isn’t an easy one for your company to answer, then your business may have some bigger problems. This information is key, though, as it helps define the trajectory of how inventory passes through your system. The next question is for those firms that do not manufacture their own products: Where do items go when they leave the customer?

Back to the manufacturer (for return or repair)
To specialized repair shops outside of our jurisdiction
To a central depot managed internally
To satellite locations managed internally
To local retail operations managed internally
Other

This helps you to build both ends of your logistical map. Where are items going to? There can, of course, be multiple answers for this question. Perhaps returns go to the manufacturer, part replacements go to an internal depot, and repairs go to third-party repair shops. Now that we have our map, though, we need to understand how inventory travels across it. How do items get to their destination?

Customer shipping
Business shipping
Technician courier
Delivered by contracted technicians
Other

This is another instance where a combination of methods is not unusual. This, of course, is another key element in getting the big picture of reverse logistics for your company. Finally, and most importantly: What sorts of items pass through your reverse logistics systems?

Full assets in need of repair
Full assets to be returned
Parts in need of repair
Parts to be returned

With all these things in mind, you can know with certainty that you have the full picture. This map will give you the business problems that you need your reverse logistics software to resolve.

Stay Connected

Subscribe to The INSIDER, our exclusive monthly newsletter, and get a first look at what’s new, what’s next, and what’s only shared with our inner circle.

Most Recent

Optimization vs. Amplification: Why the Future of Service Success Hinges on This Distinction

How MAKEEN Energy Is Turning Sophisticated Asset Management into Service Growth Potential

Successful Transformation Starts Inside: Leadership Skills that Yield Lasting Change

July 11, 2019 | 6 Mins Read

Building and Maintaining a Satisfied – and Loyal – Customer Base

July 11, 2019 | 6 Mins Read

Building and Maintaining a Satisfied – and Loyal – Customer Base

By Bill Pollock

By focusing your service and support performance on the specific needs and requirements of your customers, you are much more likely to end up with a satisfied customer base. However, in order to build a loyal customer base for yourself and your company, you will need to go well beyond merely keeping them satisfied.

During the 1990s, a new philosophy of customer service was adopted by some of the more progressive services organizations – the philosophy of becoming an "interactive" partner with their customers by working closely with them to gain a better understanding of:

What products and services they use,
How they are being used,
When they are being used,
Who within the organization uses them,
What impact downtime has on their business operations, and
How they ultimately use their products and services to help them run their respective businesses better.

This philosophy has assisted many services organizations in "turning the corner" on their ability to provide "world-class" service and support to their customer base. A true (i.e., interactive) services partnership must, first and foremost, be focused on the specific needs and requirements of the customer. However, by doing so, you will find that the ultimate outcome will likely be a "double-edged sword" in terms of its potential benefits to both you and your customers. For example:

You, and your company, will both stand to benefit significantly through an increased understanding of your customers’ total services needs and requirements, thereby leading to a better understanding of what it will take to successfully meet them;
Your customers will also stand to receive higher – and more consistent – levels of service and support as a result of your increased ability to focus your attention on the specific areas that are most important to them; and
It will be easier for you to obtain more direct customer input and feedback in the future, resulting in fewer lingering customer service problems and quicker overall solutions in most cases.

There are many other benefits that can ultimately be realized through the establishment and maintenance of a customer partner relationship, but it must be a continuous and interactive process in order for it to truly succeed. It will require significant effort on your part – as well as on the part of your customers – and it will involve ongoing communications and interaction between each of the parties. Partnerships require a great deal of work on both sides – first, to build them and, second, to maintain them over time. You must never lose sight of the importance of these partnerships, as once your customers believe you have "forgotten" about them, all of your credibility will be gone, and your service and support capabilities will become nothing more than a commodity provided to them by relatively interchangeable vendors. You also need to focus your customer service and support energy directly on the customer. Having a customer focus means that you are always conducting your business in a manner where the customer does not have to make multiple calls, visit numerous webpages, or explain his or her problem repeatedly to more than one person. In other words, you are conducting your day-to-day business in as responsive a manner as possible – with your customers’ best interests first in mind. Best practices services organizations do not settle merely for customer satisfaction, but instead seek to gain customer loyalty as their primary goal. These types of organizations are typically focused more on the concept of “lifetime customer value”, rather than on a “quick fix”, quick sales, or generating a “one-time” satisfied customer. By looking at your customers through this more broadly defined perspective, you will be better able meet their demands and needs over time, generate customer satisfaction, and build the foundation for customer loyalty. But, this will only happen if you are truly responsive to the customer. To ensure that you are, you should follow the following guidelines:

Listen to your customers; then make the necessary changes to the way you approach their needs based on what they tell you;
Use a variety of listening and learning strategies (i.e., Listen, Observe, Think, Speak, or LOTS) to continually obtain customer input and feedback reflecting their perceptions of your performance matched against their needs and requirements, expectations, and preferences; and
Improve the way in which you support them based on the feedback you receive on a continuous and ongoing process.

It is very humbling to realize that no matter how good you are at customer relationships, you can always do better. The best advice you can follow is to:

Listen to your customers - you can't know what they really want unless you ask them; and you can't tell if they are truly satisfied with your performance until they tell you, one way or the other.
Once they tell you what they want, either respond to them quickly, or tell them when you will have an answer for them shortly – and then provide them with the answer as quickly as possible.
Don't hit your customers with any surprises; if you promise them “A”, then you need to deliver “A” - not “B”, or “C”, or “A-“, and then tell them it's an “A”.
Confront all customer issues quickly, firmly, and as if they are the most important issues you will be facing all day – because they are!

Customers can oftentimes be very fickle – but generally only when the service and support they are receiving is erratic, inconsistent, or inadequate. However, if the customer service and support you provide is focused, consistent, and generally perceived as being "over and above the call of duty", then you will find your customers to be more than merely satisfied – they will be loyal. It is once again very humbling to remember that your customers’ perceptions of your service and support performance may be only as good as the last service call you've made in their behalf. Despite an impeccable service performance track record over the past year or more, all you have to do is mess up just one time, and you may find yourself right back to square one. Unfortunately, the converse is generally not true; that is to say that if your performance all last year was unsatisfactory and, all of a sudden, your last service call was perceived to be "superior", don't expect everything to change overnight – because it won't! Customers have long memories – especially when something “bad” is involved. The more loyal a relationship you and your customers have built over time, the more "forgiving" they are likely to be should you "mess up" on occasion. Partners do that – they forgive each other when there is reason to do so. Partners are honest, they rally to each other’s side when they are in need, and they work together toward the common goal of making their jobs – and their lives – easier to deal with. Otherwise, you’re just a vendor, and they’re just a customer – and they've got a handful of you, and you've got dozens (if not hundreds or more) of them. Establishing a good, strong, interactive services partnership makes each one of you more important to the other – and that essentially lays the foundation for a successful customer relationship. In the most successful services organizations, the voice of the customer ultimately drives its customer support operations. However, acceptable customer service – from the customer's perspective – generally requires cross-functional teamwork and processes on the part of your organization. Some of this will be entirely under your control, and some will not. Accordingly, your role will be to take whatever is under your control, and apply it to your customers in the “real world”, in a professional and courteous manner, and with your own style of “human touch”. In this way, you and your customers will be able to work in unison toward common customer service goals and objectives. Your ability to provide them with seamless customer service and support will represent a good first step toward building and maintaining a satisfied – and loyal – customer base.

Stay Connected

Subscribe to The INSIDER, our exclusive monthly newsletter, and get a first look at what’s new, what’s next, and what’s only shared with our inner circle.

Most Recent

Optimization vs. Amplification: Why the Future of Service Success Hinges on This Distinction

How MAKEEN Energy Is Turning Sophisticated Asset Management into Service Growth Potential

Successful Transformation Starts Inside: Leadership Skills that Yield Lasting Change

July 10, 2019 | 1 Mins Read

Gosiger’s Foundation for Field Service Success

July 10, 2019 | 1 Mins Read

Gosiger’s Foundation for Field Service Success

Roger O’Connor, VP of Product Support at Gosiger, discusses the company’s three-pronged approach to service transformation: modernizing through technology, migrating to outcomes-based service, and developing effective KPIs to measure progress and success.

Stay Connected

Subscribe to The INSIDER, our exclusive monthly newsletter, and get a first look at what’s new, what’s next, and what’s only shared with our inner circle.

Most Recent