Getting fitter through best practice service management
In more and more companies, it is no longer the product or industrial good offered alone that determines the company's success, but increasingly also the quality of customer service. But what requirements must a modern service organization fulfill in order to optimally meet customer needs and contribute to targeted value creation in the company?
In a world where customer demands are increasing, constantly changing and at the same time the complexity of organizations and technologies is growing, efficient and agile collaboration with all parties involved is a very relevant criterion for success.
Regardless of the industry in which they operate, service organizations face a number of challenges that cannot be solved satisfactorily with previous approaches. The following is a description of the seven key fields of action that service departments are currently dealing with or will have to master in the future:
1.) Efficient cooperation
It is about the way organizations are integrated into the corporate value chain, the interaction they have with customers and suppliers. In the future, this collaboration must take place with increased frequency and agility. In addition, there is usually a high level of organizational complexity, since not only 1st, 2nd and 3rd level support, but also field support and specialists as well as external service providers must be integrated and coordinated. The goal is satisfied customers.
2.) Alignment
Alignment in this context means the alignment, alignment, alignment of all parties involved in the service delivery (customers, suppliers and the different departments and teams of the service organization). This applies to all activities, but especially to partial and final results in the value chain. The ultimate goal of the effort is not the clean process per se, but the optimal and economical service, from the customer's perspective.
3.) Proactive instead of reactive
Many support organizations are very highly clocked. Their day-to-day business is dominated by unplanned activities such as requests, faults, issues and orders that have to be implemented quickly. They usually act reactively as soon as the customer needs support. In other words, these organizations are highly externally determined and have difficulty with planning. Optimization is very difficult under these conditions, as are management and control. For the future success of these service units, it is essential to find ways of moving from reactivity to proactivity in order to regain control and the ability to plan.
4. ) The optimal flow
Service organizations must find and define their optimal flow for all activities, processes, malfunctions or orders. This flow is flexible in the sense that it is regularly questioned as to whether framework conditions have changed and whether adjustments to the flow are necessary? To do this, the service organization must create space for itself in the form of time and money. This can be achieved by eliminating backflows and obstructions and by consistently standardizing and automating the defined processes (especially for all routine activities).
5.) Dissolution of hierarchies and silos
This goes hand in hand with the fact that traditional organizational structures still exist, but collaboration is becoming increasingly service and process-oriented. Operating in functional silos no longer works today. The optimal flow is mapped along the value chain in matrix organizations. This changes the culture of communication and collaboration. Work is increasingly project- and process-oriented - strongly cross-departmental and cross-organizational.
6.) Visualization and full transparency of tasks
When working in this way, all participants must be clear about which tasks are pending, which results and partial results must be achieved by when, and which activities are performed by whom. Visualization creates transparency and thus optimized efficiency. In addition, the service organization can prove the added value it contributes to the company in the first place.
7.) More agility
It is important to establish a service culture that understands continuous change as normal and has established organizational capabilities that give the organization room to continuously adapt to agile conditions. It is important to cast routine activities in clean processes and at the same time to invest as much effort as possible in business projects, in added value. By reducing unplanned work and standardizing or automating daily business, capacities are freed up that are needed to build up the necessary agility. A suffocation in routine activities is prevented.
If the processes in the company are clearly defined, a sustainable and future-proof solution for successful service management can be implemented in combination with an appropriate tool. You can find more know-how about service management in the longer article "Raus aus der Tagesgeschäftsfalle" by Markus Bause, Managing Director SERVIEW, and Oliver Bendig, CEO Matrix42.
