You might hear talk about “maximising your service delivery”, but what does it mean? Is maximising getting the most of every penny spent or delivering as good service as possible? We explain why we think maximising is about investing, not cutting back, and give you five handy tips on how to improve your service delivery.
What is maximised service?
Service is something that must be allowed to cost. Try seeing service as an asset instead of as a cost and it will be clear that you need to invest in it. You want an asset to increase in value and be valuable to others too, or else it will be useless. Therefore, you might need to change your perception of what service is in order to make it an important part of your business offering. A customer-focused service delivery is a golden opportunity for upselling, building customer loyalty and strengthening your brand. These are opportunities you cannot afford to miss in today’s competitive market.
1. Let the board set service KPIs
If you think of service an asset, then you can measure the ROI. Service KPIs ought to be a priority for the board because they are a true measure of your customer relationships and key for your business. KPIs are another argument for channelling customer contacts to forums where their interaction can be measured and analysed. Examples of interesting KPIs are customer satisfaction, their view on your accessibility, upsales and query resolution speed.
The more you know about your customer the more you can predict their behaviour and match volumes and spikes in trade or calls. Service is how you interact with your customers throughout the entire customer lifecycle. This plays a vital role in building a strong brand and increasing sales.
Use service KPIs as a starting point to see what you need to do in order to measure them efficiently and then improve on them. You will notice that maximising service is about investing, not cutting back. But what digital tools and which processes can be used?
2. Adept to new customer behaviour
B2B online behaviour is now similar to B2C behaviour and you need to make sure your organisation is adapting to this shift. For example, you do not expect to get personal service for every single item you buy online as a private consumer, so there is no need for this for B2B customers either. Good service can mean ease of use and accessibility, which is why you should consider investing in an efficient e-commerce process for your customers so they can buy whenever it suits them. Your customers may not purchase high-priced products through an online shop but do consider what you can move online as a step towards increasing your service level.
3. Keep track of your customers
How do you keep track of issues related to customers or products? What happens to queries raised by customers in conversation with the account manager or service technician? How do you get feedback on how queries were dealt with, which ones are recurring, and which products generate the most issues? This provides a wealth of information that can help to massively improve your service delivery while transforming your offering and even your products. If your account managers take service calls, enable them to log the call just as a customer service representative would do. Ensure that other communication channels, such as Facebook Messenger or your app, also track every issue.
4. Go from emails to bots
I am sure you remember when emails became an alternative in how to contact customer service. Now chatbots are overtaking emails. A B2B customer wants to have an answer as quickly as in B2C and bots can be on duty 24/7. For example, the bot can advice on delivery times, stock levels, openings times, addresses and prices. Your bot learns by using AI and continuously gathers information, which will be useful for you to further improve your service delivery. Investing in a chatbot also contributes to your customer’s positive experience of your company as you can offer service anytime it is requested.
5. Automate to free up time for analytics
Use digital tools wherever possible to automate manual processes, thus freeing up time for employees to analyse customer data and drive upselling or improve marketing efforts. The Microsoft Dynamics 365 Field Service App is a digital tool designed to reduce administration and enable a customer-first mindset for service technicians. Everything relating to a work order is saved in the app and automatically exchanged with your ERP systems. This makes the data accessible for analysis and comparison against KPIs without requiring manual data entry in multiple systems. Other investments you can make involve automating what customers can do on their own, like implementing e-commerce, and deploying chatbots and AI.
At Stratiteq we help businesses connect people with the latest technology from Microsoft. We call this approach Connected Services. With Microsoft’s services or a mix of other services, you can get a better overview of your customers and potential customers, a more efficient way of doing data analytics and actionable insights. Download our guide “Make Service Great Again” here.
