New Year Resolutions of a Manager - National HRD Network

CRM - Six Steps
From Customer Service
CRM encompasses the capabilities,
methodologies that support an enterprise in
managing the customer relationships. The
general purpose of CRM is to enable
organizations to better manage their
customers through the introduction of reliable
systems, processes and procedures.
One of the ongoing challenges, that the
business are facing today are optimizing
customer satisfaction & developing
Customer Relationship Management.
There are six steps to make the customer
service effective.
I) Importance of a clear customer
experience strategy.
II) Selecting the Correct People
III) Developing, Motivating and Managing
your People
IV) Establishing Effective Service Delivery
Processes
V) Building in Continuous Improvement
VI) Ensuring Managers are the key change
- agents
I) The importance of a clear Customer
Experience Strategy.
To establish a good strategy certain key
practices required are:
o Understand the overall organizational
vision and mission.
o Define the organization customer
service direction slogan and values.
o Ensure customer service is defined as
a key responsibility for the business/
department.
o Share the customer experience strategy
via a comprehensive communication
program.
o Ensure that this strategy does not
conflict with other business strategies.
o As consultants, it is amazing how often
we hear organizations say, "Improving
customer service is a priority, and we
are also introducing stringent cost -
cutting measures".
II) Selecting the Correct People:
It's really head to teach an elephant to
dance.
When recruiting employees to provide
customer service, the process often tends
to concentrate more on functional
expertise, technical competence and
knowledge rather than interpersonal skills.
However, lack of right attitude can
drastically impact client satisfaction levels.
Therefore in selecting the right people,
1. Define the critical job requirements.
2. Develop scenario based interviews/
assignment centers to screen and
select candidates.
3. Involve multiple team members in hiring
process.
4. Ensure evaluation is based on objective,
not the subjective "be like me" criteria.
III) Developing, Motivating and
Managing Your People:
Even though you have hired the right
people, there is still a need to reorient
them into organizations customer
relationship culture and define key
communication skills. In call centers and
technical support departments, there is
a tendency to rely on technical/functional
skills and neglect interpersonal skills
development. This can result in providing
acceptable material service, the more
tangible aspect, yet unacceptable
personal service, and the competitive
differentiator.
To build customer relationship culture,
it is important to:
1. Provide training in key areas required
to deliver exceptional personal service.
2. Reinforce their skills using on going
coaching & feed back.
3. Measure current performance levels.
4. Reward performance using a
combination of monetary and nonmonetary
recognition.
IV) Establishing Effective Service
Delivery Processes:
Effective processes and procedures
provide the foundation for smoothing or
inhibiting the material service element
of the customer interaction. The critical
elements in ensuring a positive material
customer experience are:
a. Mapping the service delivery processes.
b. Evaluating critical success points in the
process.
c. Defining service standards and
objectives for these essential points.
P. Sugunakar Reddy and T. Vijaya
d. Establishing service delivery
procedures to optimize material service.
e. Creating service legal agreements to
smooth internal service delivery.
V) Building in Continuous Improvement:
No matter how effective the service
delivery processes, or well trained the
service deliverers, things go wrong.
Products have faults. Customers get
frustrated. The organizations that build
around managing the customer
experience are able to resolve these
issues effectively. This process is known,
as "recovery" is an important differentiator
in building customer loyalty. In order to
recover effectively, it is necessary to:
o Actively seek customer feedback and
complaints; you cannot improve if you
don't know what went wrong in the first
place.
o Train staffs how to handle customer
complaints effectively, using the correct
mix of empathizing, apologizing and
resolution.
u H
P. Sugunakar Reddy and T. Vijaya, faculty of business management, Vaagdevi P.G. College, and can be reached at
peddisugunakar_reddy@yahoo.co.in; vijji02@gmail.com
o
o
Make sure the real problem is solved.
Focus on proactive (prevention) as well
as reactive (cure) problem solving.
VI) Ensuring Managers are the key
change - agents:
As consultants, we observe that senior
management often has the vision,
intention and commitment to introduce
a comprehensive, customer relationship
management system, but the 'make or
break' element is in involving middle
management in change process, and
empowering them to be the key change
agents.
To do this it is important to:
o Engage the management team early
and often in the process.
o Involve management members in
articulating customer experience strategy.
o Use managers as facilitators when
rolling out interpersonal skills training.
o Reward managers on establishing,
monitoring and updating service
delivery processes.
o
Ensure managers are able to act as an
example to their teams.
| HRD News Letter | January 2007, Vol.22, Issue:10 32|