MANAGED SERVICES customer ser vices
management standard. It could not be prescriptive, but would help to identify best practices - although aligning customer service practices with ITIL’s service and support framework was a reasonable alternative for now. There was also mention made of 6 Sigma as a useful tool. There was a general acknowledgement that the IT industry in particular had a long way to go when it comes to customer service – ‘The last thing a technical person thinks of is customer service’ was one participant’s summary. The starting point for customer service best practice is the creation of an engine of people working to help the customer-facing staff to review all the teams and to help them better understand customer service. Of crucial importance in this process is the need for communication. To make sure that (especially in the case of the IT department) you tell people what has happened and how and when it will be fi xed. And also to be proactive, to let employees know – if you have any issues, let us know – we can’t fi x them otherwise.
Interestingly, the roundtable participants were critical of some of the IT organisations they have to deal with in terms of customer service – perhaps the best/worst example being where one participant’s incumbent telephony provider ‘didn’t actually know we had an account with them’!
For Claranet itself, customer service has been central to its business. This continues to be the case – and their customer service strategy continues to evolve in line with customer and market requirements. At its heart is customer trust, and signifi cant resource is put into building long-term customer relationships – ensuring that customers know that Claranet is an expert (knows what it is talking about), reliable, transparent and communicates well.
Service Level Agreements (SLAs) Of course, in any customer relationship, things do go wrong and, for the IT industry at least, SLAs are seen to be the litmus test for deciding where the blame must lie. Interestingly, all of the participants were sceptical as to the effectiveness of SLAs in terms of managing a supplier/customer relationship effectively. For example, if an SLA specifi es that Problem A must be fi xed within four days, there’s every chance that the supplier will take the full four days to fi x the problem, when it could be fi xed much sooner. As a target for an organisation to meet certain standards, an SLA has some
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www.dcseurope.info I Summer 2014
value, but as a tool with which to ‘bash a supplier around the head’, is it useful? The general feeling was that, if an SLA and its penalties need to be invoked, then something has gone badly wrong with the supplier/customer relationship.
There was also a strong feeling that, in order to deliver good customer service, an IT supplier must not act arrogantly – ie assume that he knows more about your organisation’s needs than you do – nor try to and offer everything. Back to the same telephony example given earlier, and this company is trying to force workforce management solutions on to the participant’s organisation – when all that is required is telephony.
Food for thought
The roundtable ended with some thoughts on what customer service project(s) each participant is working on at the present time: 1. A single view of customer preferences – linking data from web, email and phone – with the objective of personalising the customer experience, providing a ‘corner shop experience’.
2. Modern ecommerce, understanding what a customer wants and anticipating what their needs are. Making this a cultural aspect of the business – providing a customer service, that just so happens to use technology. 3. Consistency – having regular customer service meetings and reviews; communicating well and making sure employees care about what they do. 4. Our colleagues understand their customers well, but our IT needs to understand our customers – We also need to celebrate success, and not always deal with people when something is broken down. 5. Direct engagement – can we help to improve the customer service provided by the business?
6. Eat your own dog food – look at our own service delivery internally and then roll this out to customers.
7. Find out what customers do, what they need and understand their day – a back to the fl oor programme.
The Claranet roundtable event provided an incredible amount of food for thought, and hopefully this report will act as a catalyst for many IT departments and the wider organisations of which they are apart to re-examine their customer service approach. If there was one key take away from the day it would be the need for good communications – both internally and externally – as the key foundation for good customer service: If people know what is going on, then their expectations can be managed; but if they are kept in the dark, then they are unlikely to be happy, whatever the eventual outcome.
www.claranet.co.uk
Participants in the Claranet customer service roundtable event were:
Kirsty Marshall, Customer Service Manager, Telecity, Daniel Cooper, Head of Corporate IT, Net-A-Porter, Susan Grace, Corporate IT Services Manager, Net-A-Porter, Russell Parr, IT Director, Attraction World, Suki McNair, IT Operations Manager, CRU International Philip Alsop, Editor, DCS publications, Sally Duff, Account Director, Institute of Customer Service, Wiebe Nauta, Operations Director, Claranet, Tim Hawes, Head of Service Quality, Claranet
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