Company-Wide Customer Service
Customer Service is Process, not a Department
Customer service is a process and not a department. If that thought is true, what does that mean? At the heart of this viewpoint lies the idea of thinking often found in reengineering discussions. This is where outdated rules and assumptions that underlie current business practices are identified and abandoned. This is where traditions are also abandoned. This is important because in some cases, traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening.
Customer Service Is Not Just One Department
If customer service is a process and not a department then everyone in the organization is responsible for providing good service to the customer, not just those in the customer service department. Organizational history can stand in the way of making this change in thinking as the traditions of the past present large obstacles to change.
The management systems in place in many organizations today represent the traditions of task orientation that have existed for the last hundred and fifty years. This is where different departments are responsible for different responsibilities and are looked to for the successful accomplishment of the tasks. Task-oriented jobs in today’s world of customers and rapid change are obsolete. Leading companies today are innovating instead and are organizing work around processes.
When that happens, jobs evolve from narrow and task-oriented to multidimensional. The functional departments of a silo organization lose their reason for being. Managers stop acting like supervisors and behave more like coaches. Workers focus more on the customers’ needs and less on their bosses’ needs. Essentially every aspect of the company is transformed, and often beyond recognition.
A Definition of Good Customer Service
What is everyone in the organization now expected to provide to the customer? Here is one definition: “Excellent customer service is the process by which the organization delivers products or services in a fashion that allows the customer to access them in the most effective, just, cost effective, and satisfying manner possible." Customer service has often been done badly because it’s been defined badly, so it’s important to begin with a definition.
So Just Who in the Company Provides Customer Service
Customers perceive that the person with whom they are dealing in that company, in fact, represents the company. In this view, who now is providing customer service? A simple list would include:
- Marketing people who involve customer service representatives in new product decisions to help head off potential problems.
- Credit people in the accounting department who are discussing past due payments with customers.
- Transportation people who are delivering product to a customer’s premises.
- Truck drivers who are sharing highways with customers.
- Receptionists who are often the first to engage a customer in for a visit.
- Operations people who are conducting plant tours for customers.
- Sales people who only make promises the organization can back up.
This list can be added to but the question remains if customer service is a process and not a department, then who is accountable for customer service as defined here? The answer is everyone!
Customer service is more that people on the phones
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