Steve Downton, Downton Service Management Consultants Ltd, Noventum Group
Recent research into trends of a number of service industries, has confirmed that many companies now recognise service as a strategic mainstay towards supporting businesses to generate revenue. Services replacing products to generate the bulk of revenue and profit is not accepted. The assumption is that service, at best, can become more efficient and thereby save money and reduce costs.
The value of service has not been recognized, as the focus has been on product sales revenue and cost cutting in non-sales areas. Many have believed service can be dealt with at a later stage as a separate module (quite often still in development). This has proved to be extremely inefficient and expensive, and tools and methods must now be employed that will provide service as an integrated part of the customer’s solution.
This growing role of service in the business has resulted in a need for detailed useable customer information to be readily available for the service representative. The majority of existing tools still focus on gathering data about productivity and performance of the break/fix aspect of the operation, and without an effective customer information system the whole structure struggles to provide the additional information required.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has had a radical impact on the customer service environment.
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