Service management is a comprehensive process that tailors the customer experience from the moment they contact the business until they are satisfied with the transaction. Poor service management can lead to poor service performance, high service charges, or major errors leading to customer service requests. Service managers are responsible for ensuring a positive customer experience and managing inventory to reduce costs.
Service management is a practice designed to improve a company’s customer service processes. It’s an all-encompassing process that tailors the customer experience from the moment the customer contacts the business until the customer is satisfied with the transaction. Parts of the customer experience may include purchasing, billing, and troubleshooting. One of the most important parts of service management is avoiding errors or service errors.
Customer service isn’t just about talking to customers on the phone or helping them with returns in the store. It includes all aspects of coordinating the interactions a business has with its customers, including the shopping experience, billing, and business website. Unpleasant customer service experiences can deter customers from making repeat purchases and can push them to do business with competitors.
The consequences of poor service management can include poor service performance, high service charges, or major errors leading to customer service requests. Efficient service management across the enterprise can help contain customer service requests by reducing errors that lead to customer contact. A customer who has a billing issue may need to contact the company for assistance in resolving the billing issue. If the billing service issue had been resolved prior to the error, the company would not have had to pay for helping the customer resolve the issue.
Service managers are often responsible for the service aspect of a project where many other managers have contributed. This can result in cutting back the more user-friendly features in favor of other interests, such as budget. In these cases, it’s the responsibility of the service manager to stand his ground on important service issues, so budget cuts don’t impact the customer experience in a way that hurts the business. For example, if an online postage company’s marketing team designs a misleading advertising campaign to drive sales, a service manager would oppose the misleading advertising campaign in the interest of promoting a positive customer experience.
An often forgotten part of service management is inventory. When a business has inventory on hand, it can deliver the product or service faster than a business that needs to order the product. Service management in product repair customer service also requires a keen eye on inventory. Keeping needed repair parts on hand can mean that a service organization can make repairs to defective products quickly, but it also means that the company has to pay to keep and maintain that inventory. This makes balanced inventory an important part of cost reduction in service management.
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