Term Paper on "Customer Value"

Term Paper 10 pages (2901 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Business Resource Management Group

Customer Service Strategy Assessment

Introduction

The intent of this paper is to analyze the customer service strategies of

the Business Resource Management Group. The basis of this analysis is an

interpretation and discussion of a customer service survey completed in

conjunction with the company recently. The Business Resource Management

Group is a consultancy that serves small businesses in the areas of IT

Development, Human Resources, Marketing, and Organizational Development

specifically focusing on those emerging small businesses that are in the

introductory and growth stages of development, typically with 50 employees

or less. As Business Resource Management Group is by nature a services-

based company, the need for ensuring a consistently high level of

performance for clients needs to be translated into along-term strategic

advantage. Customer service must be the foundation of all areas of this

consultancy if it is achieve its full potential and continually attract and

serve new clients.

Customer Service Implications based on Survey Results

In assessing the commitment to and level of customer service at Business

Resource Management Group, ten questions were created to measure the

consultancy's current level of customer centricity and ability to take the

core values of service and base their strategies and initiatives on them.

These ten questions also focus on the level of interorganizational

knowledge sharing and commitment to share customer-specific information

throughout the consultancy. This is a critical value for any company to

have when it comes to customer service, as everyone in a consultancy,

especially a smaller one like Business Resource Management Group, needs to

have good visibility into all customer-related information to effectively

serve them. The intent of this section is to review each of the responses

to the survey and discuss the results of each survey answer in terms of

implementing customer service strategies throughout Business Resource

Management Group. Each of the questions were specifically scored on a 5

point Likert Scale with the following values:

1 = Strongly Disagree

2 = Disagree

3 = Neutral

4 = Agree

5 = Strong

Each of the questions is now presented below followed by an analysis of

what their responses indicate about Business Resource Management Group

today from a customer service standpoint.

Question 1: Our business objectives are driven primarily by customer

satisfaction.

With a score of 4, indicating the company's managers agree their

consultancy is driven primarily by the need to deliver customer

satisfaction, this question highlights the fact that the unmet and at times

urgent needs of customers help to define future strategies, offerings, and

even the completion of specific jobs and tasks. The commitment to customer

satisfaction needs to be backed up with strategies for measuring just how

satisfied customers are to begin with, what approaches work best for

increasing satisfaction, and when does a customer typically make the

transition from transacting with Business Resource Management Group to

being a loyal client and turning to the consultancy for the majority of

their work. For the consultancy to accomplish this, there must be a

measure of customer churn completed, specifically looking at how often

customers defect and why. Only from understanding churn will the

consultancy be able to translate their high level of commitment to customer

satisfaction driving business objectives to action in the form of plans,

strategies and programs. For customer satisfaction to be the cornerstone

of any objective at Business Resource Management Group it must first be

measured, and second, the reciprocal value of why customers leave, or

customer churn, must also be understood.

Question 2: We constantly monitor our level of commitment and orientation

to serving customer needs.

With a score of 2, the consultancy's management is saying that while

objectives are for the most part driven by a concern for customer

satisfaction, the company does not actively monitor, or evaluate its level

of comment and orientation to serving customer needs. This is ironic as on

the one hand, objectives are set with customer satisfaction in mind, yet

there is not active monitoring how well the company is tracking to that

ideal.

Clearly what is needed is a multi-step program to bring the commitment to

and orientation towards serving customer needs into the forefront of how

the consultancy evaluates major strategies, process creation and re-

definition around major functional areas and programs. Next, each new

strategy or initiative needs to be evaluated from the standpoint of

benchmarking its level of commitment and orientation to fulfilling major

unmet customer needs. Only after this two-step process will the

consultancy be able to unequivocally state they have increased the level of

monitoring of their commitment to and step to integrate process for

tracking and creating a culture that stresses orientation to customer

needs.

Question 3: We freely communicate information about our successful and

unsuccessful customer experiences across all business functions.

With a rating of 1, the consultancy's managers strongly disagree with this

statement, and it is fairly common to see this even in the most customer-

centric of organizations. The ability to share both exceptionally good and

bad news about customers is one of the more difficult processes companies

struggle to put into place. With a rating of 1 it is clear that no news

regarding customer successes or failures is making its way through the

organization.

This points to a broader systemic problem within the organization, and that

is the lack of knowledge transfer is limiting the company's ability to turn

into an organization that learns. This is a critical shortcoming for any

consultancy, as it is critical that over time, in the service of customers,

the company learns which strategies, processes and programs deliver best

practices to its clients. Without a more fluid and effective approach to

sharing both good and bad customer stories, the consultancy will

drastically slow down its ability to innovate.

Question 4: Our strategy for competitive advantage is based on our

understanding of customer's needs.

With a rating of 5 which signals that the consultancy's senior management

sees their acuity and insight into customers' needs as being superior, so

much so that it leads to competitive advantage, this question is the only

one to get rated with the highest ranking possible. In providing services

to clients, the consultancy out of necessity needs to understand, in

detail, the clients' objectives and unmet needs. Those are the cornerstones

of any successful client engagement and the essence of exceeding their

expectations. From the low scores on other questions it appears that

senior management may be confusing in-depth project knowledge for customers

versus the broader markets' unmet needs.

Paradoxically many services-based companies say they their competitive

advantage comes from their understanding of customers' needs yet have no

idea what levels of satisfaction their customers are experiencing, or

better yet, the actual benefits they are accruing from the initiatives,

plans, programs, and strategies put into place at the consultancy's

recommendation. Simply put, despite what many services companies claim as

exceptional competitive advantage based on customers' needs, they have no

idea if the initiatives, plans, programs, and strategies are making an

impact or not. This issue of making an impact for the customer is major

one and is ultimately the true test of the value that this consultancy is

delivering to its clients. To have a competitive advantage based on an

understanding of customers' needs but to not act on them is to deny the

consultancy evidence of making an impact on the part of its clients.

Question 5: We measure customer satisfaction systematically and frequently.

With a score of 2, this signals that despite a belief on the part of senior

management that the consultancy has customer centricity as the basis of

their objectives in the first question of the survey, there is no tie-back

to actually measuring satisfaction. This disconnect happens in many

services-based companies as it is assumed that if the customer pays, they

are generally OK with what was delivered. Yet as was mentioned in the

analysis of Question 4, it is common for services companies especially to

claim that their understanding of customers' needs leads to competitive

advantage, yet they never actually measure the impact of their strategies

on their specific customers' level of satisfaction.

For Business Resource Management Group to transform what it perceives as a

competitive advantage into an actual one, it must become very focused and

forthright in measuring customer satisfaction. First a methodology must be

defined that is unbiased, and that truly reflects the opinions of customers

regarding both the quality of the consultancy's work and the impact it

makes on their own business strategies. Second, the results of the surveys

need to be visible throughout the entire organization. Charts and graphs

showing customer satisfaction scores need to be highly visible throughout

the company, and measures of customer satisfaction need to begin permeating

the discussions and strategy sessions as well. For consultancy to turn

this issue of listening to customers and their levels of satisfaction with

the firm, managers must become galvanized in their commitment to create

ongoing Voice of the Customer (VoC) programs to… READ MORE

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