How to guarantee great service delivery management?

Businesses today operate in a hyper-competitive atmosphere, propelled by constantly evolving digital technologies. Engagement levels between customers and businesses are undergoing paradigm shifts; customers’ expectations and attitudes are placing tall demands on customer service and service delivery management.

Survey findings suggest 90% of US organizations view customer service as the factor in deciding whether to do business with a company. It is interesting to note that 89% of consumers are more likely to make a second purchase (from a company) after the first positive customer service experience. Managing quality customer service delivery is essential.

How to ensure effective service delivery?

To run a successful service-providing organization and ensure effective service delivery, it is essential to constantly deliver customer-centric service. Loopholes-free service delivery management models and their flawless execution are key in managing quality customer service delivery in an uber-competitive market.
Effective service delivery consists of:

• Providing cost-effective and timely resolution to companies after understanding their businesses and their existing challenges
• Pre-empting their future hurdles and implementing preventive measures proactively
• Engaging frontline employees to deliver the ultimate customer experience

1. Taking ownership and ensuring transparent communication with customers:

Let us take the example of how Columbus, an experienced IT services and digital transformation consultancy, does this. The company appoints a dedicated, single point-of-contact service delivery manager for each of its customers, who is responsible for handling that customer’s –

• Service Requests and Service-level Management
• Incident Management
• Problem Management
• Change Management
• Capacity Management
• Availability Management
• Contract Management

Other crucial responsibilities include:

• Handling customer requests and escalations
• Ensuring the customer’s desired outcomes are achieved after thoroughly reviewing the associated costs and risks

2. Governance:

Continuing with Columbus’ example, the company’s service delivery managers implement this for each of its ColumbusCare customers by conducting three types of governance meetings. The aim is to regularly inform every customer about how Columbus is performing on meeting its obligations whilst managing effective service delivery

A detailed account of each governance meeting is as follows:

I. Strategic governance meeting, which includes:

• Reviewing strategic activities at the customer’s/ supplier’s end that may affect application and infrastructure service delivery
• Business architecture dialogs
• Economic follow-up
• Add-ons to the ColumbusCare agreement
• Discussion on contractual changes to the ColumbusCare agreement regarding service-level agreements and charges

II. Tactical governance meeting, which includes:

• Reviewing and planning for upcoming projects/ services that may impact service delivery management
• Discussion on adjustments to the scope of work of respective services
• Planning for changes and improvements to tactical operations
• Discussions and decisions about the customer’s technical systems and technical application infrastructure architecture/ design
• Reviewing the customer’s environment and making proactive recommendations
• Reviewing service-level agreement status
• Reviewing technical recommendations based on performance reports and the customer’s requests
• Reviewing financial status
• Handling quality issues at the technical operations level
  

III. Operational governance meeting, which includes:

• Reporting activities and service delivery status
• Following up on action plans from the previous OGM
• Addressing technical and other quality issues
• Root cause analysis
• Reviewing service-level agreement status
• Defining continuous improvement initiatives

ColumbusCare service delivery managers provide customers exclusive access to a personalized ServiceNow portal that allows them to check the status of service requests and incident cases.

Conclusion

Customer satisfaction is the deciding factor for companies focused on growth. A crucial element in delivering this satisfaction is making sure customers are content through regular customer satisfaction evaluations. Based on the received feedback, service delivery managers must be able to adjust the service delivery process to ensure that it is more seamless and hiccups-free. To know more, write to us at us-marketing@columbusglobal.com.