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Service Management
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Service Management is an essential part of managing one's customer relationships. Service management processes need to be implemented if an organization wants to retain the loyalty of its existing customer base. The benefits of a good service management process are lower inventories of the service parts, reduced service costs, reduced visits of the technical support team and above all increased customer satisfaction.
The following are the key elements of service management:
- Service Contracts - These are long term contracts signed between customers. The characteristics of service products are defined in Service Level Agreements (SLA), which in turn are validated by different parameters, such as Availability Time and Response Time. The parameters can be used to control service processing.
- Warranties and Claims Management- A warranty is a commitment from a manufacturer or salesperson to a customer that a product has no defects, and that services such as repairs and exchange of defective parts are guaranteed for a particular period of time without the customer being billed. Warranty management includes the following activities:
- Identify warranties within the processing of business transactions in service (service processes, confirmations, complaints)
- Check whether the claims on the warranty services are legitimate
- Check whether an incoming problem message is a case for warranty
- Define the effects of warranties on pricing and billing
- Monitor warranty costs
- Complaint Processing and Reverse Logistics - A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction that a customer makes in relation to a service or product. A good service management process ensures prompt handling of customer complaints through field visits by qualified technical support staff. If the product needs to be return, the reverse logistics need to be managed and the product may need to be exchanged.
- Repair Processing - The customer contacts the firm with a request for the defective product to be repaired. A repair order is created by the firm which could reference to an existing warranty if available. This order is assigned to a qualified support personnel who has access to a technical database which might contain analysis of failures for the part based on past history. Based on the inputs, prompt service is provided to the customer and the product gets repaired.
- Analysis - A good service management process is able to capture analytical data pertaining to service goods, repairs, complaints, returns etc, so that valuable insight is available for future course of action.
Poorly framed and ill-managed customer service policies render even the most efficient supply chains ineffective. This leads to increased distribution costs, a dent in profits and damage to brand equity. Our experts at Aqua MCG review existing processes and performances and match them with opportunities. This method involves understanding the level and quality of service required along with the aspects of the supply chain and service that can be adapted to arrive at the right business mix. |
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| Market Entry & Growth Strategy |
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| Aqua MCG developed the organization strategy for an opportunity size of USD 10 B covering 12 countries. Learn more about it. |
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| Electronics, High Tech & Telecommunication |
| The focus of this industry is on products which deliver better performance, high speed communication and energy efficient products. Read more about Aqua MCG's capabilities in this sector. |
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