Question

Evaluate best organizational constructs to support an IT framework that is a “brick and click” B2B industrial global manufacturer of automotive parts. Critique what software will support both the online parts business and the traditional distribution selling channel business. Compare both organizational concepts outlining and assessing the installation differences and provide what aspects of each business model can be shared, and unique to the differing methods of sale. Evaluate the customer service software needed to support both operations and specifically choose what aspects of each environment are critically necessary to provide best practice. Assess the hardware and software characteristics of each business model platform and recommend most economical and effective methods to provide 24/7 global operations demands. Recommend what communications systems, security, manpower, contingency, and performance aspects needed to operate both business models. Predict the most important skill sets needed to organize and operate the configured IT installation and provide comparisons between both business models in the creation and on going evolution and growth of each business. Project the future critical needs of each business model and what IT, organization, and strategies will be needed to assure best service quality highlighting what service quality dimensions are most important in the created IT organization created.

Answer 1

As the new generation comes to managerial and purchasing power age, their preferred method of purchasing (ecommerce) will surpass older processes.

In general, B2B customers want to see their B2C conveniences transfer over.

• 72% of B2B customers want self-service access to accounts and orders
• 64% of B2B customers want scheduled deliveries

“The modern millennial B2B buyer doesn’t want to have to pick up a phone to order,” says Doug Root, CEO at Atlanta Light Bulbs.

“Today’s B2B buyers just want to get things done – right then and there.”

A recent study by Heinz and SnapApp found that millennials B2B buyers aren’t just coming –– they are here.

• 41% of millennials are either making purchasing decisions (13%) or influencing them (28%).
• 38% are tasked with researching purchases.
• 82% are part of the buying committee in some capacity.

And, they shop differently than their generational peers. The study found:

• Millennial buyers are far more independent than Generation X or baby boomer buyers during their path to purchase: They conduct extensive research on their own before making any purchasing decisions.
• While Generation X and baby boomer buyers rely on salespeople for guidance, millennial buyers are more likely to rely on the opinions of peers or outside experts than to trust a salesperson: They actively avoid engaging with sales early on; nearly 60 percent say they don’t engage with a salesperson until they’re in the middle of a purchasing decision.
• These buying behaviors mimic B2C buying behaviors in which brands must educate, build trust and build community before a purchasing decision is made – or even considered.
• If you want your brand to show up in those buying committees, you must have an online presence.
  • One last data point to drive this home:
  • An overwhelming majority (89%) of B2B researchers use the internet in their research process and they conduct 12 searches prior to engaging on a specific brand’s site.

Organizations are facing exciting and dynamic challenges in the 21st century. In the gloabalized business, companies require strategic thinking and only by evolving good corporate strategies can they become strategically competitive. A sustained or sustainable competitive advantage occurs when firm implements a value – creating strategy of which other companies are unable to duplicate the benefits or find it too costly to initiate. Corporate strategy includes the commitments, decisions and actions required for a firm to achieve strategic competitiveness and earn above average returns

When company communicates its customers the process can involve many different people within both organizations using a variety of different methods. CRM is the acronym for the term “Customer Relationship Management”. The main tool that is used is an order that is communicated by company’s customer to its sales department. However this is only one of many communications that should be managed. To ensure that company can provide the best customer service experience possible the use of customer relationship management (CRM) software should be considered.

Typical CRM software will allow company to track and organize its contacts with its current and prospective customers. The software allows your employees to store information about customers and customer interactions which then can be accessed by employees in different departments within company.

There are three areas which in general company interacts with its customers.

Front Office Contacts

These involve the direct contact your employees have with your customers which can include phone calls, e-mail, instant messages and face to face communication.

Back Office Operations

These are processes that are used to facilitate the front office, such as finance communications, marketing, customer billing and advertising.

Business Contacts

Your employees will interact with customers and suppliers through networking, industry events and trade associations.

In the traditional method of consuming services or resources, the owner of the infrastructure is responsible for managing every piece of hardware and software he or she uses. Normally, it takes some time for a user to access a new resource, but it can be configured exactly as needed.

Traditional infrastructure is often related to legacy core applications (tied to older technologies perhaps) that cannot be easily migrated to cloud paradigms. Elasticity, standardization and other clear cloud advantages are not sufficient reasons to migrate. In other cases, rigid security and country regulations sometimes force users to have data located nearby and/or under total management control.

In our work with dozens of companies in six data-rich industries, we have found that fully exploiting data and analytics requires three mutually supportive capabilities. First, companies must be able to identify, combine, and manage multiple sources of data. Second, they need the capability to build advanced-analytics models for predicting and optimizing outcomes. Third, and most critical, management must possess the muscle to transform the organization so that the data and models actually yield better decisions. Two important features underpin those competencies: a clear strategy for how to use data and analytics to compete and the deployment of the right technology architecture and capabilities.

Just as important, a clear vision of the desired business impact must shape the integrated approach to data sourcing, model building, and organizational transformation. That helps you avoid the common trap of starting by asking what the data can do for you. Leaders should invest sufficient time and energy in aligning managers across the organization in support of the mission.

“The purpose of business is to create and keep customers,” so every business needs to organise its service delivery system around the needs of its customers. This means firstly designing a customer service strategy that will put customers at the heart of your business. Senior managers need to ask themselves, “Are we doing everything we can to create the best possible experience for our customers?” Perhaps some senior managers assume that because their marketing departments communicate that the organisation’s service delivery “exceeds customer expectations,” that they actually do. I call this corporate arrogance! It is suicidal for businesses.

Your people are the ones to leave a first impression - and a lasting impression - on your customers. They also intimately understand customers’ frustrations and they often know how issues can be resolved, but are not empowered to make the necessary changes.

The UK is predominantly a service economy, so we increasingly need high performance people to keep our customers loyal. Poor customer service is costing UK business’s billions of pounds per year as customers defect! Companies that increase customer interaction investments during a recession can improve profit margins, sales and market share over complacent competitors. It is critical for organisations to retain every customer and maximise their lifetime value.

Institute of Customer Service research has suggested that organisations with a reputation for service excellence have on average a 24% higher net profit margin than same-sector rivals who do not have the same standing – and they can achieve up to 71% more profit per employee. Are businesses listening?

Let’s assume there are still many organisations out there that still do not know how to establish a strong customer base, so what do they have to do? Let’s get customer-centric and here are my ten key components, tried and tested, which will help organisations get started.

Components of customer-centricity

1. Customer insight – Get to know your customers and understand what they expect from you. How many organisations conduct mystery shopper activities for themselves? Where they do it can be scary but enlightening. Get to know your internal customers too - your workforce. Customer service managers need to focus on all their customers consistently and there are many ways of gathering customer intelligence. This does not mean the odd customer satisfaction survey, which I am personally not in favour of; not because most organisations disregard the feedback or do not interpret them properly, but because many organisations create them with a primary intention of achieving good results! They sometimes only ask the questions that will highlight their good practices.

What is AI technology currently capable of and how can it impact your customer service? Read on.

Also, where satisfaction surveys are concerned doesn’t the customer experience depend a lot on customer expectations in the first place? might score highly because we have low expectations, but we might score British Airways lower because we have high expectations. Organizations need more reliable methods of evaluating the customer experience and they need their people to make this happen. I really believe that before you decide what your customer service strategy should be you need to talk to your customers and your people, your internal customers, before you put pen to paper.

I remember one such company that impressed me which has now been taken over. Portman Building Society’s top executives travelled the length and breadth of the country to speak to their customers and their staff to identify what was important to them and what needed to be in place to satisfy all their requirements. When they analysed all the information they developed their customer service strategy, created new service standards and then went back on the road to communicate their new vision to employees and customers alike. Absolutely the right way to go which is why they proved to be a great acquisition.

1. Create the service vision or service personality – This is an identifiable set of service characteristics that define how an organisation service proposition is different from that of its competitors. Some organisations have their own credo, others have a service promise or a customer charter but whatever method you have of communicating your service standards to your customers it is important to make sure those promises are achievable and shared by all teams in the organisation.
   
2. Develop a customer service strategy - This determines the overall direction of the organization, and, in particular, how the organization will go about delivering customer service excellence. This is a high level plan that communicates to everyone involved with the organization how it will develop relationships with its customers, in order to maximize customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and achieve business success. It is commonly used to prevent non-aligned and disjointed activities between departments and drives everyone towards the same service goals. It includes a service/operational plan to ensure the strategic objectives are met and this should be shared with employees as everyone is going on the same journey. Communication is key; if you do not keep your people informed, rumours and gossip spread fast which can lead to negativity and once embedded it is hard to eliminate.
   
3. Build an appropriate customer service framework - A learning and development framework will help identify how the organisation is going to go about delivering service excellence. Reward and recognition, celebrating success are key motivators for employees so use them to deliver your service strategy. Customer service performance will improve when organisations provide support through valued reward and recognition systems. This level of recognition results in higher levels of employee satisfaction which translates into better customer service for your customers.
   
4. Deploy executive service leaders and managers who will become the organisation’s service champions - Service leaders and managers can make or break an organisation’s values; a leader who successfully creates a customer-focused culture will have a huge impact on business success through employee retention and customer loyalty. Ensure that your leaders and managers have the right skills, dedication and passionate about service excellence, customer focused and are results-driven. Leaders should posses a strong business acumen, be strategic, but lead by example, inspiring trust and embedding a no-blame culture within the organisation. Critically, they must encourage positive teamwork.
   
5. Recruit high-performance, intelligent and well-motivated people with a 'can-do attitude' - You want people with a customer-focused mindset. Once in place, develop their knowledge and skills for delivering service excellence against competencies that are customer focused – good communication skills, tolerance, empathy, good judgement and the ability to interpret service issues and respond appropriately according to the organisations rules.
   
6. Create innovative products and services with the support of all your people- Inspire your organisation to develop a culture of continuous improvement and innovation for the benefit of your customers. Employee suggestion schemes have helped many organisations implement change which has improved service delivery for customers but even those organisations that have the answers today cannot assume they know what their customers will want tomorrow. Customer’s expectations have become demands and successful organisations will already be anticipating customer’s demands tomorrow to stay ahead of the competition.
   
7. Design and implement customer-centric processes that make purchasing easy for customers - Processes should be seamless, designed from the customers viewpoint and be consistently reviewed to make transactions simple and stress free. This includes making it easy for customers to complain, remember complainants are your most loyal ambassadors if their complaints are handled professionally. Organisations seldom achieve competitive advantage through their technology and processes alone; it may add value but only if there is a parallel investment in their people who have to work with the technology to assist customers.
   
8. Create performance metrics so that the organisation can routinely and accurately assess its effectiveness for customers - Use appropriate tools, proven methods, for measuring your customer satisfaction, remember that customer service as a whole includes a wide range of specific service characteristics and there are many touch points where customer transactions take place. It is important to check on customers` perceptions of your service levels at each of these touch points and compare the results with what actually takes place. In other words, identifying your gaps!
   
9. Manage customer relationships - Products and service alone will not develop relationships with customers. The organisation must deliver something of value to ensure loyalty. Loyalty is created when you provide a level of service that exceeds expectations and which delights your customers. Managing customer relationships is about establishing, maintaining and enhancing relationships with customers for mutual benefit. This takes us back to the beginning, to learning more and more about our customers in order to deliver what they expect. If your people can be encouraged, not only to deliver the promise, but also to go the extra mile, this goes a long way towards sustaining a fantastic relationship with your customers. You will reap the rewards in loyalty, increased reputation and business success. I must emphasise at this point that although CRM is a term given to the management of customer relationships in high volume consumer services its prime objective is to collect data from different departments to enable the tracking and analysis of customer’s transactions and trends. Although particularly valuable it does not replace the personal touch.