Service Management
Some friends used to keep asking me about my occupation. They know I work in the telecommunications sector but a good part of my business is not very clear to them. So I used to say “Well, I am a Service Manager!” – but what’s that in detail ?
Being a Service Manager in today’s world is a pretty interesting and challenging business. Delivering exceptional services for our most important asset – the customer. Fighting the good fight and carrying out the day to day challenge managing to get things right first time or to apply resilient corrective actions if it’s not.
A Service Manager is a customer’s true business partner who makes sure that related clients are happy with the overall purchased service solution at any time during the entire life-cycle. It is a very important, proactive, structured approach that makes the difference. It’s however much more than just quality management, transactional and escalation support. It’s a valuable add-on and an activity above the normal with a strategic approach, aligned to the much bigger picture to secure and expand company revenue to gain utmost benefit for all parties.
A typical Service Management approach consist of following important basic blocks:
- Manage a service manual per customer as an integral and underlying supporting document to clarify how business is being conducted
- Have the right Governanve Model in place covering every aspect of customer & in-/external requirements
- Carry out regular trend analysis to proactively control performance in order to initiate and drive any required improvement activity before a potential problem drives you
- Perform regular customer service reviews to match trends, receive valuable first hand feedback and balance any required future activity
- Add a good percentage of flexibility and always be ready to work a bit in the grey area to explore the unknown
Clearly, one of the most important competence of a Service Manager is to be passionate. You need to be agile enough to execute and willing to go the extra mile if needed to keep your house clean.
And - you need to be positive minded and have fun !
Miscellaneous
Here's a small collection of various things from the Internet which I personally think are worth to be mentioned. All views expressed are those of the public and/or the related site owners and I shall not be responsible for any content of any of the external websites below.
75 Customer Service facts
29 ways to stay creative
More to follow ....