Planning, execution, both?

So, to deliver on the promise of Extreme Customer Service we probably all understand the need for good planning and also good execution (see the Logistically Speaking post of March 1st at http://flashlogistics.blogspot.com/). So what does that really mean? Let’s think about planning; is it an art, a science, or a little bit of both? My vote is that it is a little bit of both. I’ve seen it; lived and breathed it too.

I experienced the planning piece while working as an Inventory Planner and strategy analyst at a Fortune 100 office products company and then while working for the company that is now Click Commerce designing key components of the original version of their software and implementing it for their customers around the globe. The execution piece while working in the service parts logistics organizations at two large global companies, and most recently for third party logistics providers, now of course here at Flash Global Logistics.

Plan as we may, even when using some of the top notch planning and optimization tools on the market today, to the Service professional, when the rubber meets the road, technicians or customers need parts and they usually need them FAST. Gone are the days when a technician can break a service call for lack of a part and tell a customer they’ll be back in the morning to get the machine working again. That’s almost like saying “the check is in the mail”. And remember, when it’s time to renew an equipment lease or sign a new service contract, it’s the broken calls that customers remember – even more than the fact that the equipment needed service in the first place. Years ago I remember reading research that concluded that customers who received good service were actually more satisfied than customers who’s equipment never needed service at all, imagine that!

So, many companies with same day service agreements (like 2 hours, 4 hours, etc.) have taken the approach of positioning service parts within arm’s reach of their technicians at Forward Stocking Locations using service providers who can deliver them to customers in minutes / hours. Today, technicians can’t tell customers that they’ll be back tomorrow and have the machine up and running again after they finish their morning latte. That doesn’t sound right as I write it, and certainly doesn’t sound right at the customer site when their device is not working. OK, nobody ever says that to a customer, but what you say and what your customers hear are usually two different things; right? Remember, we’re talking about the promise of extreme customer service here….

To the service provider what is important are things like potentially not meeting service level agreements for lack of parts, technicians spending time to hook up with their buddies who may have the part they need, or a host of other non productive activities that could potentially happen and yet the service level agreement is not met anyway. What’s needed is intelligence in selecting where to put Forward Stocking Locations, what to put there and what to look for when picking a service provider to manage them. More on that in the next posting.

John Wild

Extreme Customer Service?

Extreme Customer Service. That title on a recent BusinessWeek cover really got my attention (so to did the guy bending over backwards with an Amazon box in his hands... a guy far less follically challenged than Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos who is usually pictured in articles like this). And what I also found most interesting is that the various articles had comments like “when service means survival” or “keeping customers happy is more critical than ever” or “service champs economize on everything but TLC”. I thought: good, that all makes sense. Then there was the list of top customer service champs – all consumer facing companies from Amazon to Zappos.

OK, I get it, good. But I wondered why there were no manufacturers or aftermarket services firms on the list and that the bulk of the material focused on consumer facing organizations. What was missing was the Business to Business sector in which extreme customer service is so important now. Manufacturers and independent service providers have a heightened level of awareness of the need to provide extreme customer service in the current economic downturn. Maintaining current customers is critically important. The impact of the old adage that goes something like... it’s far less costly to keep existing customers than it is to get new ones... has been amplified by huge orders of magnitude in the last 12 months or so.

The end business customers (those that rely on the equipment they’ve purchased or leased to remain performing or to be service ready) are a fickle bunch. They’re paying for performance (up time) and expect it. Let them down, and they’ll start looking elsewhere for products that perform better or that are serviced better. So this challenge hits right at home in the field service and service parts logistics environment. Here our laser focus has to be on availability of technicians to provide service when needed and the service parts they require with them or within arm’s reach. In my experience, that requires two things; planning and execution. Planning as in making sure there are enough of the right parts in the right place, and execution as in making sure that those parts can be delivered from distribution centers or forward stocking locations to the point of use in time to meet the level of service commitments that have been made to the end customers. Oh, by the way, manufacturers and service providers are generally ‘for profit’ organizations (or at least they are not ‘not for profit’ organizations) so this extreme customer service has to be provided in a financially responsible way.

What I’ll be writing about in this blog are the challenges faced in this B2B extreme customer service environment and the creative ways that a laser focus on service parts logistics enables it... hey, I’m a service parts guy…John Wild