The popular book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie, is a business classic. But the ultimate cold-calling guide wasn’t written with the intention of being a business book. It was a collection of practical lessons on how to build relationships.
Solving Business Challenges
In the same way, our case studies on shared services started out as examples of how we were solving business challenges, but they became a collection of stories on how we were Turning Customers Into Fans. How? By exceeding the expectations of our customers, and by partnering with them in their businesses to outpace the run-of-the-mill KPIs. Let’s call it “How to Win Fans and Influence Customer Experience.”
Inspiring Fans
Just like making friends, the art of customer satisfaction and shared services is both simple and complex. It’s a study of incredibly high expectations of technology and process, and a mixture of high, low, and undetermined expectations on the rest of the experience. The customer is the single most important part of shared services; the value of a satisfied customer is gaining more attention within these types of organizations. A survey of shared services directors found that 81% of respondents said driving customer satisfaction was their number one priority over the next three years. Perhaps this is because the benefits of shared services make up a long list, from cost savings to data analysis to improved customer engagement. Most of these benefits are easy to track and improve on. Regardless of what the scorecard details look like, whether a service provider has won a fan or not is a binary condition, you’re either a fan or you’re not (yet). How do you inspire fans and keep the relationship going?
The types of industries entering into the shared services model of customer service and engagement will continue to grow as the value of the customer becomes more of a priority for all types of organizations. Customer demands will drive strategy and operations—if you don’t take care of the customer, they will go elsewhere.
Make sure your customers aren’t neglected. Learn more by downloading Four Clues Your Organization Suffers from Inefficient Integration, ERP Integration Part 1.
