It is obvious that every business exists because of its customers. Businesses grow when new services are rolled out to multiple customers. It is apparent that handling multiple customers with the growing businesses and complex business situations is the order of the day, more pronounced than yester years.
With this, comes the complexity of how to handle multiple customers, their requests, their projects and accounting simultaneously while keeping all the customers happy with the project/service delivery and the back end transactions. Optimizing one customer against the other is a sure No as this is bound to soon get the organization out of business.
The idea is to be able to have efficient internal systems in order to handle the multiple customer requests, projects and transactions simultaneously. This calls for a thorough system backed up by efficient processes and skilled resources.
In creating such an internal system, there is a need for a strong front line staff which understands the customer requests and needs. These front line staff need not be highly skilled in solutioning; however they should possess a strong communication skill and the ability to be able to translate the customer situations to meaningful requirements. Further, there is a need to create a set of backend staff that is able to articulate these requirements and translate them into meaningful solutions within short periods of time. The ability to do “requirements management” is one thus one of the critical pre requisites to handle multiple customers effectively. Many a times, there could be situations where several of these customer requirements could be met by a single solution. Hence the ability to be able to box up these requirements and tie them to single solutions and to be able to deploy these solutions is another key factor in building the capability to handle multiple requirements. In short we are talking of a system which inculcates customer-orientation from the front line staff backed up with internal processes for demand and supply management would enable an organization to handle multiple customers simultaneously.
Reuse or replication of services is not new, but is often not given enough focus in organizations. Every organization which has a large base of customers utilizing similar services has a good case to develop this ability to reuse the existing systems to suit customer needs. This means that the wheel is not being reinvented every time the customer requirement is there; instead the internal systems are mature enough to match the requirements to a pool of already available solutions which is then reused and reapplied. Thus, the ability to reuse and reapply is another important manner in which multiple customers could be handled simultaneously.
Automation of mundane laborious tasks is another way of handling multiple customers effectively. Very often, most of the transactions in capturing the demand from the customer and meeting it, is made up a series of tasks which could take sufficient deal of time of the front line and back end staff. It should be every organizations effort to identify which of these transactions could be handled manually and which of these should be automated. Please note that automation does not mearly mean implementing a tool. There is a saying that “a fool with a tool is still a fool” – We are only stressing the need for the tool to be backed up by well thought out and well designed processes. Unless this match exists between the tool and the process, the purpose of the tool would never be served.
Thus, we see that there are several simple ways for an organization to handle multiple customers simultaneously. It is upto the organization to decide what suits them best and accordingly implement it.
With this, comes the complexity of how to handle multiple customers, their requests, their projects and accounting simultaneously while keeping all the customers happy with the project/service delivery and the back end transactions. Optimizing one customer against the other is a sure No as this is bound to soon get the organization out of business.
The idea is to be able to have efficient internal systems in order to handle the multiple customer requests, projects and transactions simultaneously. This calls for a thorough system backed up by efficient processes and skilled resources.
In creating such an internal system, there is a need for a strong front line staff which understands the customer requests and needs. These front line staff need not be highly skilled in solutioning; however they should possess a strong communication skill and the ability to be able to translate the customer situations to meaningful requirements. Further, there is a need to create a set of backend staff that is able to articulate these requirements and translate them into meaningful solutions within short periods of time. The ability to do “requirements management” is one thus one of the critical pre requisites to handle multiple customers effectively. Many a times, there could be situations where several of these customer requirements could be met by a single solution. Hence the ability to be able to box up these requirements and tie them to single solutions and to be able to deploy these solutions is another key factor in building the capability to handle multiple requirements. In short we are talking of a system which inculcates customer-orientation from the front line staff backed up with internal processes for demand and supply management would enable an organization to handle multiple customers simultaneously.
Reuse or replication of services is not new, but is often not given enough focus in organizations. Every organization which has a large base of customers utilizing similar services has a good case to develop this ability to reuse the existing systems to suit customer needs. This means that the wheel is not being reinvented every time the customer requirement is there; instead the internal systems are mature enough to match the requirements to a pool of already available solutions which is then reused and reapplied. Thus, the ability to reuse and reapply is another important manner in which multiple customers could be handled simultaneously.
Automation of mundane laborious tasks is another way of handling multiple customers effectively. Very often, most of the transactions in capturing the demand from the customer and meeting it, is made up a series of tasks which could take sufficient deal of time of the front line and back end staff. It should be every organizations effort to identify which of these transactions could be handled manually and which of these should be automated. Please note that automation does not mearly mean implementing a tool. There is a saying that “a fool with a tool is still a fool” – We are only stressing the need for the tool to be backed up by well thought out and well designed processes. Unless this match exists between the tool and the process, the purpose of the tool would never be served.
Thus, we see that there are several simple ways for an organization to handle multiple customers simultaneously. It is upto the organization to decide what suits them best and accordingly implement it.
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