The Components of a Service

Last week we discussed the concept of Service Stream Automation, what this means, and how it can benefit your small to mid-sized company.  As we defined in that discussion, a Service is anything you do for the benefit of someone else.  Today we are going to take a closer look at what components make up a strong Service in the business world, and how these components are addressed within the small and mid-sized companies.

I think we can all agree that quality service begins and ends with the service personnel.  Having people in your organization who are good at what they do and take pride in providing good service can go a long way in providing a high level of customer satisfaction.  With that said, even the most qualified can be hampered if they are not provided the proper tools.  It is extremely difficult for your service personnel, no matter how good they are, to provide a high level of service quality if they cannot quickly locate necessary files, cannot find the information they need, or have to run around the office to find a customer’s file.  On the other hand, an office staffed with average but adequate personnel can perform at an efficient high level if properly equipped in a way that makes their job simpler. 

So, what are some of the components that can drastically affect the level of service?  They include the following:

• Workflow Management – How you get work from one place to another.  This can be from person to person, department to department, site to site, or even organization to organization.  Many small to mid-sized organizations manage their workflow with files floating around from inbox to inbox, from desk to file cabinet.  Jobs float around the facility and often need to be tracked down to address any questions or enhancements.
• Document Management – With almost every workflow comes documents – all those papers sitting in those folders.  Documents can come from a number of sources, such as faxes, mail, email attachments, off a printer, or hand-written notes.  Managing all these pieces of paper can be a nightmare.  Not only do you have to account for all of it and manage storing it, but you also have to ensure that it gets with the appropriate workflow.  Nothing is worse than preparing for a job or talking with a customer and realizing you are missing an important document.
• Contact Management – It is one thing to know who you are talking with.  It’s another if you need to know the company that person is with, their location (ever accidently called someone on the west coast before 8 am?), and how to reach them.  Most small companies  have notes scribbled down on scraps of paper with a customer or client’s contact information taped to the wall of their desk or in a Rolodex somewhere.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you had all contact info, shared by everyone in your organization, in one place?
• Collaboration – Ever had an instance where you had a customer on the phone asking a specific question about something a co-worker did for them?  You usually find yourself scrambling to locate that person to ask them the question being asked of you.  Meanwhile, the customer is sitting on hold, formulating an opinion about your level of customer service.  A much easier alternative is if you could find the customer’s service history right on your computer with just a few keystrokes, or maybe chat with the co-worker while still on the phone with the customer.
• Reporting – A lot of small companies are successful because they are good at what they do, despite their limitations of tools.  They focus on meeting the customer’s needs today, but because they do not have some of the other tools in this list, they are not able to track their service.  File cabinets are full of valuable data that can be used to refine your service and adjust future service to promote more efficiency and profitability.  If this data was electronic, the reports on this data could support this refinement.

As you can see, there are a lot of areas that can be addressed to increase your service level, which will increase your bottom line.  The good news is that there are many tools on the market to address each of these components.  The bad news for smaller organizations is that these tools can be extremely expensive.  Addressing any one of these areas are typically out of the budget of the small to mid-sized company.

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone made these tools within the reach of smaller companies?  Better yet, wouldn’t it be wonderful if someone made one tool that addressed ALL of these components and blended them together so that they worked as one?  In other words, your workflow could contain all your contact information, your documents became your workflow, and your information was instantly 100% visible for collaboration and reporting.  What if all of this could be provided to your organization and all you needed was an internet connection and a web browser?

PhaseAlpha is sensitive to the needs of the smaller companies, and wish to bring these “big company” capabilities to your organization.  Very soon, we will tell you how we can accomplish this feat.  Stay tuned to this blog to see how we can help you transform your vision into reality.

Service Stream Automation – Coming Soon

We have some very exciting things coming from PhaseAlpha in the very near future.  While we are still grudgingly keeping it under our hats for now, I wanted to take a moment to share the basic concept on which this new application will be built.  That concept is Service Stream Automation.
To understand the concept of Service Stream Automation, let’s first define a Service.  A Service is anything you do for the benefit of someone else.  Think of a service station, where you might take your car to have the oil changed, or serviced.  The service technician is performing a service for the benefit of you, the customer.  A waiter at a restaurant also performs a service for you, and if they do a great job, you comment on how good the service was.  This is the same quality of service you would hope to receive from a customer service representative when you have questions about your latest utility bill.
A Service Stream is a series of services working together to provide a resulting benefit for the customer.  At the service station, you might have one service technician changing the oil in your car, another rotating your tires, and yet another vacuuming the floor board.  These are independent services that each technician is doing for you the customer, but they all accumulate into a stream of services to provide you with your ultimate goal of having maintenance completed on your car.  When you go to dinner later that evening, you have your waiter providing great service by keeping your water glass filled, but you also expect good service from the cooks, a pleasant welcome from the hostess, and an welcoming atmosphere provided by the management.  All of these individual components or services flow together to provide you with a hopefully great experience so that you feel compelled to visit again.  The same applies in the business world, where you have multiple people, teams, technologies, and possibly even companies working together as one flowing stream to provide you with your desired service, or product.
So, now that we know what a Service is, and how services combine to form a Service Stream, there needs to be a way to make all these components work together seamlessly and efficiently.  This is the concept of Service Stream Automation.  Service Stream Automation provides a centralized, easy to use tool to make the coordination of all these service components flow in a logical manner in order to provide quality services to the customer and to reduce the stress of companies having to maintain all these services.
Let’s face it – making all these services work together is difficult for business owners and managers.  With so many moving parts, smaller companies are often left with lots of paperwork, less than ideal quality, or simply having to work extra hours just to track their business.  In the very near future, you will be introduced to PhaseAlpha’s solution of providing Service Stream Automation in hopes to help those companies who struggle with the managing their services.  Keep an eye on this blog for exciting news how how PhaseAlpha can help you turn your vision of great service into a reality.