Customer Service Managers: What is ITSM ?

Customer Service Managers: What is ITSM ?

How Is ITSM Different From Business Service Management (BSM)?

TSM and BSM are similar but are often confused as being the same thing; however, there are two key differences:

ITSM is about moving from IT support to service delivery. ITSM aids the change of an IT organization from a support group to a service group in which ITIL processes are introduced. This reorganizes the IT group from technical domains (e.g., network management) into process groups. New roles such as the business relationship manager, who is responsible for managing the relationship between IT and a particular line of business, are inserted into IT. Introducing ITSM into IT improves how the IT shop runs.

BSM is an IT service that is visible to and consumed by a business user outside of IT. BSM is the true alignment of IT to the business, as it lets business users know how well their business is running. BSM is the next level of maturity and a logical progression after the ITSM stage has been reached.

Business service management dynamically links business-focused IT services to the underlying IT infrastructure. A business-focused IT service may be a specific IT service or part of a business process, but it must support a significant, visible business metric for a business owner.

ITIL V3 - introduced in June 2007 - has a BSM flavor, as it addresses the strategy, design, and transition of a service into operations. The operational aspect was defined in ITIL V2 via the service delivery and service support frameworks, which included, among others, incident, problem, change, configuration, service level, and financial management.

Next: ITIL, BSI—And The Benefits Of ITSM

Why IT Service Management Should Matter To You

IT service management (ITSM) has made its way onto the agendas of both global businesses and large and medium enterprises. Yet there are many companies that don't fully understand what service management involves and what it can deliver to your entire company (including IT). There are also many organizations that think they have implemented ITSM, when in reality all they have done is implemented a service desk. Others have adopted additional best practices from the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) foundation and are well on their way to the journey of service management. Unfortunately, too few companies fall into the latter category, leaving a great deal of confusion still surrounding ITSM.

WHAT IS IT SERVICE MANAGEMENT?

ITIL defines IT service management as: The delivery and support of IT services that are appropriate to the business requirements of an organization.

ITIL provides a comprehensive, consistent, and coherent set of best practice processes for ITSM, promoting a quality approach to achieving business effectiveness and efficiency in the use of information systems.

However, before you can truly understand what's involved in the management of services, you must first understand the types of services being managed. Several types are:

Technical services. These focus on the delivery of the service related to a technical subject area. Examples include voice and network services, database services, backup and restore services, desktop services, and Windows administration services.

Organizational services. These focus on a specific organization or role in the company. Examples are sales support services, human resource services, marketing services, and research and development services.

Application services. These focus on a particular end-user business application. Examples are email services and ERP services. Sometimes they're even more specific, and the name of the particular business application appears in the name of the service, such as SAP services.(see endnote 1) Typically, the firms that have defined services have a good understanding in regard to the requirements of the service, the resources it uses, and how to deliver it. The difficulty arises when services are dependent on or have an impact on other services. This is exactly what service management is about.

EFFECTIVE ITSM:

In a recent survey of enterprises across North America and Europe, only 17% had already implemented parts of ITIL or COBIT, and 16% were planning on implementing ITIL or COBIT within the next 12 months.(see endnote 2) This means that these companies are currently going through this transition (see Figure 2). In many client inquiries, Forrester finds that IT organizations have implemented aspects of ITIL but fail to call it ITIL. The major benefits of leveraging ITIL are its structured approach to managing IT, the delivery of its services, and the introduction of a common language across the different domains or working groups. Additionally, almost all of the IT management software vendors have adopted ITIL language into the naming and grouping of their solutions. The effective use of service management can bring a lot of benefits to the organization, and through service management an alignment of IT and business is possible.

Figure 1: ITIL V2 Key Elements

Figure 2: ITIL Or COBIT Adoption In 2007

Service managment is a Passion to serve.!!

Customer service management to me is a passionate job you can't do it if you don't have the passion to serve. Always looking to delight customer, exceed expectation of customer as well as of your own, One can only do it if he/she is having the courage to take ownership, champion the cause of customer. Never take anything personal. there might be day's which I have experienced when customer makes your life really tough but that's the time real Service manager will come up with goods and handle customer.

Like today I got a call at 3 am in morning you can imagine what I was feeling, As soon as I talked to customer my sleep was gone my first concern was to check the issue and how much impact customer is having of it, provide the status of the issue and see what severity it is on what is the ETR(estimated time of repair), checked if the appropriate escalation is done for management visibility etc. This is passion to serve be in customer shoes think from customer prospective take ownership of customer concern. Make sure Customer understand that YES you are for them and working to make sure they are/will always be running their business with minimal issues .

One can't promise and guarantee that there will be no issues no impact of business, This can't be as simple as that. At last we are working on hardware, electricity, cables etc and they have the nature to go down, No one can deny this. Here Service managers come and handle everything because they know how to handle communicate with customer at last we are dealing with people so People management skills are paramount to be a good or excellent Service manager.

Again I would like to add my own experience here: Once there was a fault Customer was hard down they were running their call center on Backup. Case was escalated to highest level and it took around 3 hrs to resolve as there was a hard cut on cables. anyway Case was closed and our Help desk Technical team they called customer and told them the RFO (reason for outage) but amazingly Customer was not accepting the RFO they said that the Technical team didn't supported them with proper troubleshooting so on & off Technical team called and they told me that customer is not accepting the RFO and is not letting the case to be closed. Again being a Service manager I called customer talked to them helped them understand the issue told them how it was resolved Customer accepted the RFO and agreed to closed the Case and were satisfied with support as they understood what went wrong and how this was fixed.

They were not accepting RFO from Tech guy because he was having limited knowledge of the issue only technical part and that too on which he worked also he was not able to talk to customer I say he was great on technical part but was not good in People management or handling customer So here Service managers add the Value and always see the Big Picture.


Be clam always have a sense and instinct of situations, be in customer shoes always, always have a feeling that YES I GOT IT.

Service managers are virtual employees of customer, rather Service managers are the Bridge or Interface between customer n Service provider, So he is having two faces representing Customer in front of Service provider and representing Service provider in front of Customer. SM is the person who build rapport on both side, and mind it it's not an easy JOB

Tranings for better service/customer managment.

All please advise on what kind of trainings will be good for Service manager and aspiring Service managers,

What trainings can help to do better?

This is an open question to all, why service management is important and more important to big organization operating in different geographical regions?

My Own personal experience on Customer satisfaction turn around

I am writing this out of my own experience which I am prevailed to have on customer turnaround this is a long short story. My team too ROCKS my team was so focused and was ready to go out of the box for customer satisfaction and at last we achieved it.

The Biggest reason of customer dissatisfaction were very simple and it was ( lack of Effective Communication this was the gap & root cause for all dissatisfaction) I will narrate a bit about it

I with one of my colleague were assigned on a the customer who was not happy due to various reason in fact we got a huge endless list of the customer expectations or I say wish list Customer wanted us to improve on.

Our first Step was to know each other, Than Customer Attitude, Services they were having, geographical regions they were operating in areas where they were RED or I should say highly dissatisfied , So we all Plan for the PLAN.

First thing we did was to have shared Expectations with customer where we shared and adressed all the issues in simple terms (Mainly what was expected and what we can deliver) these meetings we did were from Top to bottom. We implemented a Communication plan and devided our responsibilties rater I would say took ownership of different areas , One took tools, other took commuciation and information sharing , fault managment etc.

Above all we made sure that customer was updated on every single issue and these updates were simple and in timley manner and across the globe this helped us nearly 80% improvement with customer relations and customer started to raise their voice and talk to us for nearly every issue this gave us a chance to be more intractive with them understand them and set their expectations right the first time, It was a pain in begining but now we have implemented it so effectivey that we are first choice for anyting say new business.

In a nutshell we achieved it by making sure that customer was talking to us keeping he dialouge open .

We didn't do anything different, we did things differntly..!!

service level agreement (frequently abbreviated as SLA)

A service level agreement (frequently abbreviated as SLA) is a part of a service contract where the level of service is formally defined. In practice, the term SLA is sometimes used to refer to the contracted delivery time (of the service) or performance.

In Simple words: A service level agreement is a document which defines the relationship between two parties: the provider and the recipient.

This is clearly an extremely important item of documentation for both parties. If used properly it should:

• Identify and define the customer’s needs
  
• Provide a framework for understanding
  
• Simplify complex issues
  
• Reduce areas of conflict
  
• Encourage dialog in the event of disputes
  
• Eliminate unrealistic expectations

Specifically it should embrace a wide range of issues. Amongst these are usually the following:

Services to be delivered
Performance, Tracking and Reporting
Problem Management
Legal Compliance and Resolution of Disputes
Customer Duties and Responsibilities
Security
IPR and Confidential Information
Termination

Detailed Definition on SLA:

A service-level agreement (SLA) is a negotiated agreement between two parties where one is the customer and the other is the service provider. This can be a legally binding formal or informal 'contract' (see internal department relationships). Contracts between the service provider and other third parties are often (incorrectly) called SLAs — as the level of service has been set by the (principal) customer there can be no 'agreement' between third parties (these agreements are simply a 'contract').

The SLA records a common understanding about services, priorities, responsibilities, guarantees and warranties. Each area of service scope should have the 'level of service' defined. The SLA may specify the levels of availability, serviceability, performance, operation, or other attributes of the service such as billing. The 'level of service' can also be specified as 'target' and 'minimum', which allows customers to informed what to expect (the minimum), whilst providing a measurable (average) target value that shows the level of organization performance. In some contracts penalties may be agreed in the case of non compliance of the SLA (but see 'internal' customers below).It is important to note that the 'agreement' relates to the services the customer receives, and not how the service provider delivers that service.

Service-level agreements are by their nature 'output' based - the result of the service as received by the customer is the subject of the 'agreement'. The (expert) service provider can demonstrate their value by organizing themselves with ingenuity, capability and knowledge to deliver the service required, perhaps in an innovative way. Organizations can also specify the way the service is to be delivered, through a specification (a service-level specification) and using subordinate 'objectives' other than those related to the level of service. This type of agreement is known as an 'input' SLA. This latter type of requirement has become obsolete as organizations become more demanding and shift the delivery methodology risk on to the service provider.

New To Six Sigma (What is Six Sigma)

What Is Six Sigma?

Six Sigma is a rigorous and disciplined methodology that uses data and statistical analysis to measure and improve a company's operational performance by identifying and eliminating "defects" in manufacturing and service-related processes. Commonly defined as 3.4 defects per million opportunities, Six Sigma can be defined and understood at three distinct levels: metric, methodology and philosophy...

Simple Rules For Good Customer Service.

These are simplest rules we can follow and can see the difference almost in a month or so I have tried them and they have worked wonders for me.

Good customer service is the lifeblood of any business. You can offer promotions and slash prices to bring in as many new customers as you want, but unless you can get some of those customers to come back, your business won’t be profitable for long.

Good customer service is all about bringing customers back. And about sending them away happy – happy enough to pass positive feedback about your business along to others, who may then try the product or service you offer for themselves and in their turn become repeat customers.

If you’re a good salesperson, you can sell anything to anyone once. But it will be your approach to customer service that determines whether or not you’ll ever be able to sell that person anything else. The essence of good customer service is forming a relationship with customers – a relationship that that individual customer feels that he would like to pursue.

How do you go about forming such a relationship? By remembering the one true secret of good customer service and acting accordingly; “You will be judged by what you do, not what you say.”

I know this verges on the kind of statement that’s often seen on a sampler, but providing good customer service IS a simple thing. If you truly want to have good customer service, all you have to do is ensure that your business consistently does these things:

1) Answer your phone.

Get call forwarding. Or an answering service. Hire staff if you need to. But make sure that someone is picking up the phone when someone calls your business. (Notice I say “someone”. People who call want to talk to a live person, not a “fake recorded robot”.)

2) Don’t make promises unless you WILL keep them.

Not plan to keep them. Will keep them. Reliability is one of the keys to any good relationship, and good customer service is no exception. If you say, “Your new bedroom furniture will be delivered on Tuesday”, make sure it is delivered on Tuesday. Otherwise, don’t say it. The same rule applies to client appointments, deadlines, etc.. Think before you give any promise – because nothing annoys customers more than a broken one.

3) Listen to your customers.

Is there anything more exasperating than telling someone what you want or what your problem is and then discovering that that person hasn’t been paying attention and needs to have it explained again? From a customer’s point of view, I doubt it. Can the sales pitches and the product babble. Let your customer talk and show him that you are listening by making the appropriate responses, such as suggesting how to solve the problem.

4) Deal with complaints.

No one likes hearing complaints, and many of us have developed a reflex shrug, saying, “You can’t please all the people all the time”. Maybe not, but if you give the complaint your attention, you may be able to please this one person this one time - and position your business to reap the benefits of good customer service.

5) Be helpful - even if there’s no immediate profit in it.

The other day I popped into a local watch shop because I had lost the small piece that clips the pieces of my watch band together. When I explained the problem, the proprietor said that he thought he might have one lying around. He found it, attached it to my watch band – and charged me nothing! Where do you think I’ll go when I need a new watch band or even a new watch? And how many people do you think I’ve told this story to?

6) Train your staff (if you have any) to be ALWAYS helpful, courteous, and knowledgeable.

Do it yourself or hire someone to train them. Talk to them about good customer service and what it is (and isn’t) regularly. Most importantly, give every member of your staff enough information and power to make those small customer-pleasing decisions, so he never has to say, “I don’t know, but so-and-so will be back at...”

7) Take the extra step.

For instance, if someone walks into your store and asks you to help them find something, don’t just say, “It’s in Aisle 3.” Lead the customer to the item. Better yet, wait and see if he has questions about it, or further needs. Whatever the extra step may be, if you want to provide good customer service, take it. They may not say so to you, but people notice when people make an extra effort and will tell other people.

8) Throw in something extra.

Whether it’s a coupon for a future discount, additional information on how to use the product, or a genuine smile, people love to get more than they thought they were getting. And don’t think that a gesture has to be large to be effective. The local art framer that we use attaches a package of picture hangers to every picture he frames. A small thing, but so appreciated.

If you apply these eight simple rules consistently, your business will become known for its good customer service. And the best part? The irony of good customer service is that over time it will bring in more new customers than promotions and price slashing ever did!

Customer Satisfaction Survey

(Please note these are not hard & Fast rules you can do a health check of your relation with customer on Monthly or Quarterly doing an offline or virtual survey on your own and see what are the areas Customer is not happy about and can work to improve the highlighted weak areas)

The best way to find out whether your customers are satisfied is to ask them. What you ask and how you ask are important. However, the most important thing is what you do with their answers,

Read CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SURVEY to learn how to do a customer satisfaction survey that works well for you.

We all know customer satisfaction is essential to the survival of our businesses. How do we find out whether our customers are satisfied? The best way to find out whether your customers are satisfied is to ask them.

When you conduct a customer satisfaction survey, what you ask the customers is important. How, when , and how often you ask these questions are also important. However, the most important thing about conducting a customer satisfaction survey is what you do with their answers.

How You Ask Whether Customers Are Satisfied: There are many ways to ask your customers whether or not they are satisfied with your company, your products, and the service they received.

You can ask them:

1. Face-to-face
   As they are about to walk out of your store or office, ask them.
   
2. Call them on the phone
   If you have their phone number, and their permission, you can call them after their visit and ask how satisfied they are.
   
3. Mail them a questionnaire
   This technique has been used for a long time. The results are predictable.
   
4. Email them a customer satisfaction survey
   Be careful to not violate Spam laws
5. Email them an invitation to take a customer satisfaction survey

What To Ask In A Customer Satisfaction Survey:

There is a school of thought that you only need to ask a single question in a customer satisfaction survey. That question is, "will you buy from me again?" While it is tempting to reduce your customer satisfaction survey to this supposed "essence", you miss a lot of valuable information and you can be easily misled.

It is too easy for a customer to answer yes to the "will you buy from me again?", whether they mean it or not. You want to ask other questions in a customer satisfaction survey to get closer to the expected behavior and to collect information about what to change and what to keep doing.

By all means ask the basic customer satisfaction questions:

• How satisfied are you with the purchase you made (of a product or service)
• How satisfied are you with the service you received?
• How satisfied are you with our company overall?

And ask the customer loyalty questions"

• How likely are you to buy from us again?
• How likely are you to recommend our product/service to others
• How likely are you to recommend our company to others.

Also ask what the customer liked and didn't like about the product, your service, and your company.

HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU CONDUCT A CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SURVEY:

The best answer is "often enough to get the most information, but not so often as to upset the customer". In real terms, the frequency with which you conduct a customer satisfaction survey depends on the frequency with which you interact with your customers. My state renews drivers licenses for five-year periods. It would be silly for them to ask me each year what I thought of my last renewal experience. Conversely, if I survey the commuters on my rapid transit system once a year, I will miss important changes in their attitudes that may be driven by seasonal events.

Warning..!!!

Please don't disclose or write any proprietary information..

Customer Management Tip for Today

Customer Management Tip for the day.!!!

Delight the Customer. It is heard a lot, but seldom practiced. Today I saw a production supervisor straighten out a mess and, in the process, calm an irate customer. When I heard her tell them to put two mugs with the company's logo into the package being sent to the customer, I knew she understood what "Delight the Customer" means.

What is MTTR (MEAN TIME TO REPAIR)?

In Simple words, MTTR is an abbreviation for Mean Time To Recovery or Mean Time To Repair which represents the average time taken to put a defective component or system back in working order. It is a measure of the maintainability of a system and predicts the average amount of time required to get the system to work again in case of a system failure.

MTTR can range from a few milliseconds, as in the case of an uninterrupted power supply (UPS) to many hours or even days in the case of application software or complex machinery.

The time taken to restore the system back to normalcy includes the period of diagnosis of the problem as well as its rectification. When the failure rate is predictable and well documented, the MTTR can be considerably reduced. On the other hand, if the system fails unexpectedly, the time taken to diagnose the problem itself might be quite high in the first place. Sometimes improper diagnosis can lead to faulty repairs that can complicate matters and lengthen the recovery period. All of these can contribute towards raising the MTTR for the system.

Some systems have redundancy built into them so that when one subsystem fails, another takes its place and keeps the whole system running. While the overall system has a zero MTTR, the faulty subsystem still needs to be repaired or replaced and hence the subsystem alone has a non-zero MTTR.

When the MTTR is built into a maintenance contract, a lower MTTR would normally entail a higher cost since the service provider has to ensure that the system is restored within a shorter period of time. Hence the service buyer has to pay more for this quicker turnaround time.

System reliability is a matter of importance to a wide range of industries. Be it the manufacture of automobiles, aero planes and rockets or the creation of complex software for the smooth running of a major business corporation, system reliability is an area of great concern for the creators as well as the users of the system. So MTTR is a vital parameter that indicates how soon things will get back to normal which has a great bearing on the overall stability of the system.

What is ITSM ?

ITSM stands for Information Technology Service Management. It is a discipline that is widely used for managing large, medium and small scale information technology systems. ITSM is targeted towards the customer and is considered a consumer friendly approach to managing a wide variety of services. ITSM tries to put the consumer relationship first, by switching the emphasis from an IT centered philosophy to a customer service philosophy.

IT Service management is sometimes associated with other types of management philosophies including Six Sigma, TQM (Total Quality Management) and Business Process Management. In addition, IT Service Management is also associated with IT Infrastructure Library (IT Service Management is one of the disciplines), but it should be noted that ITSM or IT Service Management is not synonymous exclusively with ITIL.

For the most part, IT Service Management is concerned with back office elements of IT in businesses, as well as other types of organizations. For instance, in an ecommerce business whose primary product is electronic gadgets, the focus of IT Service Management would be on management and inventory systems, performing diagnostics and reports and for administrators to easily perform maintenance on the system in place. The emphasis for both the business and the consumer is the not the technology but the use of technology as a marketing tool or business development tool. In today's business environment, you don't necessarily have to be a technology company to benefit from IT service management, in fact most businesses today that use IT Service Management have huge informational systems which most customers never come in contact with.

There are many service providers that assist businesses and organizations incorporate ITSM into their infrastructure,

What is ITIL? Why it is used?

ITIL is an acronym for Information Technology Infrastructure Library. ITIL are a series of books and training manuals that outline and explain the practices that are the most beneficial to IT services (usually manager focused). The goal of ITIL is for managers to have extremely high standards in IT value, as well as high financial quality in day to day IT operations. ITIL procedures are supplier independent and include instructional materials on IT infrastructure, operations and development issues.

It should be noted that the acronym ITIL is a registered trademark, and the books included in the ITIL library are copyrighted as well.

ITIL has had a long history of development, and many IT professionals believe that ITIL grew out of the yellow books, which were best practices and guidelines that were used in IBM during the 1980's, however it wasn't until the middle of the 1990's that ITIL become a formal library of IT best practice frameworks. The newest version of ITIL (version 3) is set to be released in May of 2007. The ITIL v3 has been anticipated by many IT professionals all over the world for the last few years. It is expected that five core texts will be packaged in the publication, they include: Service Strategy, Service Design, Service Transition, Service Operation and Continual Service Improvement

The original ITIL library included several books that covered specific themes in IT Service Management. However, after the original publication, the books in the library grew to over 30 volumes. Since 30 volumes can be cumbersome, difficult to read and digest and expensive to purchase as a complete set, the second version of ITIL has been consolidated.

ITIL v2 was packaged differently; version 2 was sold in sets that related to process guidelines and included several different aspects of IT including applications, services and IT management. It should be noted that the most popular sets being sold in ITIL v.2 include the services set, specifically Service Support and Service Delivery. While these two sets are by far the most popular, the ITIL library used as a whole is extremely comprehensive and a good foundation for any business using IT components today.

Following is a list of the books included in ITIL version 2:

1. Introduction to ITIL: While not one of the core competencies of ITIL, this publication gives the reader a comprehensive overview of the advantages, methods used and wide array of publications available in the ITIL library. This introductory book helps both the individual and organization acquire a thorough understanding of how ITIL can be an invaluable tool when put into action.
2. Service Delivery- Part of the IT Service Management Set, the service delivery book is primarily focused on being proactive and looking at the long term for what businesses require from its ICT (information and communications technology) provider to make sure that the proper support is being given to its businesses users. This includes Service Level Management, Capacity Management, IT Services Continuity Management, Availability Management and Financial Management.
3. Service Support- Service Support is also part of the IT Service Management Set. This book is focused on the businesses end user and making sure that all end users of the organization have appropriate services to run and complete their tasks accordingly.
4. ICT Infrastructure Management- ICT is an acronym for information and communications technology, this manual includes best practices for several facets of the ICT infrastructure including ICT design, planning, deployment, operations and technical support.
5. Security Management- ITIL security management focuses on the best practices and guidelines to make sure that information is stored safely and protected against risks of hacking and theft. In today's business world, it is extremely important that sensitive data remains private and confidential.
6. Business Perspective- This book details the best practices and addresses many issues in IT. This book tries to facilitate understanding regarding key issues in the IT along with quality management in the IS (Information Service) field.
7. Application Management- This set includes best practices and guidelines in order to improve quality of software applications and support of these applications through the entire development life cycle.
8. Software Asset Management- Software asset management is part of IT service management and looks at how software should be treated as an asset with value. This book details how businesses can save money through policies and procedures that underline using software expeditiously.
9. Planning to Implement Service Management- provides business with a framework for analyzing and understanding what is needed when instituting certain IT processes and approaches. Many times a CSIP (Continuous Service Improvement Program) is implemented, along with other ITIL books and disciplines.
10. ITIL Small Scale Implementation- This discipline is used for businesses with smaller ITIL departments. This book covers many best practices and guidelines used for larger implementation, but focuses as well on the important roles and responsibilities within a small unit and ways to avoid conflicts between ITIL priorities.

Advantages of ITIL

There are several benefits for using the Information Technology Infrastructure Library for many of your IT business needs and one main benefit is that through the guidelines and best practices that are taught in the library, your business can save a tremendous amount of money once implemented.

Another advantage of ITIL is that it will help your IT department organize and manage many different disciplines using one comprehensive volume. ITIL is the leader in IT guidelines and best practice publications; it has been tested in real world environments for over a decade and is proven to work.

Disadvantages of ITIL

While the advantages usually far outweigh the disadvantages, there are a couple of criticisms that are worth noting including the idea that most IT professionals consider ITIL a holistic approach to IT management. While ITIL is comprehensive, even the publication itself does not consider itself a holistic approach to IT management.

In addition, there are also accusations by some IT professionals that following only the ITIL due to its acceptance by many IT managers as the authoritative source has actually led to many businesses to skip pragmatic solutions for their specific business needs. Finally, another criticism of ITIL is that while some topics are covered extensively and are of high value, other topics may not receive enough emphasis with quality being uneven in certain publications.

What is Service Management?

Service management, also called IT service management, is the discipline used in industries that provide services or a combination of goods and services. While widely used in the IT industry, specifically the ICT (information and Communication Technology sector, service management can be integrated into many other industries.

Service management is usually used in conjunction with operations support systems. Systems that use service management can include order management, inventory management activation, maintenance, performance diagnostics and several other types of support systems to make sure that these systems are running proficiently and error free.

There are several components of service management. Service management usually incorporates automated systems along with skilled labor. Service management also usually provides service development. For instance, it is extremely important to first simplify and then streamline services that you manage (i.e. delivery, support) into a simple workflow. However, managing your workflow is not enough, another component is the ability to govern automated controls from a centralized location and make sure that data security is in effect at all times.

Service Management is usually used with other types of management systems including Total Quality Management (TQM), Six Sigma, CMMI (Capability Maturing Model and Integration), and Business Process Management. It can be used with small scale companies or used with extremely large corporations. The discipline of service management has been around since the early 1970's and was originally part of the Operations Management discipline.

Customer Service management for me is a PACT

Customer Service management for me is a PACT

(Process, Attitude, Communication, Time) Delight your Customers by keeping your side of PACT and Customer will surely keep theirs…

Try make sure the PACT is implemented ASAP,
Process is properly followed, to meet Customer expectations.
Attitude, positive attitude towards all the issues & activities with Customer.
Communication, with effective communication make sure Customer is well informed with all the updates.
Time, make sure to perform on time to satisfy Customer expectations.

Hi All Customer Service Managers ..!!

Dear all CSM & SM,

Here I invite you to share your experience and Challenges on managing customer real time experience with each other to help each other and share idea's on different kind of issues and customer handling skills,

Please make sure not to disclose any proprietary information.