One of the interesting Observation I have made over the years in Service managment

I am writing this on a very common and Simple word issue.. what is an issue? It could any sort of degradation or a hit in service, Communication, work. As a service manager what should you do..how you work on a issue it could be of network or AR or customer management. Well I feel Issues related to network will always be handled as reactivity in most of cases. As Devices , Links, Fibers, Routers they have a nature to go down and no one can't stop this from happening yet we can work on how to manage these issues in a better way.. Think on this how you can do this, by involving right teams, communicating the work in progress to customer this is utmost important so keep follow up with customer making sure customer is up on Backup that's why there is always a backup available as even customer knows the links have a nature to go down. anyway I will leave up to you guys on how to handle network issues.

Now lets talk on AR's/Billing payment and Customer management issues..First of all why these issues happen aren't we Service managers responsible to make sure that these kind of issue shouldn't happen. I guess if issues related to AR and customer management happen than we are to be blamed for it. Simple.!!!!

Why customer is not paying the bills , we have to do a followup let our management/leadership know why the bills are not paid if there is a dispute why it is not resolved who is on fault work on these things you will have a better AR number under your belt. If AR's are building up and SM is not able to make sure customer is paying it than it's a SM failure simple that's what I understand.Talk to your customer tell him the consequences on building AR's, just let Customer know that if his link got disconnected then it will be a pain for him and to you as well, this trick has worked for many we don't have to chase them for it as we have setting the expectations right with Customer on issues relating to AR's. Try it guys you will feel the difference..

Also one more thing have seen SM's not giving a good focus on issues related to AR/customer management and when issue blows up out of the proportion than they start working and guess what they will get award for it. No doubt they should be awarded but have anyone noticed why the issue happens in first place why the issues were not handled when it was very simple to handle why it was blown it'sl always say it's a Service Manager failure if these things happen and they have not handled the issues when it was small and was not so important but action was not taken on time made it a huge issue and urgent to deal with..There could be exceptions but for AR's guys it's always SM failure..So work on it this is one of the major KPI for SM's performance..

Happy Customer service management to all..!!!

EXPECTATIONS (What this word actually mean) How this can make or Break Customer relationship..

This word is used almost everyday in Service management , Share expectations with your customer, understand expectations of your customer, achieve expectation of customer etc and the list goes on n on... Expectation is a simple word with simple meaning but if it is not used and resulted properly wow this can spoil everything between Client & Customer. Expectation means what customer expects simple...!!!

Okay I am sharing one of my experience on expectations, This helped me to understand this word and what damage it can cause, So I always used my experience and always try to manage expectation on my customers, and this has worked wonder for me..

way back in 2004 I changed my Mobile service from same provider just a different service plan from pre-paid to post paid as the ones service I was using was not good due to some cash limitation issue and I was to recharge it almost everyday, So I decided to change to new Service . Someone from sales center visited me and we did all the formalities of payments and form filling etc, The agent gave me a new SIM and told me that this SIM will be activated within 24hrs and the the SIm I am using will be deactivated after the new SIm is on.Which was okay for me.

Well in simple words I setted my expectaions that I will be using the current service for coming 24hrs and than after 24hrs I can switch the SIm and wollaaa I will be having new Serive plan, sounds great..

After 4 hrs or so my current SIM was deactivated and there was no signal I can't make any call nor can I receive.. no worries I waited for 24hrs thought they might have activated the new service plan SIM , I changed the SIM and wohooo I was so pissed off it was almost 30hrs and there was no Signal and the Message I got on my Mobile was the service is not activated I was is shock I can't use the previous SIm that is deactivated and New SIM is not activated..perfect mess... I called Customer care ad they told me that this SIM will be activated with in 48hrs which was already over, They told me it will take 24hrs more...well I was so furious and agitated and angry I was in a black hole virtually cut off from whole work..So I should say in current time telecom is the most important for communication.. Well this was escalated to Head of sales in thier Deptt and he told me that the agent gave me wrong information it takes around 50hrs to activate the plan I was taking and god I was so pissed off and angry due to just a simple wrong expectation that I will be on new plan after 24hrs and okayed to deactivate my current service plan ..You know what i did I asked my Money Back from Service provider for activation and other changes which they refused. So I went and Took some other Mobile service provider Plan and changed the service to new Company. After around 52 hrs my SIm was activated which I discarded and never used it as I was emotionally so hurt and I felt I was fooled..

I think these kind of issues might have happen to all of us, but we might never have thought about it and the word EXPECTATION what it means, and how important it is to manage it.

If the Agent could have told me that it will take 50hrs I could have accommodated may be 5 more hrs but my expectations were set on 24hrs and 50 hrs is more than Double of it , and that was a pain for me..So they lost a customer and loyalty just due to wrong expectations set for me..

So guys make sure if you are doing same I bet you will loose Customer and more importantly Customer LOYALTY.. So Manage , set and Execute the Customer expectations right the first time and try to under promise and over deliver..

Well in my case it was just 10 $ company lost for a day , But think about the Customer enterprise customer we support as SM, guys I am talking about Millions of $ so make sure you are setting and achieving the right Expectations...the first time...you will never get second Chance to correct wrong doing easily...

Also I would like to add one more thing WE ARE NOT DOING SOCIAL SERVICE so make sure what you are Delivering to Customer , People tend to go out of the BOX just to get some award they do it, I am not saying this is BAD you should go out of the BOX but make sure you are not out of the BOX always as this will again set wrong expectations with Customer and he may start demanding the Service Level for which they are not paying and you could end up doing the work you are not supposed to do and in terms this might have a bad effect on REVENUE I am talking about HARD CASH...If your customer get's a habbit of getting Free service why he should Pay So if ever you are doing something out of the BOX make sure your Customer understand that he is not entitiled to get this service FREE and he should PAY for it...Our Companies are not doing SOCAIL SERVICES it's NOT NGO's we are working in..

I wish this small experience of mine could help you all it helped me a lot in many ways ...
So happy CUSTOMER service to all..!!!