Enhance Your Enterprise Operations With Customer Service and Management for Enterprises

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[Music] welcome back to this lesson on customer service in the supply chain upon completing this lesson learners should be able to understand how customer service in the supply chain can lead to customer satisfaction and impact revenue recognize how service performance is measured and understand how order management and order processing is accomplished effective customer service operations are critical to the success of every organization it's important to note that customer service concepts apply to both external to the organization customers as well as internal customers examples of internal customers are such as when departments collaborating on joint efforts such as manufacturing and warehousing on customer fulfillment operations or procurement in engineering working together on sourcing a new part dissatisfied external customers can serve as a roadblock to acquiring new customers and ultimately endanger the reputation of an entire organization in today's world unhappy customers may turn immediately to social media and other means of communication to discourage others from doing business with the organization many aspects of customer service seem to be quite obvious however in speaking with numerous companies i hear a common theme that customer service common sense is lacking in many employees some characteristics of good customer service include on-time delivery which is getting something when you want it politeness which is being treated with respect and in a courteous manner in all interactions personalization i believe this one can be an effective differentiator for developing long-term relationships with external customers this entails making customers feel special or unique and quality which is providing products and services that meet the expected customer specifications at the core of customer service is good communication there are a number of different ways that customer service can be delivered today including call centers where professionals trained to deal with customer orders and address questions and issues are located together to address customer concerns i found it fascinating to learn of the extent of call center operations for some large organizations such as utilities where they may have tens of thousands of call center representatives located in facilities around the globe using advanced satellite communications to balance call loads across call centers technical support is focused on answering technical and other specialized questions regarding products and services and may address issues with repairing products customer service stations which are locations that customers can go to return or exchange goods or ask questions typically are located within large retail operations live chat which creates a virtual immediate communications mechanism between customers and companies without the need for telephone and often with advanced technologies live live chat operator can have very specific information regarding customers needs based on observing their behaviors on the website email is another way to support customer service however it is often viewed as outdated or insufficient when a rapid response is needed and in some cases may cause more bad will than goodwill with customers due to concerns with lost emails etc in-person customer service delivered either through visits to retail stores or by having agents come to a customer's home or work location can be beneficial in better assessing more complex issues and understanding customer feelings now we have a question stop and think about a time when bad customer service led you to make a change in your purchase habits did you communicate with a customer service function if so by which delivery mechanism there are a number of service performance measures that should be used to help judge the effectiveness of customer service operations these metrics address different dimensions of service including adherence to quality standards timeliness standards logistics performance and cost performance service performance measures generally should be viewed as metrics that are shared by the entire supply chain in that multiple supply chain processes must be working effectively together in order to achieve good customer service for example carelessness in replenishing warehouse shelves could lead to incorrect inventory being placed in dedicated product storage slots this in turn may lead to picking errors or timeliness issues in filling and customer and customer orders in this case the shipping department should not bear the full brunt of the service issue when the root problem may have been an error on the part of the replenishment function the order management process is closely aligned with overall customer satisfaction and customer service in that it is a key interface between the customer and an organization fulfillment starts with an order which then goes through various validation stages before before being released to a warehouse or manufacturing operation for creation and and or order picking the shipment the shipment ready order then is released to a transportation carrier for delivery to the customer throughout the process information is gathered and communicated regarding the order status this type of order process is very similar when applied internal to an organization as well as external to an organization i also want to point out the importance of returns and reverse logistics processes to customer service most of us probably think of supply chain as being focused on forward supply chain processes such as the sourcing of materials creation of goods and delivery of finished goods however it's important to realize that returns repairs replacement and spare part operations are just as important or in some cases more important to overall customer satisfaction than forward supply chain processes unfortunately reverse logistics processes often tend to be much more complex and overlooked than forward logistics issues in some cases reverse logistics is important and integral to the success of forward logistics for example smartphone manufacturers may count on a certain supply of returned or damaged phones to be put into the pipeline as canal cannibalized parts for manufacturing being reprocessed etc and reused in new phone manufacturing likewise emerging business models such as clothing and jewelry rental services rely on reverse logistics as much as forward logistics in this lesson we learned that customer service in the supply chain can lead to customer satisfaction and impact revenue we also learned the key elements of order management and processing order processing and recognized how service performance is measured and finally we discuss the importance of reverse logistics thank you and we'll see you on the next lesson