Customer Service Focus

A customer-service focus emanates from the core veilues impUcitly and expUcitly expressed throughout the organization. It is represented in the mission statement of the company and the development... 

Customer engagement. This issue takes a holistic view of sales and customer relationships. Customer relationships management and business analytics techniques are used to provide customized customer services on a global scale. From the supply chain perspective, it changes cost optimization focus to customer service focus implying not only high fill rates and responsiveness but also social responsibility, supply chain transparency, and environmental consciousness (Carter and Rogers 2008 Danese and Romano 2013). 

Chemical companies tend to think about products not the service that the customer is buying. Forcing yourself to think about it from the customer perspective, focusing on the service or functionality required to meet their needs, opens up new innovation space. If you concentrate on the product, you will improve the product, upgrade the product, or... 

The ISO 9000 series encompasses the product development sequence from strategic planning to customer service. Currently, it is a series of five quality system standards, with two of the standards focusing on guidance and three that are contractual standards. 

Helping chemical producers and customers to focus on their core competences by offering more efficient and effective distribution, marketing and sales, or purchasing services. 

About the Author Dr. Tipton is Associate Professor of Social and Administrative Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Mylan School of Pharmacy at Duquesne University. Dr. Tipton earned an MBA in marketing and a Ph.D. in management from St. Louis University. Prior to obtaining his degree, he practiced pharmacy for 20 years and was an owner/partner in a four-store pharmacy operation. His current research interests focus on customer service, medication errors, and judgment. Dr. Tipton teaches courses at Duquesne University in management, marketing, and customer service. 

In this chapter, quahty is defined as conformance to the requirements of users or customers. More directly, quality refers to the satisfaction of the needs and expectations of users or customers. The focus on users and customers is important, particularly in service industries such as healthcare. The users of healthcare laboratories are often the nurses and physicians their customers are the patients and other parties who pay the bfils. 

In the early 1990s, some specialty chemical segments were price sensitive and cyclical, with international producers focusing more on customer service than on research and development. Some producers had not raised prices in years. By the mid-1990s some specialty chemical segments displayed the characteristics of mature commodity sectors. Slowly prices were raised, and some... 

An electronic mailbox has been created for CCMC on SRS Intranet to allow any employee to send in chemical safety questions it is CCMC s goal to provide answers quickly, usually within a day of receipt of the message. This commimication tool focuses on customer service. 

Centralization There wiU be fewer large centralized warehouses in the future to replace the more numerous, smaUer, decentralized warehouses of the past. There will be fewer managers and administrative people involved with distribution as integrated distribution is pursued and distribution staffs are centralized. Along with the centralization of warehouses and staffs wUl come the centralization of order entry, customer service, and data processing. The increased responsiveness of transportation at lower costs, the focus on the total cost of distribution, the reahties of customer satisfaction, pace, variety, and adaptability—aU are pointed toward the centralization theme. The trend toward centralized distribution wUl result in higher inventory turnover, which wUl in turn lead to new opportunities for automation and sophisticated information systems. 

The development of more effective planning and scheduling systems will be a top priority for the future capable maintenance operation. As reductions in breakdown repairs occur through more effective preventive/predictive maintenance, the opportunity to increase planned maintenance work will result. Maintenance and operations work closely to schedule rcpai rs at the most convenient time. Maintenance will become more customer oriented tmd focus on achieving greater customer service by completing scheduled repairs on time. The utilization of craft time will increase as levels of planned work increases and as the uncertainties and inefficiencies associated with breakdown repairs arc reduced. 

Number of call-backs (or percentage of craft rework) Measures the quality of maintenance repair work and provides one key indicator for maintenance customer service. It helps focus on doing the repair right the first time. 

The ultimate success of maintenance planning and scheduling will be determined by whether or not the customer is satisfied. All preliminary work to develop a plan and coordinate the scheduled repairs is wasted if execution of the schedule does not occur as promised. The customer (operations) will determine the true success of the planning process. The entire maintenance workforce must understand their service role to operations. As a formal planning process is implemented, an increased focus on customer service must be established. Operations will expect better service and maintenance must commit to providing it. 

Despite the serious difficulties of measuring and controlling the quality of customer service, service leaders have figured out ways of doing it. Measuring service performance or quality is quite different than measuring product quality because service is an experience. Generally, the better measurement systems focus on three different aspects of service process, product, and customer satisfaction. 

We center in our work on inclusive climates. Climate, for our purposes, refers to employees shared perceptions of the formal and informal organizational policies, practices, and procedures with respect to a strategic focus of interest (Reichers Schneider, 1990)—for example, inclusion, customer service, or safety—in particular the extent to which that focus is a priority in the organization. It is the aggregate of individual climate perceptions that is of greatest theoretical and practical interest. 

Consider Bharti Tele-Ventures, the largest private telephone company in India. It recently outsourced and integrated its core functions - such as network and program management, help desk support, disaster recovery, IT, and billing - which freed it to focus exclusively on marketing and customer service strategies. As a result, Bharti tripled its subscriber base - from six to 18 million subscribers - in just 20 months. 

Consider the in-stock availability offered to the customer (with a nearly zero lead time) by the retailer if the retailer and manufacturer were to carry inventory. It is clear that the retailer s choice of inventory would reflect retailer margins and costs associated with excess inventory. Such a choice of customer service level may not reflect what is best for the overall supply chain, something that is discussed in the chapter on coordination. Thus, a focus on availability will encourage the manufacturer and retailer to establish coordination agreements that can increase the delivered service level to the customer. 

An extreme focus on cost will decrease customer service and increase inventory levels. 

A singular focus on asset utilization will increase inventory and decrease customer service. 

As a result, they have stumbled forward. As companies have outsourced the supply chain, they have had to build inter-enterprise processes to ensure that they are able to achieve better levels of quality, customer service, and corporate social responsibility through their network as they did when all functions reported through their organization. As a result, the focus of the supply chain has become outside-in. 

Early pioneers fought hard battles with finance teams that did not understand the concepts. IT projects were implemented with overinflated commitments that were not grounded in reality. In the early days, the principles of supply chain trade-offs and the effective frontier were difficult to conceive. The singular focus on costs resulted in failures in customer service. These failures drove organizations to define supply chain excellence as a reliable supply chain to focus on closing multiple gaps ... 

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