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Business Case 2: A system for handling customer complaints

Business Situation: XYZ Company manufactures is a global leader in water pumping solution. XYZ manufactures and sells water pumps, valves, tubes, and so on.  XYZ has also set up a customer care center for helping customers in resolving issues. However, it has been found that increasingly the customers are not satisfied with the customer service extended to them. As such the revenues from servicing are decreasing. They have asked you to provide a solution such that customer service can be improved and customer satisfaction can be enhanced.

Questions to be asked:
1.      What is your current business, people employed visions, IT infrastructure, and turnover?
Predictably, this question is about knowing the client and assessing the situation. (Of course, in real working scenario, one must do a research about the client and ask questions related to IT infrastructure in the company.

2.      What processes are laid out for customer servicing especially for handling complaints? For e.g. is there an IVR system in place or direct assistance is provided to customer? Is there any complaint number issued? How is the complaint handled? Is there any tracking or monitoring of how issue is being resolved? Is there any process of getting feedback from customer?

3.      Is there any IT software present for handling customer servicing? If so what are its functions?

4.      What is the team size? How are they being trained for handling customer complaints?

Scenario: Based on the answers to above questions, Company XYZ has disparate software installed throughout the organization that handle different processes and are not interrelated. The billing and invoicing system which has all the details of the product purchased and customer but is not connected with the customer serving software. As such when a customer calls in to the customer service center, the operator takes time in searching for product and customer details before resolving the issues.

Solution: The customer serving software needs to be connected with billing and invoicing system such that details of customer and the product bought can be easily.

1.      When the customer calls, the operator can first enter the SKU of the product in the customer serving software. Based on the entered SKU, the customer serving software will pull out the details of the product can be easily.
2.      The customer can then detail out his problem. Based on the problem, the customer serving software can search a database and provide following details;
a.       Was such problem reported earlier?
b.      If so, what have been the solution provided and how much time and cost were involved?
c.       Is the solution can be provided by operator himself?
d.      In case there was no such problem reported earlier, the customer serving software may login the problem as new.
3.      Based on the above details, the customer serving software can generate an approximate time and cost of providing a solution along with a complaint number. The details can be provided to the customer for his ready reference.
4.      Based on the problem, the customer servicing software will track the complaint and escalate the problem, if the problem is not resolved within specified problem.
5.      After the problem is resolved, based on the quotes for customer service, billing can be easily by the billing and invoicing software can raise an invoice.
6.      Also, after the complaint is resolved, feedback can be taken from the customer regarding the service provided.

Reports:
7.      Based on the details captured, statistics can be generated such as what are the frequent problems being addressed, how much time is being spent, and how much cost is involved. The statics can be generated monthly, quarterly, and yearly to take further actions.
8.      The statics can also be provided to engineering team to find solutions for frequently occurring problems.
9.      Performance metrics can be created and data can be generated to appreciate the operators handling the customer complaints.
10.  Based on performance metrics and statistics, training can be provided to operators for improving customer service.

Links
http://www.tcs.com/resources/case_studies/Pages/Avery-Dennison-business-processes-customer-retention.aspx
http://asq.org/manufacturing/why-quality/case-studies.html

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.customermanufacturing.com/wpfiles/csbpi.pdf
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