The term ‘customer’ does not always come naturally to the back office. As a result, it can take time for the required customer-service mentality to seep through every part of a new shared services organisation (SSO).
Too often I have heard SSO directors say, “They just won’t listen; they're causing a roadblock”. Is this how your marketing and sales teams refer to their clients? I doubt it.
Shared services leaders must tap into their skills in sales and customer-account management. You need to plot your customers’ journeys and look internally at your processes, skill sets, approaches and methodologies to understand how you can best support each stage of the journey.
The problem is that this is an area where F&A leaders can lack training and experience.
Last month, at the sharedserviceslink.com European Summit on Finance Shared Services and Outsourcing, a global telecommunications giant detailed seven ways that it is managing its internal activities to enhance the customer experience:
1/ Create a customer relationship team
Ask a room of 50 SSO leaders how many have a dedicated customer relationship manager and few will raise their hands. For a function that is geared to helping thousands of customers perform better, it is often surprising how under-resourced an SSO business can be.
By establishing a team, your customers know that you are building long-term relationships, that you care and that their needs are being catered for.
2/ Sign off a service-provision document
Are your customers clear on what services they will benefit from, how they will be rendered, what the charging mechanism is and what line of recourse should be when issues arise?
When you set up your SSO, or take it to the next stage, you need to scope your services. This often relies on extensive interviews with your prospective customers. They will tell you what they want and expect from your SSO and which services they want over and above others.
Your prospective customers’ needs will vary so your service provision document will be unique to your SSO. It should be signed off by the shared services organisation and respective customer, and should be reviewed annually. The ownership that stems from this activity will tell your customers that they too have responsibilities, but more importantly that the SSO understands their needs.
3/ Build and monitor your SSO value set
Value sets are important. They are sometimes considered soft or fluffy, but they can capture the essence of your SSO and help your whole SSO team understand its purpose. When creating your value set, your customer needs to sit at the heart of your thinking. It can include statements such as the one shared at our event: integrity and quality delivered in a timely and passionate manner.
When your team goes about its day-to-day activities it’s good for its members, the SSO and the customer to check-in with these values and ask whether they underpin their work or if their work undermines them. Communicate your values to your customer and ask for feedback. Remember, it’s natural for your values to change according to where the SSO is in its lifecycle.
4/ Hire a communications manager
“Communication isn’t what we say, it’s what is heard.” The first time I heard this I felt like I was experiencing a mini ‘Eureka!’ moment. Communication is delicate: it relies jointly on you capturing the nub of what you want to convey and the recipient to be listening.
We are not all natural communicators and, typically, there are few in the finance function. So it’s a good idea to recruit one (maybe from your marketing department). Our speaker from the global telecoms company was a communications manager. He engages with the customer nine months before migration to prepare the customer journey. A data-driven SSO leader may think this is a soft expense, lacking in identifiable ROI. The modern SSO leader will recognise that customer satisfaction can make or break a shared services implementation and a communication manager is therefore key.
5/ Develop new business
As your SSO secures and manages its core business elegantly and proficiently, turn your attention to new business. Identifying new business opportunities might not always be obvious. Qualifying with your customers where further pain exists and where your services could help improve performance will not only help your customer feel nurtured and supported, but will also help extend your SSO’s reach.
6/ Have clear channels for recourse
As a customer, how do you feel when you want to complain about a service from say, your broadband provider, but you can’t find a telephone number on the website? It’s frustrating and unnecessary.
Our speakers explained how they have varying levels of feedback channels, from their own intranet page and quarterly meetings with the SSO CEO, to monthly meetings with the relationship manager to assess results. Nine times out of ten, disappointment stems from perception rather than fact. Having a transaction log and process owner helps to dispel undeserved disappointment or absorb deserved criticism, and helps to find a solution. Your customer wants to know what the escalation procedure is, and it is your responsibility to communicate it.
7/ Set up a customer council
A customer council is a forum that meets once or twice a year to discuss the strategic direction of the SSO. Country and regional CFOs attend with the SSO leadership team. Their objectives are to ensure the SSO and its activities are in tune with customers’ needs and that customers have a sense of ownership over the services they receive to helps make SSOs successful.
Sometimes, traditional shared services can focus on cost savings at the expense of the customer experience. Contemporary shared services will often put the customer experience first and are mindful of this in everything they do.
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