• Manage the relationship, not the contract. Customers don’t mind spending more and are well aware of the fact if they’ve bought too cheap a contact. However, first try to solve the problem before asking for a change or an expansion. It’s not for nothing that customers talk about ‘money left lying on the table’. The best relationships evolve through your solving of problems, not by allowing them to drag on in silence.
• Don’t raise the issue of opportunities on the business side if you have not yet put the basics in order. Chances are you often spot opportunities or potential for a company and want to help. But remember that your proposals will not go down well if you do not yet have the basics in order. After all, why would a CIO follow your recommendations if you can’t even solve the technical problems you were called in to fix in the first place?• Choose KPIs that reflect the business impact. Once you have your basics sorted out (and not a moment earlier) you can set up business-oriented KPIs and extricate yourself from the maze of technical targeted indicators that mean nothing to the customers (from business managers to users).
• SLAs are no proof of good conduct. “Yes, but…” is probably the most hated phrase in service level management. We want to prove that we’ve done a good job by showing that the SLA has been achieved. The idea is not to prove your availability, but rather to prevent relevant unavailability and to report back on your efforts made to this end (you often do it, but don’t show it). And if things do go wrong: if it hurts, it hurts. Accept it. That alone will do wonders, because it gets you talking about a solution. Also show that you understand where the other party is experiencing the pain and ask where the priority should lie in resolving the problem.
• What are the most hated KPIs that you should do away with? Customers tend to have their set of KPIs that you use, but actually feel a great sense of resentment towards. ‘Corrected average resolution time’ is one such a grating and even misleading indicator. It leads to stopwatch management because you have to stop the clock just to achieve this KPI. And because it focuses on averages, you will ‘conveniently include’ a number of easily resolved incidents in your calculation to achieve the KPI. Ask your customers which KPIs they detest and do away with these for a while. Rather no KPI than a poor KPI!
• What constitutes a complete waste of time? Lots of bulky reports, meetings and status updates serve no purpose. The strange thing is that everyone knows this, but no one is willing to admit it. Except you. Let them know if you believe something is a complete waste of time. Get rid of it and everyone around you will be asking themselves: why didn’t we do this much sooner? Incidentally, you won’t need as many reports and updates if you provide the customer with a dashboard of key indicators so that he doesn’t have to keep asking for them. Of course, you can only do this if you have first established the necessary level of credibility.
• Know your customer’s world. It’s a form of respect. Organise company visits for all players in your service chain, let the customer present workshops and draw up an internal jargon test to see if you speak the customer’s language.
• Give users a good customer feeling. At a Working Conditions Service working with physicians, a more formal mode of address immediately improved customer satisfaction levels. Helpdesk staff use a formal mode of address because that is what callers expect of them. Putting yourself in the shoes of your target groups pays off in the form of scripts and tips that give users a real sense of being a valued customer.
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