I understand that our company, Estee Lauder/Clinique Division, has already approved the needs-analysis stage of a forthcoming enterprise resource planning program. This is laudable because sooner or later, those who need to plan and make decisions can see where we stand in real-time: scheduled shipments of raw materials and packaging, manufacturing supplies inventories, stocks of finished goods, pending orders, deliveries, collectibles net of returns, and realized revenue.
Situation Analysis
I draw to your attention, however, the fact that the Customer Relations Department (CRD) is not part of the contemplated ERP. This might perhaps be attributed to the fact that CRD was established off-site, at the Docklands. As well, CRD currently has no involvement with tracking physical product movement, earnings, or accounts.
In my short stint thus far with CRD, I observe that the tools in use are positively archaic and prone to lapses in customer service. It seems equipment planning stopped at providing the front-line agent’s toll-free lines unconnected to any monitoring system and desktop computers on a local-area network. The functionality of this set-up is limited to accessing the product catalog and price list from the departmental server.
There is no provision for recording the results of calls, the customer service representatives (CSR’s) jot down notes or make up their own lists in Notepad or Excel. Given the dozens of calls that come in every day, this means there is no guarantee that CSR’s will remember to call back later in the day or week with the latest on retailer and volume discounts or to confirm availability of desired sales-keeping units for delivery. Further, the weekly performance reports must be compiled by hand, are error-prone and so laborious, they take half a day off everybody’s time.
This is definitely sub-par as normal customer relations management standards go. About one-quarter to one-third of the time, the calls that come in simply follow up on a promised response that is already late. And when we ask for voluntary customer satisfaction ratings each quarter, there is always a significant proportion of irate customers. We think we deliver superb customer service but, as in the Purdue survey, very few customers agree (Petouhoff and Johnson 1).
Recommendations for Improvement
If it is too much to ask that a wide-area network be built to tie in CRD to the rest of the company, I suggest that performance- and goals-oriented database be installed to improve the experience of customers who call. Perhaps we might rough up a functional model employing Excel macros or proceed straight to constructing a smart data entry and customer-service database in Access.
The latter has plentiful templates that can be easily modified for CRD needs so that CSR’s remember to request all pertinent information when a new caller is encountered, easily calls up pertinent details about contact person and account status when a caller provides their store account number, reads standardized greeting and query scripts off the screen, and enters call outcomes in a standardized fashion. That way, the database will correctly record callback dates and times, for instance, so as to display at the start of the working day “Today’s Action Items” of accounts needing to be re-contacted. And if you agree that these performance metrics must be put in place as speedily as possible, I can revert to you in two weeks with detailed specs for constructing just such a robust database with off-the-shelf options like those of Salesforce.com or offerings from the open-source community (Salesforce.com 1; Microsoft Corp. 1).
References
Microsoft Corp. “Call Tracker.” Microsoft Office Online. 2010. Web.
Petouhoff, Natalie L, and Brian R. Johnson, “Raising the Bar on CRM Standards: Driving Toward a Customer-Centric Call Center and CRM Financial Strategy.” BNet/Technology Industry. 2007. Web.
Salesforce.com, Inc. “Service Cloud™ 2: Join the Conversation.” 2010. Web.