Six Characteristics of Highly Effective Service Organizations

To be fully successful with services you must keep the customers you have and create opportunities to expand relationship value.

This means that you must deliver positive customer experiences and meet increasing customer demand and satisfy higher customer expectations – cost effectively.

Here are the six characteristics of highly effective service organizations.

1. Service Strategy Delivers Outcomes

Strategy defines what an organization wants to accomplish and how it will prioritize initiatives and allocate resources to achieve outcomes. Service organizations need a strategy to set goals, define priorities and establish plans.

Highly effective organizations define how teams including Services, Development, Sales, and Product Management cooperate and coordinate efforts across the company to cost effectively meet customer needs and attain business outcomes.

2. Service Offers Drive Growth

Service programs establish customer expectations and define how companies monetize service delivery.

Service portfolios need to meet evolving customer needs from onboarding through adoption, support, success, and modernization stages of product ownership.

The right service portfolio design will engage customers, accelerate time-to-value, and increase the likelihood of renewal and expansion.

Highly effective organizations monetize support and success services by offering catalogs of high-value services that customers want and Sales can sell.

3. Service Team Design Promotes Collaboration

Organize the right people in the right roles to do the right things cooperatively.

Every team within an organization is accountable for contributing to customer outcomes. Organizations need to have the right people with the right skills and responsibilities incented to do the right things.

When teams cooperate and work towards common objectives, they are efficient and effective in delivering what is promised to customers.

Highly effective organizations break down organizational silos and maximize cross-functional cooperation to achieve shared objectives and deliver better customer experience at every touchpoint.

4. Processes are Streamlined and Cross-Functional

Define activities and actions to achieve desired service outcomes efficiently.

Process defines what organizations do and how they do it. Service processes need to encompass delivery of services, engagement, and renewal of customer relationships, and strengthen service delivery capabilities.

Highly effective organizations increase service efficiency when key activities are well-defined and best practices embraced.

5. Technology Drives Efficiency and Innovation

Innovate, automate, and scale service delivery cost effectively.

Technology enhances service capabilities and enables new ways to engage customers. The right use of service technology will scale delivery capacity, improve customer experiences, and deliver better business outcomes at lower costs.

Highly effective organizations leverage technology to streamline and automate core service functions and find new and better ways to serve customers.

6. Access to Data Leads to Meaningful Insights

Insights drive process improvement, efficiency gains, and better customer experiences.

Highly effective service organizations have the means to measure the contribution of service initiatives to specific corporate goals and objectives. They use insights to predict and prevent issues and escalations and identify opportunities to mitigate churn and expand relationship value.

Apply theses 6 characteristics of effective service organizations to maximize service success.

1. Define your service strategy.
2. Offer a robust portfolio of services.
3. Organize teams to maximize cooperation and collaboration.
4. Embrace best practices.
5. Modernize technology.
6. Develop and apply insights