Service with a smile?
There are many ways of measuring the performance including OTIF, CSLM, CCF and CCFOT amongst many, many others depending on your business sector and level of operational maturity. Essentially, you should be unambiguously measuring how much of the right stuff you delivered to the right place at the right time. Importantly, it is not value based. You might measure that internally for monthly sales progress monitoring but it is largely irrelevant for Customer Service measures.
Lifting the fog.
This tip top list of 7 is not exhaustive but these are some of the most common challenges in FMCG Customer Service measurement and management:
- Service should be measured per SKU thus avoiding the possibility of hiding poor performance at a brand or range level with exceptional performance in another. Measuring by SKU allows you to hold the right people accountable and ensure improvement resources are appropriately applied.
- Are you measuring against what the customer ordered or what your team said they could order? This is a common error particularly when order capture is in the hands of employees rewarded via value based sales incentives, e.g. “We do not have that SKU but you can have some extra of this SKU”. This is a perfectly sensible and proactive approach towards the customer but you do need to see the raw demand to understand what they actually asked for and what they actually received. There is no problem with substituting products with customer agreement as this maintains the relationship and should result in sales but this must be a visible process.
- A customer may ask for unreasonable amounts of a certain standard SKU or promotional pack but hiding this 'data blip' is not the answer. Addressing the issue head-on with some collaborative planning would be mutually beneficial. For some probably good reason they asked for a huge shipment so find out why and be more ably prepared to potentially service the demand next time.
- Use an ERP that simply and automatically allows you to allocate reason codes for service failures and get them investigated promptly. Focus on the big wins using the 80/20 principle, e.g. do not spend too much time finding out why you did not deliver 5 boxes of washing powder and do spend time on the failure to deliver large volumes of high value beauty products.
- Get your Customer Service level on the agenda of the top table in the company. Your service level is a function of every single person in the company and is a reflection of how well you are performing in the market. This means that functional leaders other than Supply Chain and Sales must be actively involved and you must avoid blamestorming. This is pointless, immature and hardly team working best practice and in parallel, celebrate successes widely and noisily.
- Do you have a Customer Service department led by a talented individual who is graded as highly as peers within the company? CS is a very important function and it should enjoy equality of importance within the business. CS is not just about taking orders, printing invoices and solving problems. Customers deserve the opportunity to talk to a real human being (avoid voice mail!) about their issues and concerns or maybe even mutual opportunities. Small issues in invoice accuracy which can delay payments of thousands of Euros can be sorted out by knowledgeable and concerned staff motivated to really help.
- Make the CS measure highly visible around the company – everyone should be aware of the overall CS their company is providing to customers. Do not fall into the trap of accepting low or 'sand-bagged' targets – you are highly likely to achieve them and that gets you precisely nowhere.
Service please!
Customer Service matters and is a reflection of your entire company processes including the critical Sales & Operational Planning backbone of the demand and supply balancing deployment. If the discipline has not been reviewed and refreshed for a while then now would be a good time to change your game for the better.
Customer Service = Satisfied Customers = Sales = Jobs/Pay/Bonus = Satisfied Staff
Help, I need somebody!
If you have any Supply Chain or Route to Market problems or opportunities you would like to discuss, then please reach out to Enchange.com via telephone, email, or live chat.
