Customer Centricity is focusing your support organization on the needs of your customers. It literally means knowing all there is to know about your customers and changing what you do and how you do it to meet their expectations. In a customer Centric organization the support center is literally the "center" of the organization as it is the place where the most intimate customer knowledge is held.

A normal service organization asks how the customer likes what we offer. A customer centric organization asks what does the customer want from us and how do they want it.

The way to begin a move to customer centricity is by implementing Best Practice Standards. Whether we have to focus on user productivity in an internal support center or on pleasing our customer in a customer service environment, the tools and processes that support customer centricity have to be in place to make it work.

Best-in-class practices enable us to gather the required knowledge about our customers and deliver the required service levels they want while reducing cost.

• Deliver a consistent, high level of Service

• Reduce the cost of providing the service

• Increase efficiency of service delivery

• Ensure the latest tools and methods are being used

• Raise customer satisfaction  

The first step to implementing these best practices is to do an assessment of the support organization, a gap analysis of the operation as it is verses the best practices. The assessment results in a detailed report revealing the various levels of compliance to the 66 standards and goes on to identify areas which can be improved beginning with the ones that offer the biggest results for the least time and effort. Often immediate minor changes have significant impact.

This process is not unlike the ITIL maturity level test except that it is much more granular and looks at all facets of a support organization not just operations. Human Resource policies, financial resources, planning and all other aspects of the service are reviewed.

Much of the value of the report is in the experience we bring to it. Having successfully helped a support center receive HDI SCC certification, Service Minds Inc. knows how to meet the standards. When combined with many years of customer service experience and regular contact with many different types of support organizations, a great deal of knowledge and experience is immediately applied to the group being assessed. The report is more than a status document. It is a roadmap for future improvements.  It is the first step to customer centricity.