By John Hamilton, President, Service Strategies Corporation
Technology and process are the foundation of your service delivery model. The appropriate use of technology will allow you to build an efficient model that can scale to meet your clients’ needs. If you fail to leverage technology as the foundation of your delivery model, you will miss an opportunity to stay competitive in the market. Many service organizations fail because of their inability to leverage technology. As a result, it is important to fully understand your technology options as you build and adapt your service delivery model.
There are several evolving technology innovations that will help form the future of the service industry. Here are the key enablers:
Service maturity and technology maturity are closely related. The Service Maturity Model was developed as an assessment tool for the globally recognized Service Capability & Performance (SCP) standards. The Service Maturity Model helps to identify and categorize how advanced a service organization is from a process and technology perspective. There are five phases in the maturity model, and organizations can move to more advanced phases in the model as they develop and enhance their service capability and delivery processes. The five phases are developing, implementing, sustaining, advancing, and innovation. Here is a more detailed breakdown of each phase of the model combining process and technology attributes:
Service executives today face the challenge of developing effective strategies, improving operational efficiency, and driving world-class levels of performance. The Service Operations Health Check supports these goals by providing an unbiased review of a company’s service performance and will show where you fall on the service maturity scale. It includes:
In many companies, there is a mismatch when it comes to the perception of operational performance. Service executives view performance very differently than middle management or individual contributors who engage clients on a daily basis. An independent Service Operations Health Check identifies these gaps in perception and helps drive alignment across the organization. By aligning perceptions, management can focus on the real issues that affect performance and ensure the organization is driving towards a common objective which will guide their organizational improvement efforts.
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John Hamilton
President, Service Strategies Corporation
jhamilton@servicestrategies.com