Service consulting is booming in today’s services economy. Granted service has always been important - we all experience good / bad customer service stories on a daily basis - but today, ‘good’ service is a critical business characteristic. And ‘good’ is in the eye of the buyer, the customer, the client and not the organisation delivering the service. Sometimes, it only takes one negative experience, maybe two, for us as buyers to switch to the ever-present competitor.
Innovating and creating new service models must be a permanent item on your agenda. Innovations will range from completely new models, through step-changes, incremental continuous improvements and minor tweaks, to old models. And all with one objective great customer experience!
Service consulting projects
Common service consulting projects include:
- Customer experience / Voice of customer to determine customer needs, wants, perceptions and preferences and translate into meaningful objectives to close the gap between customer expectations and the organisation’s services … this analysis delivers both immense value and invaluable insights.
- Service strategy … be prepared for regular review, as your strategic intent at any point may only be a transient strategic advantage.
- Outsourcing or offshoring … beware doing it just for cost reduction.
- Service (level) agreements are an essential and because it’s an infrequent activity, consulting advice, guidance and support for preparation, market analysis, management, and subsequent evaluation is invaluable … but remember that agreements drive behaviour, so consider this aspect too.
- Service design to get the service delivery model your customers will be fulfilled by … this design process may involve techniques such as co-creation, story-telling and customer journey mapping.
- Service provider management to define, develop, evaluate and implement service management policies and procedures with your service providers … try to stand in their shoes to predict and pre-empt any behaviour change.Self-service is becoming the ‘new black’ in some industries … but you must devote effort to not only post-implementation support, but also ongoing post-implementation review.
- Service improvement to design, develop, review and implement a regular regime of service improvements … a regular service keeps the ‘service excellence engine’ in good tune.
What to look for in a service consultant
Service consultants are typically creative and customer-centric, and understand where the two, sometimes polarised, main stakeholders (you, your customer) are coming from and heading to. A hallmark of a contemporary service consultant is intimate knowledge of customer experience techniques and methodologies around "multi-channel" or "omni-channel" and customer journey mapping. Finally, change management may come into your quest for service excellence. Visit our Change Management page for more information.
If you are ready to speak to a service consultant for your needs, select the "Service" category in our quick online wizard.