Did you forget your: Username / Password ?

Microsoft

TechWell

Home

CM Journal Articles

Another Tool in Your Bag of Tricks (Part 3)

Written by Randy Wagner

Sunday, 12 December 2004 16:00

In part 3 of the customer service in CM series, we look at the strategic opportunities that good customer service and customer relationship management gives CM. Using tactical level knowledge gained from daily transactions with our internal customers, we'll identify larger opportunities and prevent miscommunication before it happens.

Where is customer service as an industry going? Does that have any impact on CM? These questions are very relevant if we believe that quality is a journey, not a destination. Look around our daily living. We use ATMs and the Internet to bank, buy plane tickets and print boarding passes on line, video conference in better-funded companies, and chat with distant friends daily on messenger services. Massive access to the world, instantly. Each of us demands it in our roles as customers; we need to be providing it in our CM systems. Remember, the postal service still does the job as well as it ever has, sometimes even better and adjusted for inflation, about the same cost too. But when was the last time we hand wrote a letter and mailed it? Can our project staff run their own reports? Is the lifecycle built into our tools? What opportunities exist for us to remove potential errors and therefore cost? Are the CM tools integrated into our customers' systems like IDEs or requirements management tools? Do we use the bells and whistles effectively?

If we've done our homework well, we know what parts of our CM system the customers are pleased with and which parts they are not. That knowledge can have a huge impact on the success of choosing a new CM tool or process. Certainly, we have primary functions that need to be fulfilled but we also need to bear in mind that the customer sees the systems and interacts with our tools as an extension of the CM team far more frequently than they speak to us. Will our internal customers use them? Will they work with the tools the customers currently use or plan to use? Buying and implementing tools is not a cheap or low-level effort. It's usually very significant. Ensuring its success is critical to our mission and we need that tactical customer service feedback to make it happen.

Standards and expectations are points at which we can focus on long term goals. Do we set minimum standards with the customers, the service level agreements mentioned in the second article? Do we then set higher standards for ourselves? What expectations are the customers moving toward? Is speed more important than functionality in our tools or process? Are headed toward unified process or extreme flexibility? Is our staff structured to handle that? Do we need to hire a specific skill set or do we have the luxury of training internal candidates?

Training is a huge strategic opportunity. We need to provide training on our tools, our process, and our goals. We need to do it freely and as often as possible. Political candidates know that repetition can be equally as powerful as fact, sometimes more. Marketing firms depend on it. Just do it. Be a Pepper. Where's the beef? I like Ike. Hail Caesar. Throughout history, they hammer home a message. Training gives CM that opportunity. Get a slot on the new hire checklist. Teach them that this is how the company secures quality. Make sure they know that they can come to us for process questions. They can depend on us. For good or bad, catching them early and often is a winning combination. Beverage advertisements with pop icons, the Experimental Aircraft Association's Young Eagles group, and Sunday bible schools are all constructed to welcome young members and provide a touch point people can return to. Use training to do more than just provide a how to. Give them the whole package. Even if we don't win instant converts, we only need to plant seeds that we can nourish with repeated training down the road when they become leads and managers.

What other trending can we read in the tactical customer service tealeaves? What are we hearing from the customers? Are the customers headed toward Six Sigma or looking to be assessed by a standards organization? Who, in general, is getting promoted in the organization? Are SQA leads moving up or are development managers being promoted? Things like that give you a better assessment of where the business will be heading down the road and what senior management values today. That, in turn, gives you the ability to gear up within the CM team and tools to provide the kind of data that will be expected. We may need to start adding more metrics fields to the issue tracking tool or start doing daily builds to sense code stability.

And how do we see the trending? What data can we analyze to gain perspective? Are we building useful metrics into our tools? Is the data actionable? What data can we stop collecting? Is the client asking for specific measurements? While it's important to do our daily work well, it's just as important to keep on eye on the horizon. Perhaps we need to find an hour of our week where we can look through on line forums or e-zines to gain some perspective. Can we get the company to sponsor a subscription to a relevant trade journal? It might be as simple as moseying to the sales or end-user side of the house and asking for last month's business magazines. Everyone knows that information is gold in the new economy. Decide what ways the CM team can dip into that pot. Particularly during slower times (yeah, right. when's that?) of project start up or between projects we assign a research task to a lesser-loaded CM to inform the team about some perspective of our customers potential needs. It also allows us to understand the moves of our customers without needing to be specifically informed by them.

Good customer service means understanding the customer. What are the market forces that matter to the customers? Is senior management thinking about off-shoring? Maybe the CM team needs to bone up on supplier contract management. Perhaps the CM lead needs to swing by the legal department to put the bug in their ear about including audits and other CM expectations in the contract. Maybe only parts will be outsourced. That means a lot of code merging and issue coordination. What training would the CM team need to be safe and successful in that environment?

All these items, and especially the items in the first two parts of this series are practical applications of customer service to promote the CM goals of delivering quality, building customer loyalty, and reducing cost and efforts. They are not tactics to "blow sunshine" but realistic opportunities to make CM successful in the broader organization. We do need to function as a business. Keeping on our toes by working closely with the customers is most definitely good for business.

Randy Wagner is a Contributing Editor for CM Crossroads and VP of Technology Development with Taylor Bean & Whitaker in Ocala FL. His experience ranges from major financial institutions to multimedia multinationals to the Federal government. Working in small to large project efforts has given him a unique perspective on balancing the discipline of SCM and enterprise change management with the resources and willpower each organization brings to the table.

You can reach Randy by email at SR_71_98@yahoo.com.

Set as favorite

Bookmark

Email this