Customer Focus Teams
To be more responsive to customer needs, emphasise customer
satisfaction, develop closer relationships with their customers
and flatten the management structure some companies have adopted
Customer Teams or Customer Focus Teams. These are
cross-functional, customer focused teams exist to provide
customers a 'one-stop shopping' service.
Teams have complete ownership of their accounts, with each team
empowered to decide how to work with each of their customers and
bring together each service function such as accounting, sales
and service into a single team structure to serve all the needs
of the specific customers assigned to them based on a mindset of
continuous improvement in customer experience. Teams are
empowered to take corrective actions to resolve day-to-day
problems and have direct access to information that allows them
to plan, control and improve their operations. The teams manage
themselves and work within the team is generally allocated on
the basis of skills and strengths, rather than just job title.
This enables a team to provide fast turnaround on all a
customer's issues and concerns. By self managing, like players
on a pitch during a team game, the managers' role becomes that
of coach, developing skills and knowledge rather than simply
directing and controlling actions.
Working in customer focused teams interdependence and joint
responsibility for outputs become the goal and thus instead of
organizing work traditionally from the top down, reducing
processes to individual steps work becomes structured around
whole processes. Traditional approaches reduce the required
skill at every level of work leading to boring and repetitive
tasks, but team based approaches are more likely to consider the
fit of team members with the work to be done with those closest
to the jobs agreeing the jobs specifications.
The advantages of ownership and self management include
customers being more comfortable knowing who they will deal
with, and teams gaining in-depth knowledge of the needs of each
customer because of improved internal communications as team
members understand the customer's expectations and share
information, realizing there is no advantage in hoarding
knowledge - as their pay will be affected by their customers'
results on their own company's profitability.
Self managing teams do not just happen and they are not 'an easy
answer'. Teams go through several stages on their way to
self-management and it can take two or more years to achieve
this objective. Comprehensive training in basic management
skills such as problem solving and decision making is critical,
as is functional cross training so they can manage their own
processes.
To fully realize their potential, teams need not only to be
cross-functional but also need to be managed by entrepreneurial
and experienced managers who understand that they exist to
provide greater profitability for their company by providing
better customer experience to their company's clients or
customers and to this end support and drive team initiatives,
including playing an active role in building an ongoing working
relationship with the customer's management.
Teams also must not become 'customer silos' rather than
'functional silos' and must work on sharing policies, systems
and processes and people so that the results of 'winning teams -
those that provide increased customer satisfaction together with
superior profitability and increasing volume - are quickly
tested and replicated elsewhere. To achieve this senior
management needs need to fine tune structure, roles, processes
and systems to meet the ever-changing needs and increasing
complexity of both the customer's business and their own.
Senior management also have to set the tone and reality - teams
exist to provide greater profitability for their company by
providing better customer experience to their company's clients
or customers.
To achieve these corporate goals teams must:
1. Make customer satisfaction their top priority.
2. Have a common understanding of the organization's vision and
mission and their role in that.
3. Understand the roles of individual members within the team as
well as its role with the organization.
4. Work together to plan, make decisions and resolve differences
and build trust.
5. Understand what is and is not possible and walk before they
try to run
6. Set goals for continuous improvement in inputs, processes,
outputs and measured results.
It is in this last area that CRM software such as Customer FOCUS
[ http://www.e-crm.co.uk/crm/customer_focus/customer_focus.htm
] can really help.