Read about Gartner's 2017 planned research on Customer Service and Fulfillment.
Managing customer relationships is becoming more complex as customer demands and channels to reach them change in the digital age. Findings from the 2015 Gartner Customer Service Strategy Survey indicate that the customer service and order management function is underfunded and has taken a back seat to other investment priorities, resulting in missed opportunities to provide service differentiation. This places the customer service and order management function at increased risk of being managed only as a cost center instead of a source of rich data insights. Yet, there are well-known examples of companies that have reaped the benefits of improved customer service capability that afforded them a unique competitive advantage and overall market leadership.
Supply chain leaders responsible for customer service must prioritize investments to improve order management capabilities to meet rising customer expectations and get ready for even more complexity in a multichannel, digital world. Leading organizations are using customer service and fulfillment operations to identify initiatives that differentiate the organization through customer-centric processes.
Gartner's customer service and fulfillment research helps supply chain executives manage trade-offs between exceeding customer expectations for service and fulfillment at the right cost.
The 2017 research agenda covers:
- Defining and executing effective customer service and customer collaboration strategies in alignment with business priorities.
- Managing customer service performance through the effective use of metrics and benchmarks.
- Working collaboratively with customers on joint value creation opportunities.
- Continuously improving operating efficiency through best practices in order fulfillment.
- Differentiating the customer proposition through multichannel fulfillment and direct-to-consumer best practices.
- Driving customer trust and retention by connecting and empowering the customer with improved visibility throughout the supply chain.
- Exploring innovation and future trends in customer service.
Gartner clients can get a detailed overview of planned research by accessing the following paper available now on www.Gartner.com "Improve Customer Service and Fulfillment in Supply Chain Primer 2017" reference G00318272
All posts reflect my personal view
7 年The "BOM structure" of customer service is a thrilling area crying out for attention. Books have been filled with theory on how to represent physical product structures... Systems have been tailored to support physical product structures... Definitions for structured representation of "Service" are far less mature.
some very interesting subjects; looking forward to contribute where possible
Helping companies transform for the digital age; Particularly in Tech Transfer, connecting R&D with Commercial Manufacturing
7 年Personally, I believe that not only service and fulfillment operations play an important role in making customers happy. In addition, today and in the future sales must be much more aligned with those processes compared with the pre-digital age. Indeed, strategies and tactics to servicing customer should be a synchronized orchestration of three functions (sales, service and supply) perfectly aligned – goal wise, culturally and technologically.