Creating Additional Value Through Service

Leaders of product-oriented companies – manufacturers, industrial suppliers, technology firms and other vendors of business goods – are coming to understand and realize the benefits of offering services and solutions to their customers. Yet, few executives grasp the extent to which they must change their organizations in order to dramatically grow services and solutions. In this session, Mary Jo Bitner will highlight key items to consider including:

• How can companies successfully transform their product-centric business models into model services and solutions businesses?
• How can they steadily shift their revenues from goods sold to services rendered?
• How can they drive this transition and overcome the challenges they will face?

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In today's "age of the customer" companies are no longer competing against their direct competition. They are competing against the best service experience customers come in contact with. To progress to a customer-centric culture companies must achieve several levels of maturity, from "interested" all the way to "embedded". As a company advances through these levels there are several roadblocks that can hinder the journey to customer centricity. Navigating this road to maturity will be different for every enterprise. We'll have an active discussion on what works and explore the steps that companies can use to build the customer experience they seek to provide. Key takeaways from this session include:
• Roles for Leaders on the journey to a customer centric culture
• Barriers ands solutions to customer centricity gaps
• Where to commit your focus for your journey

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The key to keeping customers happy is ensuring open communication. One challenge service departments face, however, is determining how much, and which, information to share. Our panelists will debate the benefits and risks of sharing, including:

• Deciding how much visibility into service events to allow your customers
• Should customers be able to see the status of service events, whether the tech is onsite, whether tech needed additional help to solve issue, what the ETA is to returning the equipment back to service
• Allowing customers access to the data pulled from their systems

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As many service organizations shift from reactive to proactive to predictive mode, the focus on capacity planning becomes ever more important. Sudipto Ghosh leads service operations for Lenovo and is responsible for developing and executing the overall service business strategy including:

• Moving from a reactive mode with measured, predictable growth to a proactive mode
• Building growth plans and capacity that incorporate both sales and business plans
• Shifting mindset from capacity-constrained growth to determining how much capacity you can build

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Fully engaged customers lead to more loyal customers which lead to increased profitability. Scotty Benda encourages his team to focus on creating a true customer partnership by:
• Appreciating your customer at a deeper level
• Streamlining internal workforces and procedures to increase end-user efficiency
• Optimizing satisfaction and loyalty to maximize retention
• Establishing loyalty programs for customers by providing preferential treatment beyond SLAs

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Are you meeting our customers’ needs with your current service locations? Is it better to support your customer out of small satellite facilities or large support centers? Discussion about the benefits of being local versus regional based service organization.

Key Discussion Points:
•Consolidation of services verses local presence – impacts to the service and sales revenues
•Determining where to set up a facility to achieve the greatest support leverage
•Velocity of response verses cost savings to the customer •Understanding the voice of the customer in your service offerings •Utilizing Service Engineers to grow your Service business

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One way to ensure quick issue resolution is by having the appropriate parts available when and where your technicians need them. Kevin Young analyzed the parts operation at Munters and found the following keys to success:

• Optimizing your parts supply chain and parts manufacturing
• Determining whether to keep supply chain operations in-house or investigate external vendors
• Moving beyond just-in-time manufacturing principles to anticipate parts necessity

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