Part II – What’s achievable?
Let’s consider what is realistic and achievable with an improved advanced exchange process.
Based on our primary research, here are some findings. What’s important to the customer during advanced exchange? What outcomes are achievable by an OEM, supplier or service provider?
- Being able to understand the complete returns process. Some companies have achieved a customer rating of 95% — the percent of their customers that said the process “very easy” or “easy” to understand.
- The ability of the asset recovery team to resolve all the customer questions. What’s achievable in this case? Having 97% of your customers that are very satisfied or satisfied.
- The ability to clarify policies related to returns. A rating of 90%. Still some room for improvement on this one.
- A timely response to questions about returns. A rating of 94%.
- Overall satisfaction with the returns process. A rating of 96%.
There’s always some room for improvement. What is the customer advice to suppliers, service providers and OEMs that want to improve their returns process? Examples include:
- Enhanced communication tailored to the customer preferences.
- Expanded communications options: phone, access to easier-to-use systems, chat sessions, and email.
- Getting the details exactly right! Like pre-printed labels…being able to find labels even more easily and having a copy for the end customer for easier tracking.
- “Let me know the final outcome. Did you get my return?” A closed loop process. Confirmations that the product had been received.
For one OEM, two of every three of their customers are process-champions – that is, enthusiastic about the returns process. While there are still specific opportunities for improvement that the OEM is actively pursuing, these results compare favorably with other service supply chain processes across multiple industries.
Based on our research…with good process definition, with clear start and end dates, metrics, and daily monitoring, some companies do achieve much better results.
To recap, what makes an asset management process industrial-strength? In our last session, we mentioned the ability to implement rapidly, the capacity to scale to high volume, demonstrated continuous improvement, early visibility to end-customer concerns, daily monitoring of results, ability to status every customer interaction, resolution of customer questions, closed-loop exception management, leading indicators of final results and both speed and high rate of recovery.
But that’s not all — there’s more! The ability to integrate with key service supply chain processes, including parts-dispatch, the deployment of techs along with the dispatch of parts, and product upgrades / migration / swaps.
Getting your process to industrial-strength takes some work. But the choice is an easy one!
