In the age of technology, it’s important to deliver value to customers in terms of outcomes. Service typifies what this means, providing value to the customer.
There is an art to managing a service, it’s here I want to focus the attention. “Art,” implies mastery of any sort of craft. I love the picture this paints. One could imply that managing a service is a mastering it, in turn mastering value.
Here’s a few pointers on how to do that.
Know thy customer
Relationship is key when it comes to managing a service. This might sound strange, how does managing a service (technological) fall into this category? Surely it’s all just binary? Either the service works or it doesn’t. Not necessarily, take the scenario where a service is in use and people don’t really use it. Relationship ensures you are listening to the people who utilize the service and understand if the value is in place. Having the ability to listen is crucial. Listeners have the ability to bounce their way to a positive outcome. Effectively an act of support, encouragement and growth which ultimately reflects value.
Rhythm
At Kloud we focus extensively on ensuring we have a healthy rhythm in place, it ensures we move faster, able to respond in a timely manner. It introduces agility onto our canvas.
Some examples of what we have at our heartbeat;
Daily Kuddle were we focus on what’s been happening, important Metrics and any of our customer’s challenges.
Weekly we take the time to improve what we do where we focus on news, numbers, customer and employee data, the one thing we personally each can do to improve our contribution.
Events
This might seem odd in the context of this blog, it could even find its way under the rhythm but we need to call this out. The ability to discover events, make sense of them and determine the appropriate control action is critical to service management. Like an artist studies his canvas for its creativity expression, we study our systems to ensure its expression is of a healthy nature. It here we can build a visual of how we are progressing and touch it up if required.
Cost a new approach
Cost is an important factor when it comes to managing a service. Customers want to see value at this layer. Imagine the cost actually varying? Whereas a customer you see the cost decrease? At Kloud we have introduced consumption-based service management (to be fair, it’s not a new concept but a model that will potentially redefine the way services are being delivered). In this model the consumer pays for the value that you as the managed service provider will deliver on a consumption, rather than a fixed, basis.
Governance
Spending far to much time doing Post incident reviews as opposed to pre incident reviews. Governance is important to the way that we manage our services. We spend time ensuring we have a considerable and robust governance framework in place. This framework allows us to build on hindsight, stay relevant and anticipate what’s to come in the digital age.
Passion
This could be my all-time favourite. I think of our team when this comes to mind. Wikipedia describes passion as a very strong feeling about a person or thing. Passion is an intense emotion, a compelling enthusiasm or desire for something. We care about the Cloud and the value that it will provide for the modern day organisation. It’s very essence will allow organisations to concentrate on their core business function therefore we passionately throw ourselves at our mission of the inevitable shift to the Cloud.
Something to Remember
Do:
- Know thy customer, listen more than you talk.
- Passion, care about your customer and the services you deliver.
- Evaluate your cost, ensure you are competitive and relevant in today’s cost climate.
Don’t:
- Forsake a healthy rhythm.
- Ignore the events.
Well said