Supply Chain Management Tutorial | Customer service management process

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Successful SCM requires a change from managing individual functions to integrating activities into key supply chain processes. In an example scenario, a purchasing department places orders as its requirements become known. The marketing department, responding to customer demand, communicates with several distributors and retailers as it attempts to determine ways to satisfy this demand. Information shared between supply chain partners can only be fully leveraged through process integration.

Supply chain business process integration involves collaborative work between buyers and suppliers, joint product development, common systems, and shared information. According to Lambert and Cooper (2000), operating an integrated supply chain requires a continuous information flow. However, in many companies, management has concluded that optimizing product flows cannot be accomplished without implementing a process approach. The key supply chain processes stated by Lambert (2004) are:

• Customer relationship management: Customer relationship management (CRM) is a model for managing a company’s interactions with current and future customers. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize sales, marketing, customer service, and technical support.
• Customer service management
• Demand management style: Demand management is a planning methodology used to manage and forecast the demand of products and services.
• Order fulfillment: Order fulfillment (in British English order fulfilment) is in the most general sense the complete process from point of sales inquiry to delivery of a product to the customer. Sometimes Order fulfillment is used to describe the more narrow act of distribution or the logistics function, however, in the broader sense it refers to the way firms respond to customer orders
• Manufacturing flow management
• Supplier relationship management: Supplier relationship management (SRM) is the discipline of strategically planning for, and managing, all interactions with third party organizations that supply goods and/or services to an organization in order to maximize the value of those interactions. In practice, SRM entails creating closer, more collaborative relationships with key suppliers in order to uncover and realize new value and reduce risk.
• Product development and commercialization: Commercialization is the process or cycle of introducing a new product or production method into the market. The actual launch of a new product is the final stage of new product development and the one where the most money will have to be spent for advertising, sales promotion, and other marketing efforts.
• Returns management

Much has been written about demand management. Best-in-class companies have similar characteristics, which include the following:

• Internal and external collaboration
• Initiatives to reduce lead time
• Tighter feedback from customer and market demand
• Customer-level forecasting

One could suggest other critical supply business processes that combine these processes stated by Lambert, such as:

• Customer service management
• Procurement
• Product development and commercialization
• Manufacturing flow management/support
• Physical distribution
• Outsourcing/partnerships
• Performance measurement
• Warehousing management

Customer service management process

Customer relationship management includes the strategies, business practices and technologies used by an organization to interact as well as deliver real time information to existing as well as future customers. CRM offers additional benefits of driving positive sales growth, assisting in customer retention, creating customer loyalty, etc. Organizations seek to build customer relations by aligning customer and organization goals, ensuring continuous customer interaction as well as building on positive brand image among the customers.

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