360° Visibility: Why Failures Are Important November 11, 2008
Posted by onprocess in Asset Retrieval, OnProcess.Tags: 360 degree visibilility, Asset Recovery, asset retrieval, customer satisfaction, escalation management, return rates, Tilson Bennett
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How do you increase your return rates while increasing customer satisfaction? Visibility into the entire process is paramount. Often times the main driver for success rates is an increased return rate, which is then assumed to increase the level of customer satisfaction; the rule being the higher the success rates, the better the service being providing to customers. While everyone should be pushing for higher rates of success, in order to have true 360-degree visibility into your processes, you must focus on the small percentage that is unsuccessful.
Drilling down into the reasons why we are not successful in getting a customer to return a part and sharing that experience with your team can expose problematic areas in your company’s process. Being able to pinpoint exact reasons for non-successes will enable you to adjust your process to better serve the customer’s needs and enable even higher rates of return.
Every meeting should start with sharing and highlighting the successes and then the real meat and potatoes should be focused on “escalation management”. Focusing on how to handle records that are not successful and giving your team insight and advice on what to do with these escalations will give your team their own means to improve their process from within. This will not only add value to your program in the eyes of a customer, it will improve return rates as well as open up more opportunities for business and in turn improve overall customer satisfaction.
Focusing on the success rates as well as adding value by establishing a process for handling escalations and pinpointing exact reasons for not getting a successful result will allow true 360 degree visibility into your program, and help provide continuous improvement in financial outcomes as well as customer satisfaction levels.
–Tilson Bennett
Complex Devices: Greater Opportunity, Greater Risk October 15, 2008
Posted by onprocess in Asset Retrieval, Customer Experience Management, OnProcess.Tags: Asset Recovery, costs of returns, customer education, Customer Experience Management, customer frustration, digital tv, PDAs, smart phones, Steve Kirstein, wireless devices
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Summary:
- Complex devices such as “smart phones” and digital Pay TV services have steeper learning curves, leading to user frustration and higher-than-expected return rates.
- Costs of handling these returns, as well as training users, are high and getting higher.
- Opportunity costs of these returns are high as well, as anticipated revenues plummet and unanticipated costs escalate.
- Proactive customer outreach and training can mitigate these costs and keep per-customer revenue levels higher.
As our consumer technologies become more complex, the opportunity for wireless carriers, device manufacturers and Cable/Pay TV operators to realize higher per-subscriber revenues increases substantially. Data plans, bundled voice and data, digital programming and on-demand pay-per-view can enhance your customer’s experience while driving higher usage and, therefore, cash flows.
A casual sampling of our markets revealed that Sales of these newer devices have increased between 15 – 30% in ‘08 versus the previous year.
The downside of this digital revenue bonanza, however, has begun to emerge. The promise of an enhanced user experience has been shattered by the reality customers are finding: steep user learning curves, overly complex menus, unknown feature sets and unrealized benefits of increased capabilities.
As a result, users are returning complex “smart phones”, downgrading digital TV converters and, in so doing, often expressing their frustration by changing carriers and providers.
Ironically, the more that these more expensive devices are adopted overall, the greater the exposure to companies in the areas of Capital Expenditure, Replacement Stock Management, and Lifetime Value per Subscriber. Have a look at this graph:
Smart Devices expose companies to ever-increasing return costs
In this example, we assume a typical wireless device, with an internal cost of about 1/3 that of a “smart” device, and a return rate of roughly half that of ”smart” devices. With an ever- increasing proportion of “Smart” devices as a percentage of total adoptions, the expense of returns of these devices increases substantially over time. Chances are, you have under-predicted the level of returns you are experiencing.
This makes the need for a comprehensive approach to both Asset Retrieval and Customer Experience Management so critical.
If your Reverse Logistics and returns programs aren’t completely buckled down and optimized, the hit on your Capital Expenditures will be much greater, due to the increased cost of the more complex units. In addition, if the Customer Experience is not proactively managed during this critical time of frustration and dissatisfaction, you can easily lose a customer instead of satisfying them.
Moreover, by proactively educating new customers and upgraders to a few key features and procedures on their new equipment, you can stem the flow of returns and realize those increased revenues you previously forecasted!
–sk
Asset Retrieval is Critical in This Difficult Economy October 15, 2008
Posted by onprocess in Asset Recovery, Asset Retrieval, OnProcess.Tags: Asset Recovery, asset retrieval, customer satisfaction, finding capital, reducing capital expenditure, Steve Kirstein, strategies for managing in economic downturn
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With lending and borrowing tighter, if in fact not available, companies will have to find ways to limit Capital Expenditures without hurting their operations or customer relations. As self-serving as it may be for us to mention, a well-run Asset Retrieval program can make a huge impact on operating expenses and reduction of Cap Ex.
If you can find all of your inventory in the field, and get it back faster, you can dramatically reduce expenditures on replacement goods. Returned items can be repaired, refurbished or otherwise returned to the field more quickly, keeping new equipment inventory needs down. A relatively small percentage improvement in return velocity and return rates can leverage a very large improvement in profitability.
Combining all this increased awareness and control of your warranty and end-of-life equipment with a proactive customer outreach will also mean you can maintain and even improve customer satisfaction, while reaping these very tangible financial benefits.
So, while you’re fervently hunkering down, contemplating cuts in Marketing, Operations, Personnel and so on, which will all impact sales and customer satisfaction, consider reviewing your Asset Retrieval operation as an important alternative that can bring financial improvement AND increased customer satisfaction.
–sk
Who are you, and what do you do? September 4, 2008
Posted by onprocess in OnProcess.Tags: Asset Recovery, Customer Experience Management, OnProcess, reverse logistics, Steve Kirstein
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Yeah, we get that a lot.
As we start to get this blog going, we’ll be answering those questions and more. It’s an interesting story, actually.
In addition, we’ll be talking about the issues we and our client companies deal with in general, because believe it or not there are a lot of folks who want to know about reverse logistics, asset recovery and improving their customers’ interactions with their people and equipment.
So stay tuned, subscribe if you want to our RSS feeds, and let’s see what happens.
–sk
