How to Build a Customer-Focused Shared Services Operation

An effective shared services operation is customer-focused. To keep that focus when building or rebuilding a shared services operation try following these seven steps:

1. Identify the customer community – Classify customers by respective roles across the entire organization, not just the business units that the shared services directly supports
2. Assess requirements and expectations –  Ask the customer community for specificity around their business needs  and confirm their service expectations
3. Implement analysis measures – Analyze the stakeholder community, by role, and utilize input to establish and maintain metrics to help evaluate effectiveness
4. Align service functions – Set operational standards for the alignment of shared service functions to the customer business functions and leverage synergies
5. Measure and Improve – Plan and measure customer satisfaction of the shared services, not just through standard SLAs, but also through outcomes (productivity improvements) and customer satisfaction surveys
6. Create line of sight – Define, measure and report service levels on a global, regional and market level basis. This promotes customers visibility into the value brought by shared services
7. Incent behavior – Empower and motivate shared services employees to provide world-class customer service

These are the basics of a customer focused shared service organization, but ultimately in order to advance the organization further, there has to be a cultural evolution to adopt a problem solving mentality, that is aligned with the business needs they support.  

To learn more about what Wavestone US can do for your company, visit http://www.wavestone.us/capabilities/.