In a world where customer service has become increasingly important, it's more vital than ever to have a customer service management strategy in place.

Because of the weight customer service holds for your company, it’s important that you have the right tools for the job. This is true in either B2B or B2C operations; however, both require solutions that allow you to keep necessary information at your fingertips while presenting an image that evokes a strong corporate brand and trust in your customers. Finally, these solutions need to be scalable to adjust with your company as it grows. 

Understanding how these concepts apply to a concrete interface can be challenging. This article discusses the most significant customer service management benefits provided by a cloud-based optimization platform, including:

• Improving Satisfaction
• Increasing Efficiency
• Reducing Costs
• Adding Value for Both You and Your Customers

Creating an Efficient User-Driven Experience

The central challenge to any customer service solution is ensuring that users are satisfied with the end product. In a B2B environment, this means providing them with the tools they need to perform their duties more efficiently than what would have been possible without it. It also requires ease of use and learning that speaks to the skill sets of experienced veterans and newcomers alike.

Some advanced methods to improve employee and customer satisfaction include:

• Service-Level Management: Many companies prefer to handle service requests in their own way, so your customer service platform should meet them where they are. The ideal platform should include the ability to create custom portals and assign custom roles and positions for those portals you create. Plus, allow easy configuration of multiple SLAs, even customer-specific SLAs, to track and make sure issues are dealt with in the appropriate order and within time.
  
  
• Simple and Intuitive Interfaces: Self-help portals need to be simple and intuitive for customers to be able to find what they need to troubleshoot and solve any issues they can handle themselves. Additionally, consider an interface with roles and permissions that limit the service team’s view to only the most vital information and processes they need to help customers who might have some challenging issues.

• CMBD & Asset Management: Your platform should have the ability to store and house any assets used for your business. Not just physical assets, but things like contracts, licenses, and more - anything that helps attach critical information to customer records that could be essential for your service team. This keeps important information close at hand and easily accessible for when your teams need them.

• Service Catalog Creation: When presenting your products and services to your customers, having an online platform that allows you to customize categorization and presentation goes a long way toward offering a tailored customer service experience.

Having tools like these at your disposal ensures that your company can present the best possible image to clients while keeping team members on the same page. In addition, having these essential features ensures that the user (and, by extension, the client) are kept happy.

Reducing Customer Costs and Optimizing Your Service With Customer Service Management

Software solutions that add to the capabilities of administrative teams are common, however the other side of the coin is to look for solutions that reduce costs across the board. These features keep your company light and mobile, with heightened overheads that prepare your department for any business challenges that come down the road. 

Customer Service Management benefits include freeing up resources to further enhance and build on your customer service experience. This allows you to add more value to your end users and yourselves as a business. The co-creation of value between vendor and customer is vital to overall success in both growth and retention.

Cost reduction comes in many forms, but the most helpful one available through a technology-based service would include:

• Performance Management: Generating quality reporting often requires hiring an in-house specialist or outsourcing the job to an external agency. Either way, having a technology-based solution that delivers accurate reporting allows you to cut that cost.

• Reducing Call Volume: Having a customer service solution that provides clients with self-help capabilities and online ticket updates reduces the need to have them call in. These tools allow administrators to optimize their existing customer service teams.

• Automation: Using workflows to automate certain tasks reduces the burden on the team allowing them to focus on service delivery.
  
• Configuration: Having a system that can be self administered means not relying on consultants to make simple changes to configuration.

Truthfully, any feature boasted by an online customer service management system is a tool towards cutting costs. And any job performed by that platform is a responsibility that no longer needs to fall on human effort alone. The question to ask is whether or not your platform meets your needs and the needs of your department in particular.

Experience Customer Service Management Benefits with Vivantio

Finding the right platform for your customer service management benefits multiple aspects of your company. While it is tempting for companies to find in-house solutions to these problems themselves, the process of doing so often consumes money, time, and energy at a rate that small businesses cannot adequately handle. For this reason, many choose to outsource the job to an experienced partner like Vivantio.

Vivantio's powerful platform offers both internal and external customer service and support. We enable effortless operations via our customer service management solutions. Let us empower your teams so they can focus on elevating the customer experience.

For more than two decades, Vivantio has been helping clients optimize their service organizations by leveraging a unified service management platform. To find out how Vivantio can help you with your customer service management benefits, contact our team today or register for a free demo.

In a world where customer service has become increasingly important. It's more vital than ever to have a customer service management strategy in place.

Using a customer service management platform makes the difference in how customers can connect to your brand. In fact, 95% of customers said that quality customer service makes them feel more connected to a company.

If you're on the fence about using a customer service management platform, look at these customer service management examples to see how  technology is improving the customer experience.

Examples of How Technology is Improving Customer Service Management

Various software and tools can be leveraged within your customer service management strategy to improve the customer experience. Here are a few examples of how technology is improving the ways businesses can manage the customer service experience.

Self-Service Portals

Not all customers want to wait on the phone for answers to their most important questions. This is where a self-service portal comes into play. Self-service portals make it easier for customers to find the answers to the questions they need easily. 

Self-service portals are websites that offer up both information and resources which empower users to find answers they need to resolve their issues. By collecting relevant information and resources in one place, users can troubleshoot existing issues before needing to reach out. On top of that, they can create tickets and review self-help articles to reduce call volume and optimize customer experience. 

If they can’t find what they are looking for in the self-help articles, they can then continue to log a ticket or make a service request to get dedicated support. The self-service portal can capture specific information based on a type of request to pass along to your customer service team to help them route the ticket and expedite resolution.

Third-Party CRM Software and Sales Tools

Another example of how technology is improving the customer experience is its ability to integrate customer service management platforms with other existing customer relationship management (CRM) softwares and sales tools, such as:

• SalesForce
• Zoho
• Monday
• HubSpot

When customer service integrates with CRM software, businesses can completely view the customer journey. From start to finish, customer service representatives can see every touchpoint a customer has had with your company. This makes achieving a 360-degree view of your customers and providing them with the best customer service possible.

Case Management Capability

Case management allows customer service representatives to see every customer interaction in one place. This way, they can provide a more cohesive customer experience by having all the information they need in one spot.

What's more, case management gives businesses the ability to create workflows and processes that are tailored to their specific needs. This means customer service representatives can work more efficiently and resolve complex and simple customer issues faster.

For example, if you're a customer service representative who regularly deals with service delivery, you can create a workflow that includes all the steps necessary to handle the process. This allows you to ensure that each service delivery is handled consistently and efficiently, saving you time and money.

Data Collection Tools

Data collection tools allow businesses to get insights into what customers like and don't like about their experience.

Data collection tools, such as surveys, social media, analytics, registration and subscriptions, can help businesses identify areas where they need to improve. For example, if you notice that many customers are unhappy with your service delivery or the sales process, you can use this information to make changes to your process. Being able to pinpoint where and when issues arise in your existing processes can help you tailor and build a better way to work.

With data collection, you can be sure that you're making the changes that will have the biggest impact on your business. Predictive analysis becomes possible in that once you have collected enough data, you can predict and learn behavior. When a certain kind of request comes in, you’ll know how to jump in to answer. By asking questions in your self-service portal, you can even use existing interactions to provide possible solutions to customers.

Improved Contract Management Systems 

One of the most frustrating and outdated aspects of customer service is the contract process. Customer service management platforms have made this process obsolete by offering better contract management systems.

With a contract management system, businesses can create and manage customer contracts in one place. Additionally, modern customer service management platforms allow users to create unique ticket types and categories which can assist in organizing and optimizing their processes. All of this adds up to customer service representatives being able to quickly find the information they need without having to search through multiple tickets.

Implement These Customer Service Management Examples with Vivantio

Technology is making customer service management more efficient and convenient through self-service, third-party CRM and sales tool integration, case management, data collection, and improved contract management . As a result, more businesses can take advantage of and improve their customer experiences.

If you're ready to get on board, Vivantio, a customer service management platform, offers a wide variety of customer service management features that were explained before, such as:

• Case management
• Automatic customer surveys
• Consolidated customer views
• Countless third-party integrations

For more than two decades, Vivantio has been helping clients optimize their service organizations by leveraging a unified service management platform. To find out how Vivantio can help you put these customer service management examples into practice, contact our team today or register for a free demo.

The results are in. Customer service is a major driver of a company’s sales and revenue potential. About 70% of a customer’s journey is based on how well they’re being treated. If you're running a growing company, you can't afford to continue utilizing only manual customer relations like speaking on the phone or through a chat portal.

With customer service management, you can invigorate the growth of your company by improving the way your customers interact with you. This can result in higher retention rates and help your brand become a household name in your industry. 

So, what is customer service management and why exactly is it important for companies to implement. Below, we’ll provide you with all the answers.

What Is Customer Service Management?

At its core, customer service is the act of taking care of a customer's needs. This could be handling service requests, addressing their concerns, or providing a solution to their pain points.

Customer service management is the process of handling customer service requests and inquiries in an automated way. This can be done through various means such as customer support software, live chat, phone support, or email.

Quality customer service management systems will automate most of the manual tasks associated with customer service so that your team can focus on more important tasks.

For example, a typical customer service management system will allow you to:

• Facilitate customer self-help, reducing the burden on the service team for simple tasks
• Optimize service delivery through workflow, business rules and automation
• Create a knowledge base of FAQs that customers can reference
• Assign and route tickets to the appropriate team member
• Monitor performance metrics to identify areas for improvement

Why Your Business Needs Customer Service Management

Customer service management is a critical component of any organization's growth. If you're new to the concept, here is why you should use a customer service management platform for your company.

Are You Customer-Centric or Internally Centric?

Using a customer service management platform promotes correlates into running a customer-centric organization. A customer-centric organization is one that focused on the best interest of the customer. This includes continuously listening to customers and adapting to their demands instead of chasing profits.

On the other hand, internally centric organizations are more interesting in improving their bottom lines than servicing their customers. Let’s use an example. Let’s say you are in a clothing store and approach the rgister with your items.

Instead of greeting you or asking how they could help, the sales associate asks if you would like to opt into one of their upcoming promotions. This is a clear example of a company that bases their customer service model on maximizing profits instead of customer satisfaction. 

An ideal customer service management system will help you keep track of every customer interaction and ensure that they're all positive, allowing you to focus on making your current customers happy. 

The Importance of Customer Service to B2B Organizations

Customer service provided by a CSM platform provides a variety of lucrative benefits for B2B organizations. The first benefit is customer retention. 

It costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. If you're not focusing on improving your company's customer service, you're missing out on a major opportunity to create continuity in your sales pipeline.

Next, quality customer service undoubtedly improves customer satisfaction. This leads to customers being more likely to recommend your products or services to others, which can help you acquire new customers through word-of-mouth marketing.

Happy customers tend to spend more money with the companies to which they're loyal. In fact, 93% of customers are willing to make repeat purchases with companies that offer exceptional customer service.

Customer service can also impact the lifetime value of incoming customers. The lifetime value is the total amount of money that a customer spends with your company over the course of their relationship with you.

Using a customer service management platform can help your business leverage continued service improvement to keep your customers satisfied and coming back for more. Finally, customer service has reputational consequences.

Just one bad customer service experience can lead to the loss of a customer. But that's not all—it can also damage your company's reputation, making it harder to acquire new customers.  Providing quality customer service can help you build a positive reputation that will make it easier to attract new business. 

Learn How Customer Service Management Can Impact Your Business

The importance of customer service management can’t be overstated. If you don’t optimize your company’s customer service, your competitors will take advantage. Using a customer service management platform will ultimately allow you to streamline your customer service operations, boost satisfaction and improve your customer experience. This will have a massive positive impact on your bottom line. 

For more than two decades, Vivantio has been helping clients optimize their service organizations by leveraging a unified service management platform. To find out how Vivantio can help you understand what is customer service management is, contact our team today or register for a free demo.

The value of exceptional customer service is undeniable. People will stay loyal to companies that provide incredible customer service. If you’re running a growing organization, the first thing that needs to be evaluated is your customer service model. 

This is where customer service management (CSM) platforms come into play. These helpful solutions allow companies to use workflows to streamline operations, improve customer satisfaction, and boost brand loyalty. In the B2B space, customer service management platforms can make the greatest difference. 

Why is Customer Service Management Important?

The importance of customer service management comes down to customer-centricity. There are two types of companies: customer centric and internally centric. 

Customer centric companies value their customers and offer solutions that will benefit them, even if it's not in their best interest. Internally centric companies are more focused on making sales rather than meeting demands.

Customer service management platforms help companies embrace internal customer centricity. By streamlining critical customer service operations, organizations can better assist customers and improve satisfaction. Customer service management is also key for the following reasons:

Customer Service Management Heightens Customer Retention

Canceling a service is easy these days. With the click of a button, customers can end their subscription to your product or service unless there is a long term contract involved. To prevent this, you need to give customers a reason to stick around.

Utilizing a customer service management platform makes it easier for customers to get in touch with you and have their complex issues or requests resolved more quickly. As a result, they'll be more likely to continue using your product or service.

Customer Service Management Decreases Costs

The goal of any business is to increase profits while minimizing overhead costs. In the customer service department, this means reducing the time spent on each support case.

A customer service management platform allows agents to find answers to common customer questions quickly. This way, they can resolve support cases rapidly and move on to the next one.

Customer Service Management Platforms Can Improve Company Reputations

People are quick to share their experiences with a company, whether they’re good or bad. Approximately 67% of people will consider leaving an online review based on a positive experience. 

However, 40% of them will leave a bad review after an unsatisfactory experience. If you’re affected, new prospects won’t give your brand a second look. Since consumers perform a lot of research before settling on a business, strong customer testimonials and reputations are essential to continual business success. 

Regardless of the customer experience you provide, your customer base will have something to say about it online. Using a Customer Service Management platform will go a long way in building a positive company public reputation. 

By efficiently handing customer cases and automating accurate responses, companies can use CSMs to elevate their reputation and draw more of their target audience. 

Don’t Leave Room for Competitors

There’s no room for complacency in any industry. If you don’t continuously strive to improve your company, your competitors will quickly take advantage. It is said 89% of companies believe they compete with each other to deliver the best customer experience.

The same is true for customer service. If you don’t optimize your customer service department, your competitors will. They’ll attract your customers with promises of better support and quicker issue resolution. Optimizing your customer service department can be done by:

• Using live chat support to quickly address customer needs
• Providing self-help through customer service portals to allow customers to find answers to their problems without the need to contact the customer service team
• Proactively requesting customer feedback to improve customer service
• Personalizing each customer experience using CSM data
• Exceeding customer expectations with prompt and friendly service

Don't ignore the need to implement a customer service management platform. Your entire business may depend on it.

How CSM Technology Can Help Your Customer Service Team

A customer service management platform is a worthwhile investment for your customer service team. By streamlining important customer service operations,, CSM technology can also provide:

A 360 Holistic View of Every Customer

Keeping tabs on a customer throughout every customer service touchpoint is critical in meeting their needs and ultimately retaining them. This is only possible with a customer service management platform.

With a CSM system, you have all the information you need about a customer in one place. This information includes vital insights from your CRM, sales automation process, DevOps, and relevant financial information. 

Has their contract expired? Is a vital system down? Have they constantly complained about the same service?

With a customer service management platform, you can provide them with the best possible experience by addressing their individual needs, directing them to the right department, and eliminating customer service department silos in the process.

Fully Integrated Knowledge Base

Your customer service team can’t be expected to know the answer to every single customer question. However, they can be expected to know where to find the answer.

With a CSM system, you can provide your team with the knowledge they need to resolve support cases quickly. In addition, by automating common customer questions, you can free up your team's time so they can focus on more complex issues.

Omnichannel Interactions

Your customers should be able to reach you through their preferred channels, whether that’s via a self-help portal, email, phone, social media, or live chat.

A customer service management platform makes it possible for your team to interact with customers through multiple channels. This also includes using a self-help portal. Self-help portals allow customers to interact with your brand to find the answers to important questions. If they can’t find the answer, they can raise a ticket and get the help they need. 

As a result, they can provide the best possible experience, no matter how they choose to get in touch.

Predictive Analysis

A good customer service team is always looking for ways to improve. With a CSM system, you can use predictive analysis to find potential areas of improvement.

By analyzing customer interactions, you can identify patterns and trends. This way, you can prevent issues before they happen and keep every customer interaction positive.

Customer Service Centralization

A customer service management platform provides a centralized hub for all your departments that intersect with customer service, such as DevOps, IT, Finance, and HR. 

By placing tabs on all these interactions. , you can keep track of every customer interaction and make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

In addition, centralization makes it easier for your team to find the information they need. They can quickly resolve support cases and provide the best possible experience with everything in one place.

Insights and Analytics

A CSM system can provide valuable insights and analytics that you can use to improve your customer service. By tracking key performance indicators, such as first contact resolution rate and average handle time, you can identify areas of improvement.

In addition, you can use customer surveys to collect feedback and get a pulse on customer sentiment. This way, you can proactively address any issues and make sure your customers are happy.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Manually, dealing with SLAs can be challenging, especially if each agreement is complex and unique. Using a customer service management solution can help organizations manage complex SLAs, get to customer responses faster, and fix unnecessary issues that can slow down the entire process. 

Learn More About Customer Service Management Platforms

If there were ever a way to automate operations to improve service efficiency, a CSM platform would be the perfect tool. Using a customer service management platform can help B2B organizations ultimately improve customer experiences.

If you’re operating in a competitive market where any slight advantage will prevail, using a CSM can help you elevate your customer experiences and take a competitive advantage. This is where Vivantio comes into play. 

Vivantio leverages a customer service management platform to help companies:

• Consolidate customer views into one central platform
• Automate the business process to improve efficiency and provide faster, better service
• To understand if they are truly providing excellent service through monitoring of SLAs and customer surveys
• Access helpful reports and analytics to improve customer service look for bottlenecks or areas where service can be improved

For more than two decades, Vivantio has been helping clients optimize their service organizations by leveraging a unified service management platform. To find out how Vivantio can help you take advantage of customer service management platforms, contact our team today or register for a free demo.

Join us for this in-depth look in this live demo of the powerful and highly configurable Vivantio service management solution   Hear from our experts as we demonstrate how to get the most out of this award-winning platform and elevate your customer experience. 

See Vivantio In Action 

Now Available On Demand

As part of our DEMO WORKSHOP Series, sign up now to see Vivantio In Action, a live demo on demand from Product Specialist Melissa Faletra and Software Sales Engineer Mark Walker. Discover how to easily configure and quickly enable the many features of the Vivantio solution including:  

• Customizing TICKETING views and working with automation, workflows and routing
• Using our built-in CRM to provide a holistic view of the operations
• Storing unlimited ASSETS in a full CMDB and mapping their relationships
• Providing knowledge-based ARTICLES and videos to help increase efficiency
• Creating custom dashboards and REPORTS to help make informed decisions
• Managing codeless INTEGRATIONS with popular platforms like Azure, Office, Jira and more! 

Plus, the Vivantio platform is backed by ITIL to drive continuous improvement, boost service efficiency and elevate customer satisfaction.  Don't miss out - watch it on demand today! 

The benefits of optimized Customer Service Management are becoming more widely understood every day. Of course, within any given organization, not everyone will recognize the value at the same time—in which case you may be interested in some communications tips we've seen from our clients.

Whether you're a C-level leader looking to rally your teams to investigate and adopt state-of-the-industry methods, or a CS/CX manager who needs to win support and resources from the boardroom, it's essential to have a strategy for communicating your vision and advocating for the action and resources required for success.

If you’re a Senior Leader looking to drive change...

• Work to understand the reasons for current systems and processes—but quickly articulate your vision for the future state of your organization.
• Stress that this effort has the attention of senior leaders, that the organization is counting on them, and that the required support for change is forthcoming.
• Articulate your expectation for the solution, the implementation vendor/partner, and new capabilities you're looking to achieve.
• Provide the appropriate guidance in sharing some of the benefits of Service Optimization (e.g. renewals/repeat business, customer retention, upsell/cross-sell wins, etc.)
• Discuss the KPIs you expect to be tied to Customer Service and share current-state baselines as available. For KPIs that aren’t currently tracked, outline a method and timetable for discovering them.
• Set an agile cadence for work periods, dependencies, and check-ins with the appropriate teams.

If you’re a Customer Service Leader looking to gain executive support...

Find a sympathetic Senior Executive (or two) and prepare these steps: 

• Discuss how some enhanced Customer Service capabilities have been shown to improve critical business outcomes such as renewals/repeat business, customer retention, upsell/cross-sell wins, etc.
• Try to discover what top management’s priorities are for the coming year or quarter and discuss how you think your team could contribute to advancing those goals.
• Frame your discussion around those make-or-break business outcomes that are driven by customer satisfaction. Get people to appreciate the role you’re playing in the organization’s very survival.
• Next, help inspire confidence that—with the right resources and support—you can deliver an optimized service organization built around a proven methodology and supported by technology that will demonstrate significant ROI.

Don't go it alone!

Security concerns continue to be in the news around the world with the White House issuing an executive order earlier this summer about cybersecurity and the European Union proposing a Joint Cyber Unit to respond to the rising number of security incidents.  And the hacking story that won't go away with the "SolarWinds" hackers launching a new global cyberattack at the end of May. 

Now, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t necessarily trust cloud providers.  In fact,  there are many security benefits in working with the right cloud providers and SaaS companies that can leverage the economies of scale  around security far easier and sometimes faster than most companies themselves.  After all, providing SaaS solutions is what they specialize in and have the expertise to ensure their systems are secure.

There is also the driving factor of trust.  Any erosion of their customers' trust would have far reaching effects on their core business. Every vendor's approach to security is an important part of their Information Security Strategy, and to ensure that your service management software system is protected, here are some questions you should ask to make sure your software vendor will keep your company and your customer's data safe.

1. Does the vendor adhere to security best practices? 

Are they ISO27001 certified? This is an international standard that provides a management framework for implementing an Information Security Management System (ISMS) to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of all corporate data. If the vendor is not ISO27001 certified, how can you be certain that their data center partners are?

2. Do they align their Information Security Management System (ISMS) to good standards and best practices, such as:

• ISO27001 or other standards based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)

• The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS)

• The Information Assurance for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (IASME)

• The UK National Cyber Security Centre's Cyber Essentials Plus or Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM)

Each of these organizations offer best practices and standards to assist companies looking to increase their security protocols. 

3. Do the vendors follow the security concerns outlined by the CIA Triad of Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability? 

We're not talking about the Central Intelligence Agency.  This CIA has to do with data. How is it stored, how accurate it is and how it is accessible. 

• Confidentiality: The data needs to be private and remain private. Vendors should ensure only the people who are authorized to view the data have access to it. There are different levels at which this applies. Vendors need to protect their SaaS platform, each of their customer's systems, controls within each customer's system, vendor controls to the SaaS system and the vendors own controls over the information they store to run their business.

• Integrity: The data itself needs to be consistent, accurate and trustworthy. The data must be trusted and nonrepudiation must exist.

• Availability: The data must be available. Having data that is secure, yet inaccessible, is useless. Users need to be able to access data when they need it, so vendors need to be sure that they are resilient, they have built in redundancies and can ensure business continuity.

4. Do the vendors practice what they preach?

This one is pretty simple. 

• Do they run their own business on the principles listed above?

• Do they use the platforms and tools that they expect their customers to rely on to run their business?

• Do they align with your own security policies and procedures?

Bottom line

It's important to find cloud vendors who answer the previous questions in the affirmative. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it's the best way to protect against potential harm from a security breach. Vendors need to build up trust with their customers and prevent them from potential reputation damage.

Ultimately, the vendors need to protect customers from any potential vulnerabilities along the IT supply chain that may expose data or other security risks. They must also address legal or regulatory concerns pertaining to their customers such as GDPR, HIPAA, CPRA and other data protection laws. 

Be an informed consumer and do your due diligence while selecting a software vendor. Ask questions to make sure your organization is protected from potential cybersecurity threats.

Download our whitepaper to learn more about how Vivantio values security and what measures it takes to keep your customer service data protected.

Industries from energy grids to law firms are rapidly waking up to the tangible benefits of amping-up their customer service capabilities—with a focus on evidence-based methodologies. The smartest Industry 4.0 players are realizing that lessons from the IT world provide a ready-made blueprint for Service Optimization.

Leveraging a proven approach to service (ITIL 4)

Over the past three decades, there has been significant work undertaken to systematically identify and analyze best practices for service provision.

Based on the work by the famous efficiency guru W. Edwards Demming, the ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) framework was introduced by the UK Government’s Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (CCTA) nearly 40 years ago— and has been continually revised and updated on an ongoing basis.

This evidence-based evolution has helped develop and refine practices that are relevant and proven effective—not only inside technology environments but well beyond.

In 2019, the latest iteration, ITIL 4, formally and deliberately expanded in focus beyond IT in order to help facilitate the implementation and adoption of agile principles across all types of service organizations—opening up more teams to this fundamental change that enables the kind of value co-creation sought by modern businesses of all description.

Getting started, often begins with a hard look at an organization's progress along the five key elements of Service Optimization. (See figure.)

A faster path to ITIL 4 best practices:  The right Service Management Platform

One of the major challenges that will arise in an ITIL 4 initiative is connecting a large organizations' disparate data systems in order to allow service organizations to provide this new level of transparency and real-time response.

Vivantio addresses this challenge by serving as a unique Unified Service Management Platform that sits atop all of your current systems—integrated with flexible APIs—to quickly and cost-effectively supply the essential connectivity and holistic visibility. This provides service teams with a 360 degree view of all customer interactions from across the business which contains key data points to elevate service and response times.

The good news for any skeptics is that plenty of evidence points to the bottom-line benefits of Service Optimization Solutions. And Vivantio has the track-record and references to substantiate its bold claims for tying-together B2B enterprises for maximum service success.

To learn more or request a live demo, click here.

New service optimization guide underscores need to meet elevated customer expectations.

Vivantio has launched a new guide, "Leveraging Breakthrough Service to Transform Your B2B Enterprise." The comprehensive guide identifies the distinct benefits of centralizing customer service and offers B2B business owners a detailed process for implementing it at their organization, inclusive of proven strategies for overcoming common challenges. 

"The reality is every business is a 'service business' today and it's time that B2B organizations' strategies reflect that," said chief executive officer Greg Rich. "Even traditional companies in industries like healthcare and energy/utilities are rapidly acknowledging their roles in 'co-creating value' with their customers. Business leaders seeking a competitive advantage will need to align their organizations so that customer service plays a central role in all their business activities. This report details how they can go about it effectively and efficiently."

Businesses in today's remote world need to meet the needs of their customers' elevated expectations. This is especially true for B2B companies that maintain a complex web of interwoven, dynamic and long-term relationships between suppliers, vendors, contractors, internal teams and their customers - and often their customers' customers.

Service optimization is the key to achieving business success for B2B organizations.

For any B2B business, service optimization is the key to achieving business success. Service optimization is the ability to glean coherent insight and achieve the most efficient use of processes and information - across all disciplines and teams - to provide real business efficiency and optimal service delivery. For nearly 20 years, Vivantio has been pioneering service optimization and this comprehensive guide showcases how to apply it to the latest evolution of business service.

To learn more or to download your copy of "Leveraging Breakthrough Service to Transform Your B2B Enterprise," click here.

IS A ROCK-SOLID SERVICE STRUCTURE REALLY IDEAL FOR YOUR TEAM?

Within the IT industry, everyone looks to get the most out of their service team. They often look to find concrete solutions to their service management problems. “Should I be running under an ITIL framework or an Agile framework?” “How should I structure the roles and responsibilities of my team members?”

As you reach decisions around these issues, you need to remember the answers are not etched in stone. Effective change management gives your team the ability to pivot to better solutions for internal and external customers. Staying flexible in your service management structure helps your team adapt.

Here are four reasons why operating with a flexible service management structure can help your IT service team:

1. TEAM MEMBERS WILL CHANGE

As you likely experience already, staff turnover is a stark reality of the IT industry. Based on a study by LinkedIn, technology has the highest turnover rate of all work sectors. Within technology, the IT & Services industry has the fourth highest turnover rate at 13%.

Yet, it’s not all gloom and doom. If you hire the right people, you will find leaders who stay on your team. These people will take on more responsibility and help you drive efficiency.

Can your service team handle shifts in roles and responsibilities without interruptions? A flexible service management structure enables your team to adapt to any personnel changes. You also need to make sure the system you use to manage service can adjust to these shifts in your team formation.

2. COMPANY STRUCTURE WILL CHANGE

No matter how long your company history, your business structure will not stay the same, especially considering the recent shift to working remotely. You might create a new position in IT or add more members to your management team. Changes in organizational structure can have a major effect on your service team.

You need to prepare for how these changes will affect your team’s performance. If you don’t update your service, you put both your team’s and your company’s service effectiveness at risk.

With a flexible service management approach, look to track how service interacts with the larger business. Armed with this information, you can tailor your service to maximize efficiency across all departments. This will help with multi-department operational events such as new employee onboarding. It can also help you identify service gaps in the greater company landscape.

3. TECHNOLOGY ALWAYS CHANGES

Your assets are a key part of how you structure your service management. After all, asset management is one of your team’s core functions. But, you can always depend on technology always evolving. Technological innovations not only affect your assets but also your company’s infrastructure.

As technology iterates, your service management strategy needs to account for any asset changes. If you can’t adopt new technology and retire outdated assets, it can lead to serious problems such as critical business data loss.

Flexible service management does not mean your technology change processes should be flexible. But, you need to maintain an iterative process design for services around assets and infrastructure. Utilizing tools that can integrate with new technology will help you to avoid tech debt.

4. INDUSTRY BEST PRACTICE ALWAYS CHANGES

The advancement of technology goes hand in hand with the forward progress of the entire IT industry. Best practices are constantly amended and improved. An example would be the growing standard of self-service portals due to the increasing expectations of the customer. The recent release of ITIL 4 marks a trend to expand IT services to include areas such as DevOps.

A flexible service management approach empowers you to measure and adopt new best practices without disrupting your service. For example, do you think your team would improve under Agile practices? Try to map out your service structure under Agile. With this larger picture, you can appraise this approach and make the right decision.

5. BE FLEXIBLE

Change can be scary. It is natural to feel apprehensive about making changes to your service. You shouldn’t change for the sake of changing, but you don’t want to maintain an antiquated service deliver system. What you can control is how you assess and adapt to change. A flexible approach to service management allows your team to stay effective in a constantly shifting IT landscape.