Exceptional Customer Service Drives Project Success – JMP Solutions
August 7, 2018
If you keep customer service in focus all the time, you will not only meet your customers’ business objectives, but also drive project success.
Large industrial automation capital expense projects are complex and can expand outside of the four walls of a facility and across an enterprise. Justifying these projects, defining success metrics, and executing large projects can be riddled with pressure and fear of being late and over budget. This is especially difficult if your System Integrator is not helping you define desired business outcomes and what “success” really means to you and your company.
How is your System Integrator (including the hardware manufacturers who provide services) measuring their project and customer success? Can they show you a proven track record of success for the last 1,000 or 2,000 projects across multiple industries from multiple Fortune 1000 companies? Are customer surveys published on their website for all to see and review? If not, why is that? Could it be because consistent and repeatable customer satisfaction is hard to achieve and maintain?
Realistically, many industrial automation projects do not get funded simply because engineers do not know how to “speak finance,” quantify the business value and demonstrate what the success of an industrial automation project can bring to their business – including top line or bottom line results. Internal Rate of Return, Net Present Value, Hurdles Rate and Payback Period are simple formulas used to justify projects and should be part of the discussions before, during, and after a project is executed. Your System Integrator should also be helping you link your business outcomes with the justification of the project. If you are only getting detailed technical specifications and designs from your Systems Integrator, you are only getting part of what is needed to get your project through the hurdles of your annual budgeting process.
At JMP, we have a four-step process to drive customer success:
- We work with our customers to define tangible business outcomes like reduced cost, increased yield, and improved safety.
- We sit down with our customers and help their engineers financially justify the project in terms of Internal Rate of Return and Net Present Value.
- We then apply our 30 years of Operational Discipline and Execution Methodologies to ensure the project is executed seamlessly, start to finish.
- Once the project is complete, we measure the success of the project by asking one simple question: How likely is it that you would recommend our service to a friend or colleague?
When business outcomes are matched with project justification and consistent project execution – customer success is inevitable. To JMP, that’s keeping customer success in focus.
