Is Your Back Office Service Management System Fast Becoming A Pet Elephant?

The Elephant Analogy for Service Management Systems

Did you know that a fully-grown elephant is capable of, um, releasing 300 pounds of “excess baggage” every day? I can’t even imagine the work it took to find that out, or even the scale that may have been used! Apart from the awful visual that may be in your head right now, why is an elephant an intriguing analogy when we consider the day-to-day running of your business and your service management system? This is because everything that grows to be large and uncontrollable begins as something small and manageable. Let me explain.

The Growth of Service Businesses: From Small to Unmanageable

Before elephants become 12,000-pound animals, they are only about 200 pounds at birth. You could be mistaken when looking at an adorable baby elephant and wanting one for yourself, but then it grows, and it grows… One day you look up and there you have a full-grown animal that is difficult to manage, and in order to create that much waste, it eats A LOT.

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How Service Business Growth Mirrors the Elephant’s Size

Delivering an efficient and modern service experience to your customers has followed a similar pattern. When you start out with one or two technicians and a handful of customers, scheduling maintenance, invoicing, accounting, and sales were all manageable tasks. Your growth and success meant that you added more customers, contracts, and service and admin staff. Most businesses started out using a variety of systems to manage those tasks. Typically, these systems include QuickBooks for accounting, Act! for managing sales, spreadsheets, and other services, and off-the-shelf scheduling software for managing the activities of the service technicians. Often there is an enormous amount of paperwork that goes with the business. As you continue to grow, the time it takes to keep all of these systems running consumes hours of administration time.

How Customer Expectations Have Changed with Growth

Compounding issues is that customers have become accustomed to a more automated interaction with their business partners. It may sound like an unfair comparison, but when you buy a product from Amazon, you have instant access to information, pricing, past orders, shipping details, and account details, among the most obvious. While Amazon may set the benchmark for customer experience, an increasing number of clients experience frustration when they cannot instantly access the information they require. When compared to the likes of Amazon, workflows that necessitate customers calling for information like calibration certificate details, details from the last service or maintenance call, equipment details, or even a billing inquiry are now perceived as outdated.

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The Misconception of Efficiency in Growing Service Businesses

A common misconception with running a service business is that these items become more efficient as you grow and scale. In reality, they become less efficient. Adding service technicians, sales people, and back-office administrators leads to manager and staff turnover, ultimately requiring employees to “learn” an undocumented process. Customer calls may require information that the receptionist cannot provide. They then typically go about interrupting the work of other employees to gather information.

How Amazon Revolutionized Customer Service

Amazon did not aim to become the industry leader in customer service. They simply wanted to allow customers to “self-service” their account information and allow their employees to focus on their day-to-day work, whether that is sales, service maintenance, or accounting.

How to Handle Your Business’s “Elephant” with Software

Many companies have begun to recognize that these various systems are impeding their ability to provide customer service. The elephant has fully grown, and it’s demanding your attention.

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The Benefits of Using Miracle Service Management Software

Miracle Service is a service management software system that helps automate your service technician scheduling and call management, sales activity, certificate management, meter billing, and accounting integration. Our easy-to-use platform lets customers get information and employees focus on their work, improving efficiency. In short, we take care of your elephant.