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By Bruce McCracken     Feedback The distance between the needs and desires of the customer versus the internal service level performance metrics of the company are illustrated clearly in the figures below. Indeed, benchmarks may actually be graffiti carved into the process by disgruntled frustrated customers that may choose to resolve the issue by taking their business elsewhere in the future where their needs can be met on their terms.

Does your company have established service levels for every customer communication channel?

Choice	Number Of Responses	Percent	Graph
Yes	50	64.9%
No	27	35.1%
Total Responses:	77	100%
Source: CRMindustry.com/Supportindustry.com

Does your company conduct customer satisfaction and ease of use surveys for your web site?

Choice	Number Of Responses	Percent	Graph
Yes	35	45.5%
No	42	54.5%
Total Responses:	77	100%
Source: CRMindustry.com/Supportindustry.com

Positioning for Profits
Upper level management is recognizing that more effective planning for strategic initiatives is required at top levels of the enterprise to close the gap between an increasingly demanding sophisticated customer and often disjointed business practices.

Business reporting tools to integrate the view of the business processes are becoming more important to steer the corporate ship out of the fog that can enable strategic planning. Implementation capabilities are looming on the horizon in a cost effective, timely, and relatively painless fashion through technological advances leading to enhanced business intelligence (BI). Called a dashboard by some, the customized reports tie information together from varied sources.

John Hagerty, vice president, AMR Research, elaborates on the emerging use of dashboards. "A lot of folks have created a management dashboard or scorecard. The number one area is in sales and marketing. The concept of pulling information in from any type of SFA or CRM system, in general, is one of key things that people do around performance management. They have to have that top line view to establish the marching orders for the organization."

In a March 2003 report, an AMR Research survey revealed that, "More than 50 percent of responding companies are planning to implement scorecards and/or dashboards in the near term." Further, 14.3 percent of the respondents cited customer service as a dashboard and scorecard preference.

This article was originally published on March 27, 2003

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