Are there any customers for whom support is extraordinarily high or low?
Let’s face it, sometimes the support costs for a group of people catches you off guard. When there is more support required than you expected, you know how to react. Most of the time you can develop a clear path of corrective action. However, we often ignore the areas where customer support costs are extraordinarily low. Following the stream of thought in these areas can lead you to disenfranchised employees or groups that have high turnover.
Other times, low service costs may indicate a problem with change management or training and communications. Perhaps people don’t know how to utilize services because the communications did not culturally match the norms of a particular business unit.
Let’s take the other extreme. Let’s say you find a business unit with very low costs and eventually discover that the HR Business Partners put into place have been highly effective and successful. Maybe it’s time to find out why the HR Business Partners in that business unit have been more effective than other parts of the business.
As always, when evaluating those small areas where a few people use process and technology differently, figure out if these are real opportunities or simply outliers from the norm. If a global change is warranted, don’t forget the change management process to run concurrently with the implementation.
