Customer-facing teams confront unique challenges, often unbeknownst amongst our internal supported teams. Successfully addressing customer needs requires a tenacity for closing tasks in a fluid environment often operating with loosely defined processes. Understanding the backbone of our process and preemptively adjusting as needed, leverages the system’s strengths while increasing the functionality to meet new demands.
Engineering sales management exposes gaps in the current process, with the innovative combination of existing material or introduction of new treatment methods to achieve an altered finished product, for example. Addressing the process gaps initially, minimizes potential delays and misprocessing due to confusion and unfamiliarity down the line.
It is essential that the current process is expanded to accommodate the new business so that customer facing teams share in the positivity of growth experience. Equipping the team with direction for processing, softens the negative impact of change and facilitates individual job satisfaction.
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Corissa Balcarcel The author works in space and aerospace industries managing engineering quality and innovative process teams driving efficiencies and customer satisfaction. Linkedin profile |
A common template is not shared by customers of their contracts or specifications, which requires the team to intake information from a diverse and inconsistent feed. A purchase order may be one page or 30, depending on the inclusion of applicable terms and conditions and quality clauses, for example.
Industry trends are pushing customer applied improvements; triggering an ever increasing inclusion of more details and tighter restrictions that must be negotiated in contract review. Evolving checklists maximize accuracy and completeness for translating into standard internal documents, but are not exhaustive as new requirements emerge.
Customer objectives are not always clearly defined, and are sometimes in error. A bit of detective work as a business analyst is required to ensure the objective has been accurately captured and flowed down to internal teams, and helpful is the knowledge of current projects and new directions.
Description references and part numbers are seldom identical between supplier and customer, requiring a search for conflicts to resolve, rather than exact matches.
Being the conduit of communication between customer and internal teams requires intuitive intelligence and care, as the task is open ended and success is not always easily determined. Capturing the ‘voice of the customer’ and relating it back to internal teams requires skills that exceed a standard operation procedure.
Translating the feedback in a language that is embraced by the receiving teams fosters a positive experience with understood expectations; overcoming language and cultural differences, if present.
Equally important is the ability to convey technical information to audiences varying in familiarity and knowledge.
Simply parroting communications between parties is insufficient in building strong relationships; instead it must be filtered through a lense shaped by business trends, forecasts and experience.
