Take advantage of the opportunities for virtual cooperation between your service units

For better readability, the generic masculine is used in these articles. The designations of persons used in these articles refer to all genders unless otherwise indicated.

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Take advantage of the opportunities for virtual cooperation between your service units

07.04.2021

Are you also confronted with the challenge of running regional/country-specific service units where the synergy effects of cooperation remain unused? Cooperation offers enormous opportunities in terms of mutual support in peak and off-peak times, the joint development of knowledge management and the use of specialised knowledge.

Which measures do we recommend?

Modern technology provides the basis for virtual cooperation between organisations. We recommend examining whether several service units that are physically separated from each other can work more efficiently in your company by using common information systems and communication channels, while at the same time increasing customer orientation.

As a first step, you should “review” and, where possible, “align” service unit processes and their handling beyond regional/country-specific borders. This means standardising processes beyond regional/country borders where possible, while maintaining regional/country-specific specialisation where appropriate. At this point, also consider whether it might be economically advisable to relocate certain services to low-cost locations. As part of the process review, increase your efficiency by examining additional possibilities for both external (e.g. communication channels: ChatBot, live chat, instant messenger) and internal digitisation (e.g. automation of written communication, systems, tools).

It is helpful to establish a common knowledge platform for working on the agreed processes; this can also simply be a Word file on Teams that is shared and continuously developed.

The second step is to make the possibilities of modern technology available to your virtual service team. On the one hand, it is necessary to bundle incoming contact channels (e.g. telephony, emails, chat) via a routing platform (e.g. cloud ACD) to distribute them across regions/countries (e.g. skill-based routing) and to control them. On the other hand, it is indispensable to ensure cross-regional/cross-national system access (e.g. ERP, CRM or ticketing systems).

In a third step, employees must be inspired and comprehensively trained for cross-regional/cross-national cooperation. In this context, also promote the cross-regional/cross-national exchange of individual team members via collaboration tools (e.g. Teams).

Which advantages do you achieve with a virtual service organisation?

By merging rather small, regional service units into a virtual service organisation, central bottlenecks are overcome (e.g. coverage of off-peak hours, extension of opening hours) and synergies are created (e.g. in the area of knowledge). This results in an even more professional service organisation that raises cost-saving potentials, works more efficiently and at the same time contributes to increasing customer satisfaction. In this way, you create new opportunities to realise competitive advantages in a simple way.

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For better readability, the generic masculine is used in these articles. The designations of persons used in these articles refer to all genders unless otherwise indicated.