Customer Account Management Process

One of the most important processes in a company is its customer account management process (CAM).

What does this process entail?

Of course it somewhat depends on what you are selling, i.e. services vs. products. But overall, it means the process from:

- the targeting and initial sale of a customer , to
- the providing of the service and/or product, to
- the billing and finally
- repeating that process successfully with the same customer (while also trying to sell-in other products or services

My experience with learning, developing and running CAM processes are very extensive. I was inundated with marketing/customer-focused training while at Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern, then onto developing specific CAM projects for clients and PwC itself while at PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting and then finally implementing CAM processes while at the last two companies I ran.

As most know, it is easier (i.e. less costly) to sell more services to an established customer than it is to sell a new service to a new client. So it is in the best interests of your company to have a solid CAM process.

The process usually goes across many departments and that's where the difficulty/opportunity lies. For the company that has a clearly defined CAM process, it can be one of the most important competitive edges.

What does a good CAM process look like?

First and foremost, a good CAM process has to do with managing hand-offs within the company's departments. This needs to be seamless to the customer.

Secondly, it has to do with maintaining detailed information about the customer's interactions with your company (both the good and bad interactions), so that the whole process can be consistently improved (from the customer's standpoint).

How do you develop the process and work the hand-offs?

The first step is to clearly lay out the current (or proposed) process that is used for new (and established) customers.

For example, once the sales group successfully sells a customer for the first time (i.e. gets the sales order, obtains the signed contracted, customer joins the company's website, etc), how does the group responsible for providing the service/product discover the new client.

Is the customer handed over to a different department (i.e. Account management department) once the initial sale is done, for on-going sales/servicing or is the sales department still responsible for the next sale?

Once the service/product is provided, how is the customer billed.

How does the sales person (or the account manager) know when to return to the customer for the next order/servicing?

And as stated before, if the customer provides feedback, how is that communicated to those in the process?

In my last company, we had a clear delineation of responsibility between the groups. Once the sales person knew that the customer had signed the on-line contract (an email was automatically sent to the sales department), then the sales person was responsibility for Day One training. Once that training was completed, the customer was handed off to the account management team and assigned a specific account manager. Finance and accounting were also informed at this point to set up the billing.

The account management team then had a 90-day schedule for helping a new customer. This entailed periodic training and meetings/calls to determine the customer's reactions to the service provided.

The sales person was encouraged to sell other services to the customer after a month's time frame. All information about the customer was kept within the internally developed system, so that the sales people could see if there had been any issues and how they were resolved.

Finally, the metrics were set up so that the sales group was directly rewarded for customers who did not cancel services. Therefore they worked very closely with the account management team when handing off customers. They also made sure to only sell services that they knew the customer needed/wanted. Turnover was very low.

A good CAM process leads to a team-approach that keeps the customer happy - and buying!

Mergers & Acquisitions - Part II - Integration

Now that the deal is closing and you haven't slept in a while, believe it or not, the actual difficult part begins - the integration.

Having been responsible for integrating two purchased companies into a platform company, I can provide some clear do's and don'ts to help you prepare for this stage of the merger/acquisition activitythe .

1) MOST IMPORTANT - Have a clear, detailed workplan for all departments and the overall company. This plan should be created during the negotiation stage. It should be finalized at least a few weeks before the actual closing day. It should tie very closely with the financial model that the acquisition is based upon (more on that below).

The workplan should detail out the following areas:

By department:
- human resource issues
- communication plan within the dept
- system decisions within dept (if appropriate)
- policy and procedure changes (short-term and long-term)

Overall company:
- human resource issues
- change in hr policies, benefits
- firings/layoffs
- job responsibility changes/ reporting to changes
- communication plan
- internal communications
- external communications to customers
- external communications to vendors
- press releases, etc
- policy, process and procedure changes
- system integration(s)

2) Day 1 - meet with the company, make the official announcement, explain the reasons/benefits for the acquisition, provide details of the overall integration workplan

3) Make sure that your managers (especially sales and operations) keep their focus on the current customer base

4) Consistently communicate through the whole integration process with all your stakeholders

5) Compare your financial model that was developed for the proposed acquisition with actual financial results. Look for deviations and correct them as quickly as possible. This financial model should be detailed down to line items in the profit & loss (expected increases/decreases) and should be tied to a human resource plan of employees by department.

6) Have events (lunches, after-work social events, etc) as early as possible between people from both companies

Now some don'ts (or things to avoid if possible)

1) Don't automatically take the less expensive/less extensive benefits and provide those to the company.

Determine which company has the better benefits.

If it is the acquiring company, then determine the costs to 'upgrade' the benefits of the acquired company's employees. (This will go along way to building trust and positive attitudes to the overall change.)

If it is the acquired company, determine the impact to those employees of the acquired company if their benefits are scaled back. Make some type of monetary gesture if this path is followed.

2) Don't forget the owner(s)/senior management of the acquired company

Make sure you have a detailed understanding (and employee/consulting contracts) with the owner(s)/senior management of the acquired company. Though it might be expected that they will not be long-term employees of the new combined company, remember they have usually a large amount of goodwill with the employees and customers and knowledge of the inner workings of the acquired company. Make it worth it for those people to stick around for at least the integration. You might find that they are perfect for other positions within the new, larger organization.

3) Don't forget the systems. Make sure you know how bills are going out to all your customers. Make sure you know how all your financials are going to roll up into one group of reports. Finally, make sure you know who is paying bills across both companies.

4) Think about logos and company letterhead. How soon you should be using a standard logo vs. a DBA (doing business as).