A "super" customer support department made up of Credit, Customer Service, and other related functions is gaining hot-topic status in the business press. Certainly there are some persuasive arguments for the concept. But this veteran California woman isn't buying them.

"I know it has been more than 30 years since I attended college," admits Credit Manager Margaret Spencer of CaliSem Laboratories (Garden Grove Cal.). "But I have a strong recollection from my economics courses that division of labor and specialization tended to improve productivity, shorten cycle times, and reduce waste. From what I can tell, this "super" department concept discourages rather than encourages specialization."

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Credit & Collection Manager's Letter, which Credit Today purchased in 2006.

She notes that the goals of the so-called super department include:

• Offering customers with concerns or complaints or who want to place an order. One telephone number to call to reach a person that can take care of them immediately. In theory, Super department personnel would handle billing errors, shipping errors, return merchandise authorizations, and the same department would accept new orders, amend orders, reschedule orders, or cancel orders.

• Affording each of the members of the "super" group the opportunity to cross train in other functional areas (e.g., order entry personnel would learn how to process return merchandise authorizations]. This cross-functional training would reduce boredom, would make each worker more well rounded, and therefore more valuable to the company. Also, having cross trained, cross-functional teams handling the same group of accounts would reduce the

  disruption when an employee is ill, on vacation, resigns or is terminated.

This is accomplished (in theory) by assigning a core group of employees to a specific list of customers in a specific territory so that this group of employees will get to know the salespeople and the customers in the territory, and by doing so will provide superior customer support.

However, critics of the super department concept argue that specialization is the key to productivity improvement. In particular, critics such as Spencer argue that there is simply too much information for each employee in a super group to absorb to be good at every aspect of a combined credit, collection, cash application, order entry, help desk, and RMA approval desk.

"If you become an expert in two or three different functional areas, you'll always be busy and you'll always be in demand," she says. "If you try to become an expert in too many areas, you'll either be confused or confusing."

She points out that the two most important steps before a major reorganization, such as creating the super customer support department, are:

• Understanding what needs you intend to satisfy by making the change, and then,

• Being certain that the change you are planning to make will satisfy those needs.

"The stated purpose of the super department is to satisfy customers' need for "one-stop shopping," she says. "Simple enough, except for the possibility that that customers may or may not care about one-stop shopping." So before making this radical change to satisfy an unfulfilled need, she continues, it would be a good idea to ask customers some specific questions to determine what their needs are, including:

• Are you unhappy with the current level of customer service you received from us?

• What specifically are you unhappy about?

• What specific problems have you experienced?

• Were you dissatisfied with the service you received or the answer you were given or both?

• What do you think we should have done differently?

• Did your dissatisfaction cost us business?

• How much business did we lose?

• What changes would you like to see made?

"Customer surveys often contain surprises," she notes. "You may find out customers with problems get transferred from department to department like a hot potato, and because no one wants to take responsibility for solving their problem they are frustrated and you are losing repeat business. If this is the case, the idea of creating a customer support department concept may have merit.

"You are likely to find out that your customers employ specialists. For example, you might learn that (a) only the customer's buyer calls to place orders, (b) only the customer's technical support rep calls your help desk for technical information; and (c) only the customer's warehouse manager calls for authorization to return defective merchandise stockpiled in the customer's warehouse. And, if you surveyed the buyer, the tech support rep and the warehouse manager you might learn that none of them care that each of them has a different point of contact within your company. And if this were true, then reorganizing the company to provide one point of contact would have no effect on customer satisfaction.

What are the customer's needs? According to Spencer, almost all customers are satisfied if they receive "a high quality product, at a low price, delivered promptly and in good condition--and problems with product, price and delivery are not going to be solved by eliminating the credit department and having one point of contact," She adds, "Having one point of contact is not going to make any customer happy unless the contact person has the ability, the authority and the autonomy to do whatever it takes, whatever it costs, to make the customer happy. It is unlikely that any company is going to delegate this much power to one employee or to one customer support team."

Editor's Note: The above article originally appeared in the Credit & Collection Manager's Letter, a newsletter purchased by Credit Today in 2006. This article originally appeared prior to 2000.