"Identifying all the customers, both internal and external, of a business process such as Credit, is the first step in learning what you can do to deliver better service," says a Wisconsin credit manager. "Internal customers might include your sales and marketing departments and your manufacturing locations. External customers are the purchasers of your products and/or services." Once all customers are identified, he recommends . . .

1. Defining customer needs. "Find out which products and support services your customers view as value-added, and provide these items consistently. Of course, what's important to one customer, or group of customers, may not necessarily be important to another. You have to be a little flexible. It's also important to define a customer's minimum expectations." The key here is to think like a business-person, rather than strictly from a credit perspective.

2. Setting some time-based goals. "See if you can determine the average amount of time it takes your company to process an order through credit after the order has been received. If the process is not automated, and takes too long relative to the amount of work that actually needs to be done, there is probably an opportunity for improvement." (Editor's note: For more on this, please see the results of our recent benchmarking survey on Order Approval Parameters and Processing)

3. Meeting and exceeding your customers' expectations every time. "I think it's important to understand the difference between what you can do to meet a customer's minimum expectations and what you must do to exceed them. Ask for feedback to see if you are meeting their needs and ask 'How can we do it better?' more often."

4. Creating a vision for yourself of how you can add value to your company's products and services. This vision should include making decisions and taking actions that are in the best interest of the organization, both short-and long-term. Put this vision in writing, along with a mission statement on how to provide customer satisfaction. Doing so will help sharpen your focus.

5. Being open-minded. "Credit management should be seen as an asset, rather than an obstacle, to the overall successful distribution of your company's products or services. This can be challenging when you're trying to collect a large, past-due receivable and the same customer wants to place a sizable new order with your company. It's important to be comfortable enough to take reasonable risks in the development of new and existing customer account relationships. If you look at your external customers as strategic partners to your business--and treat them accordingly--you'll be on the way to developing and maintaining profitable relationships for the long haul.