Why The Credit Department is a Critical Area of Customer Support and Steps to Take to Improve Customer Satisfacton

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"The second person a customer will have contact with after the salesperson is usually someone from the credit department," says one senior credit manager. "How this contact is handled can affect a customer's perception of the entire organization, either positively or negatively. That's why it's so important to recognize the credit department as a critical area of customer contact within your company. Make sure your people are making the most out of every customer contact." Here are some of his ideas for improving customer satisfaction:

Know your customer--inside and out. "Identifying all the customers of a business process such as credit, both internal and external, is the first step in learning what you can do for them," he says. Internal customers might include your sales and marketing departments and your manufacturing locations. External customers are the purchasers of your products and/or services.

Define 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," he says.

Learn the process. Another way the credit department can boost customer satisfaction is to identify the steps in the credit approval process that need to be improved or eliminated. "Flowcharting a process will help you identify where the bottlenecks are and where work may be currently performed that does not add value," he says. "This will allow you to redesign those processes so that you can better meet the needs of all your customers."

Set 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."

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Meet and exceed your customer's 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," he says. "Ask for feedback to see if you are meeting their needs and ask 'How can we do it better?' more often."

Create 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.

Be 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.

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.