Customer Service at Technicolor HES

     From the customers’ perspective, the Customer Service Department is the most important organization in Technicolor Home Entertainment Services. It is where they come to place new orders, get help with product configurations, and solve problems. The Customer Service function “links” the customers’ product and service needs to Technicolor’s factories. This linkage is important to understand because it defines the role of the Customer Service Representative as serving the customer and supporting the needs of our factories.

     Our Customer Service organization is unlike the customer service function in most manufacturing companies. While we do record sales order information like most companies, we also:

• Determine the customer’s exact configuration of products.
• Securely acquires the master material necessary for duplication and/or replication.
• Create and load into our company’s information systems:
  • Unique item numbers to describe each product and all of its components.
  • Unique bills of resources (BoRs) that describe what-goes-into-what in the manufacturing process and how the material will flow through a selected factory.
• Create work orders to drive production requirements in any number of our factories.
• Offload production work to satisfy a specific customer’s needs to third party suppliers (some who are coincidentally, direct competitors).
• Insure the customer has the legal right to the media, including video and soundtracks.
• Prepare auditable files that support intellectual property rights compliance requirements.

     As you can see, our Customer Service Department performs many tasks usually performed by engineering, document control, quality assurance and materials functions in most other companies. We do this because we believe that our Customer Service Representatives are closest to our customers and therefore are the most capable to rapidly decipher their unique requirements. Further, because our customers require extremely fast turnaround of orders, there simply is no time for routing item, BoR and work order responsibilities around to other departments.

     All this responsibility ultimately means that if our Customer Service organization errs in its work, there will likely be a very expensive mistake made in our factories and/or in our distribution function. Timely input and accuracy in item numbers, BoRs, sales orders and work orders are the two most important objectives of Customer Service.

Organization

     The Customer Service Department is organized into a number of customer-focused teams. Each team is responsible for a specific customer, with the exception of the Independents team that is responsible for all the smaller customers and independent studios. Generally, each team is organized with an account supervisor (or senior account manager) leading the team. All other team members work together to focus on their specific customer’s needs.

     The account supervisor manages all aspects of the team’s activities with the exception of managing the customer. This responsibility falls to the account director. Thus, the account supervisor manages all Technicolor internal activities with appropriate interface with the customer while the account director focuses on external customer issues such as pricing, contractual terms, delivery parameters, etc. The account supervisor reports to the Customer Service Director who is responsible for all internal customer service activities on all Customer Service teams. The account supervisor does maintain “dotted-line” reporting responsibility to the account director.

Limitations

     The Customer Service function surely is responsible for many things. Determining a customer’s specific order configuration even when the customer doesn’t understand it, determining ship dates, creating work orders and properly documenting the sales order are but a few of the many tasks and responsibilities that fall to the Customer Service Department. There are, however, many tasks that some might think are the responsibility of the Customer Service Department that are in fact the responsibility of others.

     The limitation of the Customer Service Department include:

• CSRs are not Sales people. They do not create demand with the customers. CSRs manage demand after it is received and do everything possible to meet the customer’s needs.
• CSRs do not schedule the Technicolor factories. They provide information to, and use information from, the Scheduling Department to determine where a production activity will occur.
• CSRs do not select offload vendors except for those on the pre-approved list. Additionally, CSRs do not negotiate offload vendor pricing. This is the responsibility of Operations Management.
• CSRs do not chase product masters. They may coordinate the movement of these items but the actual movement is the responsibility of the operations function.

     There are many other limitations and tasks that are the responsibility of the Customer Service function. As time goes on, we will more clearly define them here.

The Customer Service Representative

     Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) are the link between Technicolor’s very demanding customers and the precision of our factories. CSRs do more than enter customer orders into our information system. They also:

• Determine the customer’s exact product requirements.
• Configure a unique customer order that provides exactly what the customer wants.
• Determine when the customer can expect shipment of product and where the product will ship from and to.
• Develop unique identifiers (item numbers) to appropriately describe and archive each component on the customer’s order.

     Thus, the Customer Service Representative is responsible for starting the data flow that ultimately winds its way through our factories and distribution centers.

Rules for CSRs

     CSRs have a difficult job by any standard. It is a job that requires exceptional attention to detail coupled with a high sense of urgency… each and every day. To assist you with understanding the mandatory expectations of your role, we have provided the following list of expectations

1. CSRs must respond to all customer e-mails, voice-mails and other forms of communications from our customers. All of our customers have budgeted large sums of money to properly campaign a movie in their marketplace. Each customer has committed to a specific “street date” for the release and/or distribution of a title. If they miss their street date, they can and often are responsible for huge penalty costs imposed by their customers. CSRs must never allow our lack of communication to be our customer’s reason for missing a street date.
2. All communication with customers must be recorded in the appropriate logs. If and when a problem develops with a customer and culpability of a missed date is to be properly determined, these logs will provide ample evidence of our actions.
3. All customer orders received by an account team must be processed according to the following guidelines:
   1. Simple orders: If received before 2:00 pm, must be processed the same day.
   2. Complex orders: If received by 2:00 pm, must be processed by 5:00 pm the following day.
   If you cannot process an order within these guidelines, you must notify your account manager as soon as possible so additional resources can be provided to you. Don’t wait until the end of the day to notify your account manager. Estimate your day’s remaining work at 12:00 noon each day and tell your account manager how much additional resources you will need to accomplish all your work by 5:00 pm.
4. When a CSR is absent, the team’s account manager will determine who is the covering CSR and will assign that CSR to the team.
5. Respond to BoR issues within 24 hours.
6. Self-audit.
7. Enter customer complaints daily and follow up with customers within 24 hours.
8. Create shippers daily.
9. Issue credits within 48 hours of receipt.
10. Respond to Non-Conformance Reports (NCRs) and other customer complaints within 48 hours.

     These basic rules are designed to provide overall guidance and to help CSRs understand their basic operating parameters. If you believe you cannot work under these rules, you probably need to work in another function!

Daily Priorities

     To be a Customer Service Representative is to be a juggler of many activities and many responsibilities. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine the sequence of activities to be performed on any specific day. Sometimes, priorities can get distorted and confused simply because there are more tasks to accomplish in a given week then there is available time.

     The following table is presented as a guideline for how you should spend your time. When the multitude of activities and tasks begins to confuse your priorities, review this list.

     We do not expect any Customer Service team to ever run out of work or activities to perform in support of customers. We do expect Customer Service-focused team members however to work with these priorities in mind.

Account Management Teams

     The Customer Service Department is organized into a series of teams focused around customers. Each team is responsible for servicing all of their specific customers’ requirements for CDs, DVDs, and VHS cassettes from mastering to packaging. Even though Customer Service professionals do not perform actual manufacturing and packaging duties, the quality of those activities begins with the account team. Record a wrong ship-to address on a sales order and the customer’s customer (think WalMart here) could miss a street date thereby creating a huge liability for Technicolor. Specify the wrong packaging notes on a work order and Technicolor could incur huge rework costs. Use incorrect INCO terms and Technicolor could end up bearing the brunt of the shipping costs. There are so many issues to remember, know, and do when entering a customer order that a team structure is the only way to organize to complete the work in the time our customers require.

     The Customer Service account teams are responsible for entering the orders, insuring the order integrity, verifying the customer’s rights to duplicate copyrighted material and creating the work orders that start the factory on their jobs. There is simply too much to do (accurately) that a team structure is necessary to spread the work and complete all of it on time.

     The Technicolor Customer account teams include:

• Disney
• DreamWorks
• Microsoft
• Paramount
• Universal
• Warner Home Video
• Independent Studios

     Each of these teams’ processes orders “mostly” the same way. There are some minor variations from the “uniform flow” that are defined by each team’s account supervisor and the Customer Service Director.

CSR Training

     The job of a Customer Service Representative is very complex and challenging. To help our new CSRs get up to speed and our experienced personnel stay abreast, there is a series of tutorials available that covers important procedures and operational details. All CSRs should review this material regularly to ensure that they stay up to date on changes.

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