Day 30: Aftercare for your IWMS

One of the most underestimated aspects of IWMS implementation projects is the aftercare for your IWMS and staff. Although aftercare is quite common within Sales or the Medical domain, in implementation projects it is not. Therefore today you are going to focus on aftercare.

Today’s teaching

There are a lot of definitions of aftercare:

Follow-up care provided after a medical procedure or treatment program.
Care provided to children after school, especially in an organized setting.

In this post we apply the first definitions to our workplace management domain. Aftercare has to do with the follow-up care after an IWMS implementation.

As aftercare is not quite common in implementation projects you should change focus. The best way to do this is to think like sales reps. Try considering every employee as your customer.

Within your organization you can identify different types of customers. These different customers require different aftercare approaches.

A-list Customers

Customers that are on your A-list, bring in the most revenue. In your IWMS, your A-list contains the daily users of your IWMS. These people are in most cases depending on the IWMS to fulfill their daily tasks. Your A-List includes:

Service Desk Employees
FM/RE Department Employees

All of these groups need specialized aftercare. Working with a system and integrating that in the customers’ routines takes time. Aftercare is the only solution.

I have come across quite a few implementations that were not as successful as they could have been because of the fact that no aftercare program was in place. Although the employees were trained and task based support was available, problems kept arising because there was no aftercare.

For these customers the aftercare should include:

Identify additional training needs
Monthly Interviews to identify problems
Periodical User group meetings
Task Assistance on the job

Most important is that customers want to be special and appreciated. This is exactly the same for these employees. By listening to them you acknowledge their importance. These employees are the best sponsor of your IWMS in the organization. Giving special attention to your customers will pay off.

B-list Customers

The B-list customers are not solely depending on the IWMS for their daily routines, but rely on the functionality in the IWMS to support their daily tasks. These customers include:

Space Managers
Move Managers
Maintenance Staff
Management Support
Lease Administrators

Aftercare for these customers should be focused on identifying problems that occur in working with the IWMS. I recommend planning meetings once a month with these users. It allows you to identify possible improvements for your IWMS.

C-list Customers

The C-list customers are those users who use the IWMS occasionally and do not rely on the IWMS for their daily work. The C-list customers include

Managers
Employees that occasionally request services
Non FM/RE Staff

Aftercare for your C-list customers doesn’t need to as intensive as your A-List customers. The format should also be different. I recommend you to set up:

Customer Satisfaction Surveys
Periodical Polls

Aftercare can really help you identifying problems and improvement possibilities and therefore should be part of your implementation evaluation project.