Visibility Across Teams: Creating a Transparent Jewelry Repair Workflow
Transparency is paramount when it comes to efficiently completing jewelry repair orders. Not only does open communication help your team perform well, but it also helps make sure your customers end up satisfied. Jewelry repairs require a lot of moving parts, and communicating effectively helps you prevent mistakes, delays, and frustration for everyone. In this article, we’ll explore how to promote visibility and transparency so your team can perform its absolute best.
Why is Communication and Transparency So Important?
Communication and transparency help ensure that your jewelry repair team stays united. When everyone’s on the same page, your operations run much more smoothly. Your customer service team, jewelers, repair managers, and vendors should all have the same understanding of repair order needs, including level of urgency and any notable issues. For example, if your customer service team provides an expected timeline for your customer, but your repair fulfillment provider isn’t aware of the deadline, you could end up with a late order, an unhappy customer, and a bad review. Communicating effectively can prevent these types of avoidable mistakes, and can help your business run like a well-oiled machine.
5 Ways to Promote Internal Visibility
How can your team and vendors communicate with excellent clarity and transparency? Here are five different strategies to utilize:
#1: Centralized systems and accessible databases
Creating a centralized database that each of your team members can access is key. This ensures that everyone can stay up to date with the latest information as soon as it's available. Customer addresses and payment information, before and after photos, and order notes, for instance, should be saved in one location where all your team members can see them in real time. Spreadsheets are a fine place to start depending on the size of your operation, but you’ll probably want to find a dedicated software platform that can streamline your business as you grow. Be sure to consider features like order management, live communication tools, and a POS system.
#2: Clear processes and protocols
Implementing clear processes and protocols ensures that even when your team can’t communicate face-to-face or in real time, everyone is following the same set of rules. Having a well-established routine in place can help prevent confusion and ensure consistency. When it comes to basic processes like order intake and assigning specific repair work, the more simplified and streamlined your system, the better. Having a clear operating procedure for every routine situation can help reduce back and forth over everyday tasks and leave room for your team to work through more specific problems that arise.
#3: An environment that welcomes open discussion
Building a culture of openness can make your team feel more connected and more comfortable communicating about difficult issues. Communication isn’t always easy; sometimes your team will have disagreements or different perspectives. But fostering an environment that welcomes open, honest discussion helps your team clear up problems early and often. Issues can multiply when people hesitate to address them. To encourage proactive discussion, be sure to ask questions often that demonstrate you value your team’s opinions. Modeling this type of communication from the top down will encourage employees to support each other that way even when you’re not in the room.
#4: Provide cross-training opportunities
Providing your employees with cross-training opportunities can help ensure that everyone is collaborating efficiently. When your team members are aware of the methods, responsibilities, and routines that their coworkers employ across departments, they’ll develop a deeper understanding of the full picture of your operations. This way, they’re more likely to provide and ask for information in the most efficient way. Knowing what their colleagues do each day, even at a basic level, can improve the flow of communication and keep everyone on track. Not to mention that providing cross-training opportunities has lots of other benefits — if someone’s out sick, for example, getting coverage is a lot simpler when other team members can jump in to support.
#5: Collaboration tools to connect teams
Implementing tools that help your team collaborate and connect in real time takes a lot of the heavy lifting out of communicating. Close communication about every step of the order process can prevent a lot of errors; it takes a lot more time and energy to manually pass along notes or run down the bench to provide new updates, but sending a quick note on a tech tool takes away the hassle of tracking down coworkers and eliminates the burden of a mental to-do list. Software that keeps order notes and updates organized is even better; team communications are right there in the same place as your order details, customer history, and even materials lists, so nothing gets lost in the sauce.
If you’re looking for software that organizes your repair orders and improves your team’s communication, look no further than Reshyne. Our all-in-one, cloud-based platform makes it easy to manage orders across several departments, even including vendors and outsourced teams. We developed our easy-to-use software specifically for jewelry teams, so every function caters to your unique business needs. Schedule a demo today to see how Reshyne can improve your team’s communication and elevate your jewelry brand.
