Closer to our Customers, Providing Better Services
25/04/2011
By Raúl Echeberría *
During our latest strategic planning process we decided that one of our main lines of work would be the strengthening of LACNIC’s customer-orientation approach.
Although LACNIC is a membership-based, non-profit organization mandated by its members, these members receive services from LACNIC and are therefore also our customers.
Strengthening customer orientation means a greater focus on the needs of the organizations receiving our services and being better prepared to satisfy their expectations.
Among others, this involves sharing a common view of the customer throughout the organization and understanding that the same customers who request IP addresses and pay their membership fees attend LACNIC meetings and vote. Regardless of the channel through which they come into contact with LACNIC, they must be served in the same way, based on a comprehensive perspective of their relationship with LACNIC.
Since last year we have already carried out several activities relating to the new focus within our organizational culture: internal customer orientation workshops, training, software development; we are also currently in the process of creating a new department (Clients Department) that will play a key role in the promotion of this new, comprehensive approach to customer relations.
More Services. Consistent with this change in our organizational culture, we are simultaneously conducting more activities with our members such as, for example, IPv6 workshops for network operators and workshops on other topics of interest around the region. We have also launched new services such as a software tool for IP address administration (SARA) and a resource certification service (RPKI).
We are making great efforts to be closer to our customers and steering the entire organization in this direction, as we trust that it is one of the roads we must travel in order for LACNIC to continue to be an organization that summarizes the collective efforts of the regional Internet community, in benefit of the global Internet community.
*Raúl Echeberría, LACNIC Executive Director