I often get the question, what do you do for living? Or what is your job about? I admit the answer is not always as straightforward as I would like and I find myself looking for words to explain what I do exactly.

Perhaps, it is easier to explain if you are a developer, for example, that your job consists in coding to build and create software or applications, or in the case of financial controllers, you handle financial planning and analysis, forecasting, and budgeting, but what does a Services Delivery Manager do?

The term Service Delivery Manager describes the person responsible for ensuring services are being seamlessly delivered to the clients of an organization. They oversee a variety of tasks, such as leading project teams, rectifying reliability issues, monitoring progress, tracking KPIs, and managing budgets. They play a vital role in boosting the user experience by ensuring the smooth delivery of top-notch services that meet and exceed customer demands.

What does it mean?

There are a lot of day-to-day activities involved in the role of Service Delivery Manager, from reviewing progress to communicating with stakeholders, planning, scheduling, and reviewing budgets and resources. Every Delivery Manager is different and needs to balance the needs of the teams while focusing on delivering value.

Unfortunately, there is no manual or guideline to succeed as a Delivery Manager, but there are principles, frameworks, and elements that can help you in the path.

Here are four key activities that Service Delivery Managers do to co-create and add value to the service.

‘’Hearing is listening to what is said. Listening is hearing what is not said.” - Simon Sinek

As a Service Delivery Manager, you spend a lot of time with customers to understand their goal and uncover their pain points and improvement opportunities. Conducting sessions, service review meetings, and collecting feedback from your customers is key to aligning your service delivery strategy with their business objectives. Listen, that is the key!

Translate and Facilitate

Service Management’s stakeholders can include customers, sponsors, team members, suppliers, and many others, working in the middle of different teams can be particularly challenging.

Service Delivery Managers help to translate the customers’ needs and challenges to the different teams who can support in co-create value.

They also facilitate teamwork and cooperation, as this is essential for creating constructive collaboration and mutual benefit.

It is all about trust

A critical part of any interpersonal relationship is trust. Service Delivery Managers serve as the primary point of contact for customers regarding service delivery.

One way of creating trust is to do what you promise and manage expectations. Setting realistic goals and clearly communicating performance based on a defined service scope ensures reliability and accountability.

Maintaining open and transparent communication can directly affect the customer’s perception of value and influence loyalty toward the service provider.

Continual improvement