Can Business Processes make-or-break Customer Experience?

Onstage & Backstage

I appreciate a parallel that's been made between Onstage Customer Experience and Backstage Business Process.  Consider your customer as the audience evaluating your performance. Customer Experience is the customer's perception of how you engage, how you perform, how you deliver against their expectations at each and every interaction and transaction.  Backstage behind-the-scenes team members scurry to deliver and support the experience you provide levering your company's business processes and supporting technology. 

Suspending Backstage Reality

When thinking about great experiences, Broadway and Disney immediately come to mind; the experience delivered onstage for their customers is so mesmerizing the reality of what’s happening backstage goes unrealized. 

At a Broadway play, we're drawn into the story, the show, the performance and not what the stagehands, lighting and sound crew are doing to make it happen.  Disney has mastered the art of a magical customer experience; the reality of what it takes to deliver that experience and awareness of the choreography required is all together forgotten or suspended.  

Disruption! Backstage Problems Damage Onstage Experience

On the other end of the spectrum you have poor experiences where you become painfully aware of the moving parts and people that should be in sync but aren’t.  I called a vendor recently with a seemingly simple invoice inquiry. On the 3rd call I made trying to get an answer, the response I got was “You haven’t seen my co-workers desk. I have no idea where the file is and they’re out of the office and they don’t have a backup…”   It's likely no challenge for you to conjure up your own memories of poor customer experiences that were painfully time-consuming to resolve.  The onstage experience damaged as you were drawn backstage into their chaos and dysfunction. 

Does flawless Business Process execution guarantee excellent Customer Experience?

No.  Business Processes are one of many important elements in delivery and support of the experience.  However, the most efficient and well-executed business processes cannot guarantee Customer Experience success! 

Why not?  Business processes must be aligned with customer wants, needs and expectations, and they must deliver in a way that customers appreciate. 

Have you ever had a subpar experience with a company, only to have your frustration grow as you realize the company's team members are:

• Executing their business processes flawlessly,
• Abiding by company policies and procedures consistently,
• Using their systems and technology tools as they were trained...

But, the experience is not remotely what you want or expect?

Solid Business Processes Don’t Guarantee Good Experience

Efficient business processes can be rigid, inflexible, and customer-unfriendly. Business Process Improvement (BPI) can focus on processes within silos and ignore customer effort required.  While BPI can lead to delivering better customer experience by virtue of reducing defects and improving efficiency...

Business Process Improvement does NOT:

• Consider customer feelings & emotions, motivations, and desired outcomes
• Focus on end-to-end processes as supporting the customer journey 
• Focus on empowering employees to improve customer experience
• Align processes, employees and technology around the desired customer experience

A well-designed Experience won’t be reliable & repeatable without solid Business Process execution

Solid business processes consistently executed should:

• Organize execution of business processes delivering and supporting the customer experience
• Structure tasks to produce specific products or services
• Synchronize activities efficiently and predictably
• Streamline manual process steps where technology doesn’t enable a seamless experience
• Enable consistent delivery of anticipated results
• Simplify employee training on desired process execution behaviors

Onstage Design & Backstage Alignment

If solid business processes are a necessity backstage but aren't the complete solution to delivering the desired onstage experience, how can you ensure a great experience? 

You MUST:

• Understand and interpret your customers wants, needs, and behaviors
• Design an experience your customers want and need
• Align your processes, your people, and your technology to deliver that experience
• Choreograph what it takes to support and deliver the desired experience behind the scenes, minimizing customer effort required
• Deliver the desired experience consistently so customers rely on it

Whatever happens, you want the onstage experience to give an air of effortlessness and professionalism.

The best experiences are those that keep backstage effort behind the curtain!

Experience must evolve or you risk losing your Audience

As customer desires and expectations change, the onstage experience MUST evolve. You must continue to understand and interpret the ever-changing wants and needs of your customers to innovate and design new experiences. You must continuously align, choreograph, and deliver the evolving experience efficiently and effectively.

The operating model that got you where you are today is not guaranteed to be the operating model you need to continue growing and meeting the rapidly evolving needs of your customers.

The evolution must lever technology to improve service consistency and to create new and improved ways of delivering the desired experience. If it doesn’t, a market disruptor can quickly become the new show in town, driving a change in your customer's perception of the experience you provide.  Your customers will begin to evaluate that experience against that new experience, and you will lose your audience. 

Customer Satisfaction today is no guarantee of Customer Loyalty tomorrow.

 Ask yourself:

1. Are your backstage delivery and support capabilities aligned with your front stage experience design?
2. Is your backstage operationally efficient but not effective in delivering what your customers want and need?
3. Have you mastered the basics of delivering a reliable experience?  Is the experience low effort for your customer?
4. Do your team members know what your customers want and expect? Do they understand their role in the delivery and support of the experience?
5. Are you innovating around customer wants, needs, and behaviors?
6. As you design products and services, have you considered delivery and support or are they an afterthought?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Living in San Diego, I am the Customer Experience (CX) Practice Leader at Tribridge, headquartered in Tampa, FL. With a background in CX consulting, Sales, Product Management, and CRM.  I am passionate about working alongside customers to transform their organizations and realize their unique CX goals. Connect with me on LinkedIn or join me on Twitter @JessicaJNoble.