Creating Good Customer Experiences
Creating good customer or constituent experiences is the difference between great companies and all others. What is a great experience? My working definition: a great customer experience delivers the outcome the customer expects almost every time with as little effort on the customer’s part as possible. Great customer experiences, particularly in services businesses, starts and ends with good business processes.
Example of a Good Business Process
Lately, I experience a really good business process every work day at South Station. Each work day my commuter rail train arrives at South Station at 8:13 or 7:13 and I need to catch a shuttle that departs at 20 past the hour. Obviously, there is not much time between the train arriving and shuttle departing. Like thousands of other Boston area commuters, I enjoy a Dunkin Donuts coffee in the morning and the DD in South Station is a popular spot. So popular that the line became a big impediment into buying a coffee in the morning. However, the DD Perks online app saves the day. Here is my daily Dunkin Donuts experience:
- I order, using the DD Perks App, from the train when the train reaches the JFK stop.
- I alert them on the app when the train reaches South Station that “I am ready to pick up”
- I stop and grab my cup of coffee at the designated location for Online Order Pick Up
I’ve calculated that this coffee detour takes me about 6 extra seconds per day. My fellow shuttle travelers appreciate me not holding up the shuttle and we arrive at Assembly Row 8:37 (or 7:37). What’s so great about this?
- Outcome: I get my Dunkin Coffee,
- Consistency: It is always ready,
- Effort: I expend very little effort.
It meets all my criteria for a good business process. What is interesting about this is that not all Dunkin locations perform this process as well as the South Station location. Prior to using the South Station location, I ordered from a different DD location because it I thought it would be easier to get in and out. I was wrong about that. About half the time I went to the other location, the order wasn’t ready on time which created a lot of stress for me (was I going to make the shuttle?).
The ideal customer experience should be defined in enough detail to allow the organization to design and implement business processes that create effortless experiences. When those processes are executed consistently over time, odds are that the organization will realize improvements in brand reputation, increased revenue, and lower costs.
One tool for business architects to help get the customer facing business processes “right” is customer journey mapping. If you cannot root your customer experience in your actual customers’ authentic behaviors, needs, and challenges, then who is it good for? Building customer journey maps provides a visualization of the entire customer experience, but what about the business processes that deliver these experiences?
Workfit has a simple way to visualize the connection between customer experience and business processes. Click on our demo below to learn more about how WorkFit can help create the desired customer experience and hard wire that experience into your organization.
