Optimizing the customer experience is a must for the whole organization. We need to see the whole customer, not just an email address to be spammed with content they aren’t interested in. Customers aren’t impressed with disjointed efforts of siloed departments, none of which seem to know what the other is doing.

The most direct interactions with and experiences of customers occur in the front end. They also occur across customer-facing operations like finance and call centers. Think about the help desk (customer service, contact center), sales, face-to-face interactions and even some marketing communications. All of these have contact with the customer.

Part of the customer experience optimization exercise is to connect the front office and the back office. Lots of times, this is often not the case. Everyone pursues there on department needs without consideration to complete needs of the customer.

Consider two examples:

1. What happens if a contact center agent doesn’t dispose of the right information to service a customer because crucial data are missing to get a full customer (interaction) view. The disconnect between the back office where information enters and the front end where information enters too but where at the same time direct customer contact occurs, leads to frustration and poor experiences. What if the call center notes that a credit is deserved. Is finance ready to instantly honor that? If not, why not?
2. When a customer engages directly with your by using an online tool, is the underlying processes in which the tool plays a role, aligned? Is it fast and supportive of the intent the customer had when using it? If this isn’t the case the initial positive experience when using the tool loses all meaning if the processes and systems, it is used for are slow.

While the disconnect between the front office and the back office is among the main caused of customer dissatisfaction, there are many – often relatively easy – ways to improve the customer experience.

It takes a deep understanding of what customers truly want instead of assumptions we can easily make if we aren’t careful.

Digital Optimization