The rush to modernize customer experience often stalls for a simple reason. Shiny platforms and polished service teams may draw the spotlight, but they can’t deliver results without the support of strong underlying processes. As enterprises deploy new technologies, they often tend to skip the structural work that determines whether those efforts stick.
“Organizations focus on the things that are very visible in the customer experience, and that’s the people and the technology, but you have this invisible scaffolding [think there is a word missing here – could use scaffolding as below?] – I’ve described it as the backbone – that makes both of those things work,” Gillian Chamberlain, Managing Director – UK & Ireland for Capita Experience, told CX Today in an interview.
“It’s not a glamorous topic, process, but it’s where the customer’s intent becomes the reality and you overlook it at your peril, because customer experience will absolutely suffer if the process is fundamentally flawed.”
Even the most ambitious strategies depend on the scaffolding around them. When processes are inconsistent or poorly aligned, the entire experience wobbles, no matter how advanced the tools or how capable the teams are.
“The technology [is] not going to transform your customer outcomes or customer experience unless you’ve started with a process, and specifically, process observability.”
There are five elements to doing this well, according to Chamberlain.
Five Elements of Effective Process Design
-
Aligning Processes with Customer Needs
The first is to orient the enterprise to the customer journey, rather than starting with an inside-out view of the organizational chart or functional teams internally. Teams should determine whether their customer service processes fulfil the outcome that the customer needs.
“For every interaction, you’re asking yourself, in this stage, what does success look like for the customer? What are they trying to achieve? And is this step adding value or is it just adding another pinch point?” Chamberlain said.
“Companies need to design their internal workflows with the customer’s outcome as the guiding principle mapping that journey.”
-
Streamlining Workflows
The second step is to remove any non-customer-centric steps to streamline workflows, Chamberlain said.
“When you look at every step and you ask, ‘is this step making life easier for my customer? Is it making it faster for the customer?’ And if the answer is no, removing those steps that have probably been designed in for internal convenience rather than value.”
“We find as we work with organizations to turn their processes into agentified processes, we’ve uncovered 30 to 40 percent of steps in a process add no value. So you should stop doing them.”
“Look at your process and think, have I designed this to make life easier for the organization without truly considering the impact or the efforts it is putting onto the customer?”
-
Automate the Repetitive, Empower the Human
The third element is embedding agility and using technology to handle repetitive tasks, so service teams can get to the resolution faster and advisers can be freed up to handle the interactions with customers that require more human problem-solving.
-
Unlocking the Power of Data
Fourth is data. Breaking down silos so that enterprises can access the full breadth of the data they have is crucial. If processes are designed poorly, data will be underutilized. Enterprises have data across CRM, billing, complaints, and more, Chamberlain noted, and good processes standardize what data is collected, how it’s cleaned up, and how it’s made accessible to the wider organization.
“Make sure that you have used the data that is available to you in the process so that your advisors have as much contextual information to be able to personalize the interaction. That’s really important.”
“When your processes are invisible, and when your outcomes are delivered seamlessly, that’s when process can actually be a competitive advantage and enable your experience to be an advantage.”
-
Using Customer Insights to Drive Process Iteration
“And then the last step is the measuring and the iteration.” Leaders should track and measure processes with the voice of the customer and their pain points in mind.
“When you’re looking at your NPS scores, and you’re looking at complaints and what the customers are playing back to you, and you’re walking in the shoes of the customer, you can then ensure that your processes are responsive,” Chamberlain said, “because you don’t see them as once done and leave them, they become a much more live thing to be managed.”
Tracking the Right Wins
There are two ways to measure success: operational KPIs around efficiencies and productivity, as well as customer experience KPIs, such as net promoter score, trust score, effort score and customer satisfaction. “Both of those sets of KPIs need to show success. Because you don’t want to have cost efficiency success at the expense of the customer experience,” Chamberlain said.
“It isn’t just about efficiency. It isn’t just about driving cost down. It’s ultimately about delivering outcomes that customers notice. Whether that’s faster resolution, or it’s low effort, or it’s fewer errors, or it’s a more personalized experience, that’s ultimately what you’re trying to get to.”
Some flexibility in the process is essential. Advisors and customer service representatives need to be empowered to make a judgment call when dealing with a particular issue without having to escalate, and have the latitude to go outside of the process when an issue doesn’t neatly match the prescribed path. This will allow them to deliver faster and more effective support.
Why Process Matters Before Deploying AI
When it comes to bringing AI into the equation, paying attention to process will help ensure an organization’s data is in order. “Good processes will have a very tight framework that ensures the data can be trusted, which is really, really important,” Chamberlain said. When chatbots or automated systems fall short, the root cause is not necessarily the AI.
“Sometimes you’ll hear customers cite a failure in an AI chatbot to be able to resolve their issue. Most of the time, it’s not an AI fail; it’s actually a data fail, because there’s some flaw in the process that has prevented the AI from accessing the right information at the right time.”
That disconnect frequently stems from a gap between documented procedures and day-to-day behavior. “Most companies will have standard operating procedures, but in reality, there’s little or no correlation to what is happening in practice. Advisors work to a broad framework, but there are hundreds of variations to what happens in reality.”
It is because of those variations that mapping and truly understanding the journey for the customer is so important. “So if you first observed the process, you’ll be able to identify the pinch points, the compliance risks, where there are variances to what you’ve designed on paper… And once you’re able to observe it, then you’re able to optimize it, and then you’re able to ultimately agentify it and add AI into the mix.”
Rushing to automate without that foundation invites failure. “But it’s in that order. Because if you don’t have a well-designed workflow, AI will just create the complexity and you don’t have clarity. And at the most basic, you simply fail to deliver on your investment,” Chamberlain added. The goal is to ensure AI is placed where it can make a meaningful difference. “Your AI needs to be embedded into a process where it adds value, and where it’s aligned to outcomes; then you’ve made wise investments.”
When People, Process, and Technology Work in Harmony
What does it look like when companies have the people, process, and technology all in sync?
“It’s like a smooth-running orchestra; it’s seamless,” Chamberlain said. “From an employee perspective, they’ve got the tools and they’ve got the authority to complete the tasks they need to do and the ability to act quickly. The processes have removed the friction, and then you also have the technology there in the background automating the complexity or the repetitiveness.”
“What the customer sees is something that has clarity, it has consistency, it has… Maybe a personalized element to it, but they’re not exposed to the machine that’s working in the background. They should never see the machine. When they work in sync, it seems seamless.”
While technology can enhance and assist in customer interactions, the paradigm of customer engagement is now focused on supporting an emotional connection with brands. Starting from a process will enable brands to deliver that connection. “Ultimately, no matter what era we’re in, it comes down to delivering what the customer needs; whether it’s speed, whether it’s resolution, whether it’s agility.”
Looking ahead, the future of customer experience will depend on how well organizations treat process as the connective tissue of their operations. AI will introduce new layers of complexity, especially with the transition to multi-agent orchestration, but if processes are flexible, data-driven, and built for continuous improvement, they will be able to manage that complexity.
