Process Management Essentials for Extraordinary Customer Experiences
An extraordinary customer experience can only be provided through a deep understanding, and thorough exploration of process management..
And, of course, the process map must include an
affective diagram of the customer experience; but more on that at the end.
Process management is the explication and organization of your firm's work
into a living document (albeit, digital and largely comprised of graphical
symbols) that describes how you meet customer needs today and how you expect
to meet those needs tomorrow. Traditionally these two views are described as
the "as is" process and the "to be" process. The "as is" captures your
current workflows, the "to be" describes enhancements you are deploying or
plan to deploy in the future. Some process documents are 10 pages; some are
10,000 pages. 90% of the time: 10 are too little, 10,000 are too much;
unless you're manufacturing engineered goods or working at a Fortune 500
firm.
What is the right level of process documentation? Naturally, there are a
variety of opinions from a variety of experts, but everyone must recognize
that the cost of exacting process documentation becomes overwhelming for
most firms. Process documentation should be an outcome of efficient
training, industrial engineering, and technology programs. To the extent
that process documentation is maintained in the absence of continual real
world application, in most cases, it falls into disuse and disrepair very
quickly. Many companies have extensive libraries of process documentation
that are used to impress visiting Baldrige examiners and FDIC auditors, but
provide little else of practical value. Process documentation, to be of real
value, must be used or tossed.
A typical corporation will have 6-12 enterprise level processes. Each of
these enterprise processes can have dozens to hundreds of sub-processes with
dozens to hundreds of steps in each process. A process description catalogs
these steps so that optimization opportunities can be identified in an
efficient manner. The process description is not the point; the internal
dialog about the description is the point.
A process is simply a description of the path work must wander from
initiation to completion. In classical quality theory each process begins
and ends at an external customer in order to keep a clear focus on value
creation. Therefore, a process definition would start with a customer
ordering a product and end with that product delivered to the customer.
Often this classical definition is useful, but not vital, and should not get
in the way of practical improvements. A process will describe that a part
must go from casting to machining to polishing, but it will not typically
describe how to do casting, how to do machining, or how to polish. The
description of the task itself is captured in training materials and job
aides.
Where the process description is brilliant is in capturing that 20% of the
work rejected by polishing is because the finished edges coming out of
machining are too large to fit the polishing jib. The process description
becomes genius when the factory discovers that the casting temperature is
too low, which bollixes the machining, which wrecks havoc on the polishing
operations. 90% of the big quality glitches, which consume 30% of the
resources of most corporations, are cross-functional.
The size of the firm becomes the enemy as processes that are connected from
the customer's perspective are disconnected inside a large enterprise. Local
optimization efforts, lacking knowledge of the whole, create insurmountable
quality obstacles to other departments in the value chain. Process mapping
and process management are the only known way to identify and attack this
enormous waste of shareholder resources.
There are still huge gaps in the optimization investment strategies adopted
by firms. Too often investments in technology focus solely on development of
use cases developed by business analysts who do not incorporate the
re-engineering methodologies normally applied by industrial engineers.
Again, this is a typical cross-functional breakdown.
Use cases capture the "as is" and a whinny, subjective vision of the "to
be", but, without a formal process modeling and optimization step, much of
this automation is doomed to be replaced over the next few years as the real
improvements are uncovered.
Deming, Juran and others, argued that automation should be the last step
taken after extensive process optimization left only the essence of the
process extant. Dramatic reductions in the costs of technology have obviated
this argument, but there is still much to be gained from combining the two
techniques.
A big step beyond process documentation, process management is the
utilization of customer-anchored workflows to organize value/quality
reporting, executive fire drills, and enterprise re-engineering. The most
complicated element of process management is that work is most efficiently
organized by task competency groupings (a.k.a., departments or work groups)
and customer value is most often created, or destroyed, by cross-functional
processes that cannot interact successfully without an omniscient
perspective. Make no mistake; process management is an entirely different
beast than process mapping. Anyone could, and should, do process mapping;
only the Chairman and the CEO can institute process management.
Process management implies that owners assigned at the enterprise level are
responsible for quality outcomes irrespective of the department that
initiated the error. This is incredibly powerful, but incredibly difficult
to implement. The reality is that most department heads or functional
president have achieved their positions precisely because they are experts
at defeating traditional bureaucratic controls; lassoing them at this point
in their careers requires a cowboy with a quicker draw and a sharper knife;
a very difficult find.
With this understanding of processing mapping it should also be clear that
the right CRM tools must enable modern service center environments. Client
transactions are too complex and the costs of failure too high to justify
operating in either a manual or a legacy system environment. CRM systems now
tie together critical client data, the telephonic/network environment, and
workflow tools to maximize the value exchange between the customer base and
the service environment. In most instances, "service" is obsolete
nomenclature as service now represents the entire range: the brand, product,
sales, and service are all merged in the delivery of value and the
maintenance of loyalty across the customer base. The classical "moment of
truth" must now be re-defined as the peripeteia (turning point) of client
loyalty.
This brief précis of process description and process management would not be
complete without touching, however briefly, on the a new horizon, i.e., the
affective diagram of the customer experience. Process descriptions and
process management are necessary prerequisites for providing an
extraordinary customer experience, but an affective diagram is essential to
reach the next level.
Historically, customer experience is defined by attributes of product,
service, loyalty, and, sometimes, CRM technology. The newest horizon is to
add the affective, or emotional content, to the service/product/brand
interaction. Although more subtle, it is critical that service/product/brand
be viewed together with the affective dimension as the nexus of the customer
experience. In some case the affective dimension (i.e., how do you feel
about the product's emotional attributes) is the only dimension that
matters.
An experience diagram maps the customer's emotional reaction as they
traverse the various elements of brand, product and service. By mapping this
reaction, companies can then focus their resources on ensuring that each of
these critical elements creates an impression that equates to overall value.
Music videos, rock concerts, entertainers, and playwrights have been
carefully and concisely evaluating these additional dimensions for
millennia. Adding this affective dimension to the incredible value of
optimized process descriptions and process management can create a brand
structure that is highly differentiated from the competition.
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