How to Leverage Process Improvement Analysis for Better Customer Experience

Customers have come to expect their experiences online and offline to be seamless, personalized, and efficient. While organizations are constantly trying to accommodate their continuously changing expectations, one option that is often overlooked yet extremely valuable is Process Improvement Analysis.

Process Improvement Analysis is a systematic approach for analyzing, evaluating, and improving the way an organization operates. Simply put, it is about improving processes not just for efficiency reasons, but for the people that experience the process the organization’s customers. When an organization is using Process Improvement Analysis properly, it allows everyone involved to connect the internal workings of the organization with the external satisfaction of the customers through the direct purpose of the process. 

Every organization has room to improve through timely and continuous business process analysis that will help reveal inefficiencies and understand foreseeable failures, as well as redesign workflows that reduce costs and improve the customer experience. From a business process analyst perspective, the ideal position is to act as the conduit between what the business is doing compared to what the customer is feeling.

The article discusses several methods that organizations can use Process Improvement Analysis with the other high-level analyses of business impact assessment, business process management and business impact analysis to create a competitive differentiator for the organization when delivering a customer experience.

Process Improvement Analysis

Process Improvement Analysis is aimed at analyzing and improving current business processes in an effort to ultimately improve efficiency, minimize mistakes, and improve quality of output. It is different from large scale Transformational Projects, as it concentrates on specific workflows and systems affecting customers directly or indirectly.

Process Improvement Analysis often overlaps with business process analysis (BPA), which is the existing process analysis, documentation and bettering. This is frequently combined with Business Process Management (BPM) and enables organizations to develop tools to better manage improvements on an ongoing basis rather than a quick fix approach.

Common tools used for process improvement analysis include flow charts, SIPOC diagrams (Suppliers, Inputs, Processes, Outputs, Customers), root-cause analysis and other Six Sigma tools that help to guide any bottlenecks, redundancies, or pain-points with customers.

Role of the Business Process Analyst

A business process analyst is an expert that analyzes the company’s internal operations and workflows, with a focus on improving internal and customer performance and business outcomes. A business process analyst serves as a bridge between the technical teams and business stakeholders to execute the operational strategy while keeping the customer experience goals in mind. 

The key responsibilities of a business process analyst include the following:

• Understanding and analyzing process data
• Creating maps of the current and future state processes
• Identifying areas of waste or customer pain points
• Proposing recommendations that align with customers’ needs
• Working with IT and operations to implement recommendations

Business process analysts are professionals who need to have empathy for the customer experience. They need to think and feel like the customers. They are indeed a key in ensuring that all efficiencies get converted to customer satisfaction. 

Identifying and Mapping Customer Touch Points

Customer journey mapping connects process improvement with the customer experience. Customer journey mapping allows organizations to document every interaction customers have with the business, including, but not limited to, their online interactions with the brand, their purchase transactions, their support requests, and post-sales communications. 

For example, if an order arrives late to the customer, it could result from either poor internal processes related to product approvals or poor communication between the company’s internal systems.

After the discovery phase is done, an organization may conduct a business process analysis on the underlying workflows that contributed to those pain points, so that they can reengineer the workflows and create a streamlined customer journey.

Conducting Business Impact Assessment for CX

A business impact assessment (BIA) assists organizations in determining the priority order of which processes to improve, depending on two things for their customers: satisfaction; and business consequences. Rather than making guesses on which internal efficiencies matter most to an organization, BIA provides a formal approach.  

Tasks involved in a BIA are:

• Identifying core/business functions critical to support customer-facing processes.
• Assessing the cost of delayed processes or process failures on Customer Experience (CX) measures.
• Measuring revenue, satisfaction, or loyalty losses.
• Prioritizing opportunities for improvement by urgency and value.

For example, a SaaS company may have a slow onboarding process that results in early client churn. With BIA there is a valid case that speeding up that process could measurably improve customer experience and lifetime value.

Using Business Process Management to Drive CX Innovation

Business process management takes a route that helps to manage internal processes to meet customer expectations. Firms are thus able to identify gaps between desired and actual outcomes through analysis. BPM offers the framework to help you manage and bring in more improvement into the processes.

BPM tools enable organizations to accomplish the following:

• Automate routine tasks to minimize lag time
• Establish workflows that can be adjusted according to customer feedback in real time
• Monitor performance via dashboards and KPIs
• Include customer data as a part of decision-making processes

With BPM, businesses can move from making reactive improvements to proactive innovations; anticipating the needs of customers and refining processes before a problem occurs. This agility allows for more refined, timely, and consistent experiences for customers.

Measuring Results of Business Impact Analysis

After improvements are implemented, it is important to measure improvement, using business impact analysis. Business impact analysis quantifies to what degree changes in internal processes lead to external outcomes.

Ultimately, a successful business impact analysis connects the dots between operational efficiency and CX success. For instance, decreasing a response time through automating email workflows could elevate CSAT scores by 15% and reduce complaints by 25%.

Best Practices for Successful Process-CX Alignment

In order to achieve a successful result, organizations must look at process thinking as part of their CX efforts. Here are some suggestions to keep in mind:

Involve multiple teams: When businesses are looking to improve a process, people from marketing, operations, customer service, and IT can provide critical information. Contributions from these varied groups will help shape broader solutions.

Review processes frequently: Customer expectations change over time. Generally, organizations should build in opportunities to evaluate processes after a period of time. This will help them to monitor changes in customer expectations. 

Make decisions from data: Organizations need to combine both process data and customer data to learn more about their improvement priorities.

Start small, scale bold: Organizations can plan tests of changes in a pilot environment before putting it into production. This approach aids in managing risk, while also giving teams an opportunity to obtain quick wins.

Make customers part of the process: Customers can help organizations to discover where poor processes exist and tell them what they need to experience.

Conclusion

Customer experience has emerged as the new differentiator in a crowded marketplace. Glitzy interfaces and rapid marketing may be enough to capture attention, but the magic of customer loyalty occurs by enabling the smooth progress of customers through your processes. 

The process improvement analysis, coupled with business process analysts’ expertise organized through business process management, will allow organizations to continuously improve their processes in ways that matter most to their customers. By conducting a business impact assessment and a business impact analysis, organizations can create a roadmap for making value-rich changes and capturing value over time. 

Companies that incorporate process excellence into their CX strategy will be best positioned to earn consumer trust and sustain growth over time.