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How to Find Process Problems That Irritate Customers
Process Problems Upset Customers AND Hurt Profitability
Process is the 3rd P in the 3P Profit Formula I discuss in the book PeopleShock: The Path to Profits When Customers Rule, and it is one of the biggest areas where organizations fall down on customer experience. (The first two Ps are Promise and People.)
I mean, really, why should we have to repeat our bank card number to the service rep after we’ve already keyed it into our phone?
Why should we get different information each time we call?
Why should the rep need to get approval from his manager to give a refund when the problem was clearly caused at their end?
I gave you a sneak preview of the first two Ps earlier on this blog and podcast, at episode 52 for Promise and episode 56 for People.
So for those of you who haven’t read the book yet, in today’s podcast I read from Chapter 15, about how to spot the important process problems and do customer journey mapping.
Chapter 15: Identifying Process Problems
(excerpt from PeopleShock: The Path to Profits When Customers Rule, by Tema Frank, ©2016)
I’ve been podcasting since 2012 — first the Frank Online Marketing Show, and now the Frank Reactions podcast on customer experience (http://frankreactions.com/show). If you are not familiar with podcasts, they are like radio shows, but aired on the Internet and over services like iTunes.
For someone like me, who grew up admiring the great in-depth interviewers of my youth, like Dick Cavett, Peter Gzowski and Oriana Fallaci, it’s a thrill to be able to join them in my own small way. The frustration, however, is that second-last word: small. Podcast listening is growing, but slowly. I believe that process problems are the big barrier to mass use.
We all know how to turn on a radio. Even my kids, digital natives though they are, could figure that out pretty easily. But “turning on” a podcast is more complicated. Assuming you know what podcasts are (and many still don’t), it is not obvious where you find them. And once you do, how do you play them? Are you going to be dinged for data charges? How do you share them?
If you ever listen to podcasts you’ll hear the podcaster’s plea, where we beg our listeners to go to iTunes and review our podcast. But few people do, because there’s no easy way to do it from where you are listening.
Customer Journey Mapping
The questions I just asked are the beginnings of a customer journey map. The way to figure out how your processes can be improved is to start with mapping, from the customer’s point of view. This is a key step in improving customer experiences.
The journey starts before prospects contact you. Walk through the steps from the time someone realizes they may need your type of service or product, right through to contacting you and then buying and using the product or service.
Given the rate of technological change, customer journey mapping is also something you have to re-do periodically, because customer expectations are constantly being reset. In the early days of podcasting you had to be (or be friends with) a geek to figure out how to find and listen to podcasts. Then Apple started listing podcasts in iTunes, which made it easier for podcasts to be discovered. Then, just as people got used to that, Apple took them out of iTunes and set up a dedicated podcasting app. On the positive side, this would presumably make it easier for people to find and manage podcasts. But on the negative side,
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Process Problems Upset Customers AND Hurt Profitability
Process is the 3rd P in the 3P Profit Formula I discuss in the book PeopleShock: The Path to Profits When Customers Rule, and it is one of the biggest areas where organizations fall down on customer experience. (The first two Ps are Promise and People.)
I mean, really, why should we have to repeat our bank card number to the service rep after we’ve already keyed it into our phone?
Why should we get different information each time we call?
Why should the rep need to get approval from his manager to give a refund when the problem was clearly caused at their end?
I gave you a sneak preview of the first two Ps earlier on this blog and podcast, at episode 52 for Promise and episode 56 for People.
So for those of you who haven’t read the book yet, in today’s podcast I read from Chapter 15, about how to spot the important process problems and do customer journey mapping.
Chapter 15: Identifying Process Problems
(excerpt from PeopleShock: The Path to Profits When Customers Rule, by Tema Frank, ©2016)
I’ve been podcasting since 2012 — first the Frank Online Marketing Show, and now the Frank Reactions podcast on customer experience (http://frankreactions.com/show). If you are not familiar with podcasts, they are like radio shows, but aired on the Internet and over services like iTunes.
For someone like me, who grew up admiring the great in-depth interviewers of my youth, like Dick Cavett, Peter Gzowski and Oriana Fallaci, it’s a thrill to be able to join them in my own small way. The frustration, however, is that second-last word: small. Podcast listening is growing, but slowly. I believe that process problems are the big barrier to mass use.
We all know how to turn on a radio. Even my kids, digital natives though they are, could figure that out pretty easily. But “turning on” a podcast is more complicated. Assuming you know what podcasts are (and many still don’t), it is not obvious where you find them. And once you do, how do you play them? Are you going to be dinged for data charges? How do you share them?
If you ever listen to podcasts you’ll hear the podcaster’s plea, where we beg our listeners to go to iTunes and review our podcast. But few people do, because there’s no easy way to do it from where you are listening.
Customer Journey Mapping
The questions I just asked are the beginnings of a customer journey map. The way to figure out how your processes can be improved is to start with mapping, from the customer’s point of view. This is a key step in improving customer experiences.
The journey starts before prospects contact you. Walk through the steps from the time someone realizes they may need your type of service or product, right through to contacting you and then buying and using the product or service.
Given the rate of technological change, customer journey mapping is also something you have to re-do periodically, because customer expectations are constantly being reset. In the early days of podcasting you had to be (or be friends with) a geek to figure out how to find and listen to podcasts. Then Apple started listing podcasts in iTunes, which made it easier for podcasts to be discovered. Then, just as people got used to that, Apple took them out of iTunes and set up a dedicated podcasting app. On the positive side, this would presumably make it easier for people to find and manage podcasts. But on the negative side,