Four Practical Ideas for how CIOs can Improve Enterprise Customer ...

CIOs are in a unique position to improve the enterprise customer experience. ?Why? Unlike most other people in a company, CIOs know better than anyone the end-to-end processes within organizations and problems that exist between front and back office operations. ?They know the weaknesses, limitations, strengths and where opportunities lie in customer processes. ??And while we are not suggesting merging the front and back office, CIOs are in a position to know where barriers between departments exist and can suggest ways to tear down operational silos that have traditionally isolated these operations and created limitations for enterprise service delivery.

Here is a quick example of a barrier that can be bridged.
Often marketing will launch a new campaign that includes a popular new feature. Demand is high, but the back office can?t deliver because they are already over-loaded and also don?t have the right skilled people trained and ready to handle the influx of new orders. ?When the departments tasked with processing customer work are not properly staffed or in-synch with customer deadlines, more backlogs ensue and the customer experience suffers. ?This type of siloed operation can be corrected and CIOs are in a unique position to help.

What are some of the problems we are seeing created by silos between front and back office?

1. Lack of SLA management: ?Customer tasks, created in the contact center or web site, are delivered to workbins for employee review as part of a workflow process, but then the tasks are then not properly managed to meet customer expectations.
2. Little visibility into workload and employee performance: ?Back office management is still too manual and IT has not provided much-needed tools. ?Lack of visibility creates bottlenecks, frustrations and operational difficulties.
3. Inability to assess employee skills: ?How are tasks being handled? ?Quickly? Efficiently and according to regulations?

What can a CIO do?
CIOs can figuratively merge the front and back office by reducing or eliminating the barriers that inhibit the end-to-end customer experience. ?Here are four practical suggestions:

1. Increase management visibility into workload and employee performance. Managers using contact center software have a legacy of operational transparency and great tools to measure agent performance. The same is possible for the back office.
2. Implement employee presence. Know who is available for new work, which employees are already engaged and who is unavailable or on vacation.
3. Consider a proactive work distribution model. Instead of a passive pull model that exists in most back office environments, consider a proactive push model that is more efficient and can track which tasks are being addressed and which are not.
4. Evaluate on-line training tools. Assess employee skills and proactively push training to plug knowledge gaps.

Check out a recent Forbes article, The Top Ten CIO Issues for 2013, that supports the concept of merging the front and back office, or read more in the Genesys white paper, Taking the Effort Out of the Customer Experience; Best Practices to Optimize Your Service Strategy.

Source: http://www.business2community.com/customer-experience/four-practical-ideas-for-how-cios-can-improve-enterprise-customer-service-0346868

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