Most global leaders see 2020 as an inflection point for UX and CX across a breadth of industries ranging from retail and hospitality to transportation and healthcare. Although customer’s journeys will vary not only among industries but also companies, customers’ experiences are measured by using a common to all framework which is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Moreover, an assertive use of technology to create great customer’s experiences demands at least certain degree of operational excellence which is also required to meet productivity targets to create value for shareholders. Furthermore, today Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is one of the main pillars of the productivity strategy and it is being used to help create wiggle room to upskill and augment the value of their existing workforce, and that model is certain to quickly grow into a winning formula. However, only organizations which adopt a data-driven mindset to harness the power of company’s data will be able to understand not only the drivers of the NPS and customer experience but also those that will empower them to achieve operational excellence and create value for the shareholders through productivity. Hence, the first step to develop the data-driven mindset in organizations is to have leaders that can recognise company’s data value not only to make better decisions but also implement effective actions to ensure not only customers’ experiences but also achieve operational excellence.
Timely and effective delivery
Although the customer’s experience and NPS’ drivers will present differences between industries and companies, there are two main drivers which are applicable to all of them. The first one, relates to the ability of the organization to ensure on time delivery (Just In Time – JIT) to their customers while the second one is connected with the effectiveness. Although each organization will have details to take into consideration to achieve an effective delivery, there are two characteristics that should be always considered. Firstly, customers expect that the company delivers what is “right” not only in terms of “item” or “service” but also regarding quantity. Secondly, the organization must deliver “Right First Time” (RFT) with the quality expected by customers upon the terms of agreement. Therefore, a customer centric approach will empower leaders and organizations to assess lead-time and delivery performance from order placement until its fulfilment as well as quality and RFT as it is perceived in the eyes of customers.
Capacity planning and management
To begin with, operational excellence requires that leaders plan capacity based on demand, therefore they must know its behaviour during the year, between months and weeks and within the day. On the other hand, once the capacity is planned according to the demand, then it must be managed in the most productive way and as Peter Drucker stated: “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”. What is more, there are obvious synergies between knowing customers through demand behaviour and delivery performance which will have an impact on customers’ experiences. On the other hand, a better workload balance will have an impact on employees’ experiences and it can be also achieved by understanding the patterns followed by the demand during days and weeks and between months throughout the year. Thus, leaders and organizations can create value not only for shareholders by increasing productivity through better capacity planning and management but also customers and employees by improving delivery performance and workload balance.
Data visibility and actionability
After recognising company’s data value to “create value”, leaders and organizations can be empowered by developing a data-driven mindset to harness company’s data power. First and foremost, visibility must be addressed by using company’s ERPs and RPAs to show the current state of customer experience and operational excellence. However, an E2E customer centric approach must be adopted in order to provide quality data with a framework that ensures not only meaningful insights to understand customer’s experiences and processes’ performance but also actionability. Moreover, human connections will matter more than ever to make actionable the now visible and relevant data. Furthermore, the data-driven mindset should be developed and nurtured at all organizational levels through a “Gemba” leadership style to link data to what is happening in processes and by engaging and empowering people to be ready to act upon what data is showing. As a conclusion, customer excellence can be achieved through a data-driven mindset where human connections play a fundamental role in actionability, therefore trust and respect are core value within the future workplace.
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