**Editor's Note: Interested in this topic, then you cannot miss ebizQ's upcoming Virtual Conference 'Business Processes and the Bottom Line.' Click here to continue.

A popular misconception is that utilizing business process software is solely about achieving operational efficiency through the removal of inefficient manual steps. While this is certainly a key benefit of BPM, it is by no means the full story. Indeed, organizations seeking to improve the customer experience can achieve remarkable results by taking a process-based approach to the problem.

Customer Experience and Efficiency

Improved efficiency alone is unlikely to delight customers, who already expect their issues to be dealt with in a timely and trusted manner. However, obvious inefficiency can lead to customer dissatisfaction and, in this age of social networking, news of bad customer experiences travels fast. An annual survey conducted last year points to a dramatic change in consumer behavior – 80% of consumers will never go back to an organization or company after a negative experience, up from 68% in the previous year. Clearly, the cumulative effect of bad customer experiences can cause significant and lasting brand damage.

Examples of inefficiencies that cause irritation include:

• Transferring customers and asking them to repeat information.
• Forcing customers to use automated voice systems, only to completely ignore any information they provide when they eventually reach a customer representative.
• Customer representatives not being aware of previous interactions – recent ones in particular – and especially those involving different channels of communication, for example emails.
• Not contacting customers within an agreed time or contacting customers who have requested not to be.
• Failing to proactively communicate expected delays.

All of the above are avoidable through appropriate use of business process-driven technology.

Change is Key

For a software solution to meet the evolving needs of both the customer and the organization, the software must be adaptable. This is not just true for addressing emerging problems, where time to fix is crucial to limiting the damage, but also for introducing innovations that proactively enhance the customer experience in some way. Businesses are under increasing competitive pressure to swiftly drive process improvements. Where such improvement requires IT involvement, often the modification to the IT system is the rate-limiting step.

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