7 Best Practices in Business Process Management

7 Best Practices for Business
Process Management in Customer

Service
Good experiences. On brand. On budget.
Executive Summary
Effective customer service is not only about managing phone calls but managing
processes. Effective business process management for customer service relies on
achieving a clear visibility and understanding of your processes, as well as the ability to
rapidly adapt them to changing customer needs and business demands.
A process orientation for customer service is necessary to make sure that youre managing
your service processes efficiently and aligning them with your business strategy and goals.
These best practices help you establish a clear strategy to ensure that customer
satisfaction is maintained while business goals are realized:
1.
Defining your processes
2.
Empowering business managers
3.
4.
Facilitating Business and IT collaboration

Empowering knowledge workers
5.
Knowing your metrics
6.
Choosing technology that supports agility
7.
Establishing a center of excellence
Defining your processes

Many organizations havent defined critical processes clearlylet alone enforced them.
Ask various people in a company if they know how, for example, the ordering process
works, and youre likely to get a different explanation of the same process from different
people. While process stakeholders may have some understanding of the process that
falls under their functional area, anything outside it is a black box. And there is little, if
any, clarity about processes that span multiple functional areas like customer service,
billing, shipping, etc.
Some organizations have made the effort to describe their processes in standard
operating procedure (SOP) documents and Visio diagrams. While thats far better than
having no documentation, this rarely suffices to describe the actual processes running in
the company. Business processes change but, typically, documentation doesnt and it
quickly becomes outdated. The ideal, to document what you do and do what you
document, is hard to enforce using paper-based management systems.
This highlights the need for what is known as model-driven architecture. Model-driven
architecture enables organizations to use business-friendly tools to document their
business processes. In addition, the processes that are designed or envisioned by business
2011 KANA Software, Inc. 840 W California Ave, Ste 100, Sunnyvale CA 94086 1.800.737.8738 [email protected] www.kana.com
PAGE 2
managers are those that are actually running: When changes are made, the design
description and runtime is changed simultaneously so that you always do what you
document.
A clear understanding of end-to-end processes and the ability to keep documentation
current is a necessity for consistent process, and hence consistent customer service.
Process-modeling tools like the KANA SEM Visual Experience Designer allow service
mangers to define processes easily and ensure that their design is true to what is running.
End-to-end definition of process is possible, no matter how many functional or system
boundaries are crossed. If theres a question about a specific process, say, dispute
resolution, you can use this online tool to pull up a visual process-flow diagram for an
immediate answer. With clear descriptions of human and system activitieswho does
what at which step, what rules and policies apply to escalation etc.this tool keeps every
stakeholder in the know.
BOTTOM LINE End-to-end visibility and understanding of the service processwhat it
takes to solve a customer issue from start to endhelps break down functional and
system silos. Your process in execution needs to be the exact process designed by the
business manager. Using tools that allow you to quickly describe your operations across
functional and system boundaries and share the information, helps to make that possible.
Empowering business managers

The people who know most about customer service processes are the people closest to
ityour service and operations managers. Managing or running the service operation
they are the process owners. They must have a clear understanding of processes, since
they are responsible for the outcome and oftentimes determine operational policy and
procedure.
As the key stakeholders in the customer service process, these managers need to be able
to easily design processes and implement changes to them, to ensure efficient and
effective customer service experiences. They need business-friendly tools that help them
design experience flowsthe flow of information agents and customers are presented
with during a service interaction. Despite common practice, Visio and PowerPoint are not
those tools. They may be easy to use but the processes designed arent easily converted
into running executable applications. To implement process, the design has to be
translated by ITit takes a lot of code to make it happen and often much is lost in
translation.
Effective customer service depends on the ability to put the business managers design
into operation, to monitor performance and make rapid changes to the service
PAGE 3
experience. Processes need to be designed using tools that enable the rapid conversion of
design into application.
BOTTOM LINE Business-friendly tools are needed to enable service managers to design
and orchestrate processes across technologies, and to monitor and adapt them to
business developments.
Facilitating Business and IT collaboration

In the absence of model-driven process design, the implementation of, for example, a
refund process is a lengthy, labor-intensive undertaking: A senior executive will ask IT to
create a refund application and IT will gather the requirements. It takes business
managers weeks, if not months, to put together the kind of application requirement
document IT needs to get started. Typically requirement documents consist of hundreds
of pages defining process, stakeholders, business rules, policies, et cetera. IT receives the
document and can begin coding the application. Coding often takes several months and
the result is a prototype that often doesnt live up to what business managers actually
need. Moreover, in the six months it takes to get to this point, the requirements will often
have changed due to business developments, new service offerings or changes in
government regulations.
Now IT either has to start from scratch or the project gets scrapped. If the latter happens,
business will look to an off-the-shelf product, but these types of products commonly meet
just 30% of users needs.
A different type of collaboration is neededone that enables business to design
processes quickly and allows IT to implement the actual design and integrate with other
systems. Visual design tools for process design make this possible by putting business and
IT on the same pageliterally. All versions of the process model can thus be made
available to both business and IT for review. Work can be done collaboratively and
efficiently.
PAGE 4
Design
Business & IT Collaborate to model process and integrate with

legacy systems
A graphical user interface for process design bridges the communication gap between
business and IT regarding application requirements. IT is not burdened with creating
thousands of lines of code before it can be determined whether an application will
actually meet business needs. Programmers can easily integrate processes with other
systems and avoid the unnecessary replication of data. IT can focus on architecture,
performance, and other needs that make the process application successful in the
enterprise environment.
BOTTOM LINE Make it easy for business and IT to work together by clearly defining
process owners and employing visual design tools that facilitate collaborative design and
enable the fast conversion of design into executable applications.
Empowering knowledge workers

Customer service agents are the people interacting directly with your customers. They
play a key role in the quality of your customer experience. Many services traditionally
handled by the contact center are now being handled by customers through self-service
functionalities on the company website or online communities. As a result, only the most
complex cases typically reach agents. The agents role has evolved into that of a specialist,
or knowledge worker. Customers expect agents to have an in-depth knowledge of their
specific problemcertainly more than whats available in the self-help section of the
companys websitebut many companies have hundreds of products and complex
services. Its a demanding job.
PAGE 5
Your agents ability to do their job well affects customer satisfaction, revenue generation,
process efficiency (and hence cost)essentially how effective your service is. If agents are
struggling to find answers, customers will get impatient, further frustrating agents and
sending call quality down the drain. The result: increasing agent dissatisfaction and high
agent turnover.
To do their job well agents need fast and convenient access to relevant information,
which means that your agents actual work processes must be integrated with the
knowledge base. Integrating the contact center solution or the agent desktop with the
knowledge base eliminates the need to review step-action documents, memorize complex
procedures and search through guides to help customers when memory fails. An
integrated knowledge management system provides agents with the right information in
the context of the call.
Another common problem agents face is the need to navigate dozens of applications to
find answers and perform transactions. Applicationsinstalled over the years to solve
specific problemsaccumulate. In order to fulfill their job, agents have to alt-tab between
these many applications during callsfurther complicating their task. Like the knowledge
base, service applications need to be integrated with agent work processes. Integration
cant be equated with a single sign-on system or even a mash up. A process-based
solution integrates applications with service processes so that the process itself
determines which systems are accessed during a service interaction.
PAGE 6
A process-based solution orchestrates tasks and information across various systems and
knowledge bases, providing agents with the right knowledge in context of the process
step. Agents do not have to switch between applications or search for solutions. As
service interactions unfold, the needed information and choices are presented to agents
in the user interfacean adaptive desktopso that agents can do their job more
efficiently.
Orchestrate
Agents provide service via web

portal
BOTTOMLINE - To make the customer experience effective, agents need to be able to do
their job efficiently. By integrating knowledge bases and system applications with the
agent work process, agents can access the right information promptly and focus on the
customer rather than the process.
Knowing your metrics

Keeping customers happy and service cost-efficient is a tough balancing act for business
managers. An important first step to achieving equilibrium is to define which customer
service metrics are important to your businesscustomer sat, NPS, FCR, revenue, cost
etc. Key questions you should be asking are: Which processes impact which metrics? Do
your contact center systems allow you to monitor your key metrics? As pointed out by
Norton-Kaplan, you cannot improve what you do not measure and you cannot measure
what you do not define.
PAGE 7
Once you know which metrics are important to your business, try to list the processes
that impact them. Youll find that none of the processes or metrics in a company move in
isolationeach process can impact several metrics in different ways, and metrics are
often interdependent. Customer satisfaction may have an impact on cost. Changing a
refund service level agreement (SLA) may have an impact on customer satisfaction and so
forth. That makes it critical to perform this impact analysis before setting targets and
objectives for key performance indicators or metrics.
Listen
Managers analyze service

performance to improve processes
PAGE 8
BOTTOM LINE - Improving your business means improving your business processes. This
in turn means understanding and monitoring key business metrics and getting insights
from them to adjust or improve processes.
Choosing technology
that supports agility
The competitive and regulatory environment that service organizations operate in is
changing faster than ever. Adapting business processes to accommodate those
developments demands agility. But the reality for many businesses is that it takes months
to make the kinds of changes needed.
Efficient and effective service depends on the ability to implement process change in
weeks if not hours. To make that possible your processes and IT systems have to be
architected to support agility. A well-defined service oriented architecture for
applications, defined integration strategy and model-driven process approach ensures
that you can change service processes quickly whether you are changing policies, SLAs
or escalations. With agility you can do more than respond to changes in the market, you
can exploit opportunities before your competition does. You can launch new products and
offers quickly, rapidly impart knowledge to agents and have new processes up and
running with minimal disruption to IT.
BOTTOM LINE - Service processes must undergo regular adjustment to stay relevant to
customers and fulfill business requirements. Plan your process and technology strategy
with agility in mind to pave the way for frequent and rapid change.
Establishing a center of excellence

Customer service process deployment is not a onetime event. To stay ahead of the
competition, you need to make sure your processes are up to date and stay that way.
Establishing a center of excellence (COE) focused on the methodologies and governance
around process design, change management, continuous improvement of service metrics,
and SOA governance, will help achieve that.
PAGE 9
Design
Orchestrate
Business & IT Collaborate to model process and integrate with

legacy systems
Listen
Agents provide service via web

portal
Managers analyze service

performance to improve processes
A center of excellence establishes how the processes should be designed, what the reusable components are (data, sub-processes, services, user interfaces, integration
adapters etc.) and which repeatable process patterns can be used. Set up a version control
mechanism for your process models and define a review process to assess and approve
changes. Keep all stakeholders up to date on the latest process designs and solicit their
input for further improvements.
Define how to request changes to the process and how to implement and deploy
approved changes. Importantly, that includes how to upgrade to new versions of
processes, what happens to processes initiated in earlier versions etc. An effective COE
will document how to train employees in process design and process execution. Its key to
define the roles of all process stakeholders like business analysts, process owners, line-ofbusiness IT, enterprise IT and so forth. With clarity surrounding roles and responsibilities,
process design and development can progress smoothly.
Establishing a COE takes a lot of thought, careful evaluation of your technologies and
organizational culture. But a well-designed COE will determine the success of your process
management and continuous improvement initiative.
BOTTOM LINE - A COE helps make sure that the process applications you design dont just
become new legacy systems in need of replacement two years down the line. A COE is
where the proper documentation, version control, access control and audit history is
maintained for all processes. It defines the process in process management.
PAGE 10
Conclusion
Having a process-oriented view of your customer service operations helps you design
better customer experiences. With model-driven architecture, the task of creating process
applications no longer needs to reside solely with IT. Business and IT can now collaborate
on designing service processes and deploying applications that address customer and
organizational needs. By designing processes that anticipate the need for frequent
change, your customer service operations can respond to a constantly changing business
environment.
Clearly defining service processes enables you to monitor, analyze and improve them.
However, your process design wont succeed in the long term unless you create
governance around it. It is crucial that you determine process improvement periods and
allow for quick, unplanned changes to process applications. Define ownership, choose a
methodology for design and for change management procedures and enforce themso
that you can deliver effective customer experiences and run your service operations
efficiently.
Copyright 2011 KANA Software, Inc. KANA and the KANA logo are registered trademarks of KANA.
Other company, product and service names may be service marks of their respective owners.
840 W California Avenue, Suite 100

Sunnyvale, CA 94086
T 650.614.8300 | F 408.736.7613
www.kana.com
Contact us at http://www.kana.com/contact-us/contactsem.php
Twitter @KANASoftware
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/groups/KANA-Software-1129?mostPopular=&gid=1129
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/KANA-Software-Inc/146154198748782
All Rights Reserved. 0110-01
PAGE 11

7 Best Practices in Business Process Management

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

7 Best Practices in Business Process Management

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

7 Best Practices in Business Process Management

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

7 Best Practices for Business

Process Management in Customer

Good experiences. On brand. On budget.

Defining your processes

Empowering business managers

Facilitating Business and IT collaboration

Knowing your metrics

Choosing technology that supports agility

Establishing a center of excellence

Defining your processes

Good experiences. On brand. On budget.

Empowering business managers

Good experiences. On brand. On budget.

Facilitating Business and IT collaboration

Good experiences. On brand. On budget.

Business & IT Collaborate to model process and integrate with

Empowering knowledge workers

Good experiences. On brand. On budget.

Good experiences. On brand. On budget.

Agents provide service via web

Knowing your metrics

Good experiences. On brand. On budget.

Managers analyze service

Good experiences. On brand. On budget.

Establishing a center of excellence

Good experiences. On brand. On budget.

Business & IT Collaborate to model process and integrate with

Agents provide service via web

Managers analyze service

Good experiences. On brand. On budget.

840 W California Avenue, Suite 100

You might also like