What is the common thread among brands that have enviable customer loyalty? Clearly, it’s their commitment to high quality service. Excellent service isn’t just about a mission statement or company policy about treating customers well, it’s about the smooth, efficient processes and workflows that make customer interactions with you straightforward, easy, and with good results. Satisfied customers become loyal customers. That loyalty doesn’t happen overnight - it requires good strategy, efficient systems and excellent execution.
A business process management (BPM) approach is often a critical element of an effective customer service strategy, and the implementation of a business process management technology (via a process automation platform) is a critical element of delivering good customer service. While this may not be the first thought that a business has when thinking about how to better serve its customers, it’s a critical one because it will lead to streamlining some very necessary elements of customer service that makes them stand out from the pack.
1. BPM technology delivers a seamless customer experience.
From the customer’s point of view, it’s quite rare to have an experience with a company where they interact with a single representative of the company through their entire engagement. Most organizations have different individuals engage with customers based on where they are in the various processes that make up the entire customer journey.
In a simple example: a customer may first connect with a company through someone in marketing, then they may purchase through another person in sales, be onboarded by customer success personnel, and then work with any number of tech support representatives when they have questions or encounter problems.
For companies that don’t have a BPM-based process platform in place, this movement between different representatives of the company could likely result in a disjointed experience. Those customers may end up “starting over” with information about who they are and what they need with each new person they speak with. Imagine how much more seamless and streamlined a customer’s experience would feel if each interaction with a company was a clear continuation of the last one, regardless of who they spoke with. This is what a robust BPM platform can support.
2. BPM technology collects data that can help businesses give customers exactly what they want and need.
Data is a powerful tool to better understand your customers, their behavior, and what drives their loyalty to your business. First, data doesn’t lie. Customers may give feedback or fill out surveys based on their impressions from a recent experience, but data on how they interact with the company gives unbiased insights.
BPM technology empowers businesses with the data needed to recognize disruption in the buying journey both individually and collectively over many interactions, or at what point in there are bottlenecks or breakdowns that can lead to lost customers. Recognizing trends in loss or lack of engagement shines a bright light on the areas of the business that need to change, and that is powerful for businesses willing to make those changes.
3. Automation through BPM can anticipate customer needs, and deliver on them.
Using a BPM-based process automation platform to build out automations is likely one of the most common uses of these tools. But how can businesses improve the customer experience through automation? Simply, once businesses understand all the nuances and steps within the customer journey through business process management analysis, automations can be put in place where appropriate for an improved experience.
For example, if customers usually have questions 3-5 days after implementing your product, building in an automated email that they can easily reply to for assistance is a simple step that requires few resources but that makes a big impact on customer satisfaction. A BPM platform can help you to establish those processes and workflows without it draining company resources.
As you look for ways to differentiate yourself from your competitors in crowded markets, BPM can help you to establish that “x factor” of the optimal client experience model.
Bonitasoft understands what companies need to be successful. That’s why we’ve built our BPM-based business process automation platform to accelerate business process application delivery. Bonita’s flexibility and platform extensibility equips professional developers with powerful tools to develop highly customized, fully integrated business applications faster. Here are 3 ways to learn more:
- Build highly personalized, process-based applications today, for free, with our open source Bonita Community Edition.
- See how you can reinvent your business processes with BPM. Watch our on demand Bonita Platform Demo.
- Interested in full project lifecycle support and services from development to operations? Try unlocking the power of Bonita Enterprise Edition. Contact us to learn more.
