Companies looking to automate parts of their operations face a growing demand for 24/7 digital services from stakeholders. Indeed, going digital is no longer an option but is key to surviving and thriving not only in the new normal but beyond. Buoyed by the experiences they receive on Amazon and Uber, stakeholders now expect convenient ways to place orders for services and expect to receive these smoothly. In creating a frictionless journey from ordering to fulfillment, having digital front-end solutions is not enough. You have to ensure that the entire operations is connected to provide experiences like no other.
While It might initially appear as a mammoth task, we have created the Go-Digital Plan -- a three-step process to guide you in ensuring operational excellence as well as great customer experiences.
Digitize process forms and workflow
Analyze and automate repetitive steps
Provide access to stakeholders
Let’s explore each of them in further detail to understand how your organization can digitize operations through fulfillment operations.
QuickReach's Go-Digital Plan follows a distinct three-step process as listed below.
Phase 1- Digitize Process Form and Workflow
You will see the various customer journey steps that require your attention. These steps stand out because of two major things:
The time it takes to fulfill them and
The emotion of your customer during/after that step.
Once you have the service design blueprint ready, the first step would be to have a critical look at the activities which are being performed both in the front stage and backstage. The idea is to digitize aspects of operations which are significantly affecting the customer experience.
You would notice aspects in your operational flow such as:
Delays and errors due to employees using paper forms that are manually encoded and transmitted from one team to another
Delays due to approvals that are manually routed or gets buried in an email inbox
Delays due to limited access to core systems resulting in additional handover to other departments
Lack of Convenience because the customer has to perform too many tasks to achieve their goal
Lack of convenience because the touchpoint is not easily accessible (customer hotline that always has a busy tone, for example)
Lack of Transparency because customer is not given real time updates on the status of their order/request.
As you look to digitize aspects of these operational activities, you would look to reduce, if not completely eliminate the bottlenecks in each of these steps.
A good way to start this process on QuickReach (or any other platform of your choice) is by digitizing process form and workflows.
The specific steps that you might undertake for this include:
Select a template on the QuickReach Platform to configure or start from scratch.
You would like to customize the form to suit the unique process requirement of your organization. You might also consider building the process vis intuitive drag-and-drop interface on the platform.
Set user access to the actor type and set activity rights per form section for each actor.
Once you have taken steps to digitize your process forms and workflows in the steps above, you could start with introducing micro-automations. These Micro-automations introduced per step could include notification or SLA etc.
Phase 2- Analyze and automate process steps
You can now also start rethinking customer-facing and internal processes to create a digital experience.
There are many ways to optimize a process, but the goals the same: reduce waste & delays, improve transparency, and provide convenient online channels to everyone. Here are some things to consider while consider how could you potentially improve the experience met out in the CJM stages which affect the customer experience the maximum.
Customer Touch points: Are the touch points the right touch points for the kinds of interactions you have with your customer? Can the customer seamlessly switch from one touchpoint to the other? How much work does each touchpoint require the customer? Which one is most convenient in terms of time, accessibility, and effort to the customer?
Employee Tools: Is there a single point of reference for a customer or a customer interaction (an order, a support ticket, etc.) that your employees can access? How is the hand-over of information (from one department to another) done right now and how can it be improved? Are employees well-trained to facilitate customer interactions in the customer touch points? How can response times be made faster? Are employees able to work from anywhere or do they have to be physically at the office?
Business Rules: Are these rules properly documented and easily accessible to relevant employees? How can you “codify” these rules? Which of these rules can be automated, and which ones require human intervention? Do some of these rules make the customer’s life unnecessarily harder by causing delays, confusion, additional work?
Integration: What are the current software systems in place? Who currently have access to them and for what purpose? Are they built in-house or built by a 3rd party? Do they run on a web browser/cloud or are they installed in a laptop/desktop computer and accessed from an on-premise server? Do they have APIs or connectors in place?
The actionable steps that you might undertake to analyze process steps and automate routine ones include:
Use the process analysis reports in the dashboard to observe the average cycle time, the cycle time per lane, customer satisfaction report per process to identify potential areas of improvements.
Consider streamlining process through elimination of any steps that do not add value.
Next you could look to automate rule driven steps through ‘Jobs’. Additionally it should also allow for automated 24*7 processing and eliminate errors and omissions from human operations.
Repeat the above steps (Steps 1 and 2) on a regular basis and observe improvements in customer satisfaction as well as growth in revenue and profitability.
Phase 3- Create stakeholder access to processes
Providing self-service options to the stakeholders would allow them to feel that they are in control of any situation. They can raise requests, communicate with the technicians or help desk without having to wait over a customer support call, provide feedback after a service request has been attended to. More than just that, the self-service option would provide your organization with multiple insights about the their behavior which you could potentially use for cross-selling or upselling opportunities.
The final step in this journey would be to empower stakeholders with the ability to interact with your organization in ways they could have never imagined. This would be providing self-service options to customers and other stakeholders (vendors, suppliers and partners). There are various ways in which you could empower your customers with the self-service options: web widget, portal, mobile app, chatbot or plugins.
The actionable steps that you might undertake this step include:
Select from web widget, portal, mobile app, chatbot and e-commerce plugin wizard.
Follow instructions according to the wizard – either to add a script to your website, or to upload customized app to the App Store, or build a chatbot extension.
Make your customers aware of the new ways they can avail of your products and services directly and improve their preferred mode of interaction (outside of QuickReach activity).
By following the steps listed above, companies can more efficiently deliver higher service volumes, freeing up funds to reinvest in growth areas. Taking out operational costs and improving the customer experience become two sides of the same coin. Companies can attain both goals by reducing bad or avoidable volume; offering more self-service options for basic transactions, which customers actually want; and rationalizing the product architecture and mix.
These steps lead to a better experience, which accelerates revenues through greater customer loyalty and eventually a larger share of wallet.
QuickReach No-Code MRO: Templatizing Your Way to Digital Transformation
A great way to start with digital transformation for your maintenance, repair, and operations would be the templates available on QuickReach Platform. These templates could be customized to suit the unique processes of your organization and by a visual drag and drop interface, you can use it to build applications to ensure that once your core systems are in place, they could be used to ensure that your organization is building an interoperable digital ecosystem, for no additional cost. With exhaustive templates catering to all aspects of your MRO - Work order management, Inventory management, Preventive maintenance, reporting and dashboards, requisition and procurement and AI based predictive maintenance, QuickReach ensures that you are set up relatively easily for passing the benefits of digitalization to your employees and stakeholders.
Are you still on the fence to explore how QuickReach No-Code MRO suite could benefit your organization ?
Start by scheduling a free demo of the QuickReach MRO suite here to understand how your organization might benefit from a solution which is customizable to your unique requirements and gets you set up for any technological metamorphosis in the future.