How BPM Can Help Keep Your Customers Happy

Recently having had yet another bad customer service experience, I am inspired to talk about the importance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Businesses of all types need to have a comprehensive approach to managing customers, their inquiries, their transactions, and concerns.  Good customer relationships are essential for success and growth today more than ever.

It’s common today to find that companies are organized into silos be they departmental, service, and/or information based. Companies that don’t have the ability to seamlessly connect these various silos often find themselves with serious customer service issues. In my latest run in with Company Z, if they would have implemented a more comprehensive CRM system backed by BPM, they could have avoided the issues that led to what I’m sure is yet another unhappy customer.

You see, BPM supports and advances the effectiveness of CRM in several ways:

• First of all, it connects business silos that are responsible for providing the customer with answers and service, enabling fluid communication within the organization.
• Fluid communication gives a company greater visibility into tasks and activities that have either been completed or require follow up attention.
• Even if different silos use different systems, a BPMS has the ability to integrate these various systems allowing access to important customer information and the ability to auto populate information fields. (Seriously, is there anything more annoying than having to recite the same information over and over as you get transferred from department to department when you’re already not happy? )
• BPM enables information to be sent down multiple process paths synchronously or asynchronously at desired points to optimize the total time is takes to complete the process.
• BPM provides businesses with the ability to automate processes such as document creation and email notifications that are sent to customers or other departments, whether they are confirmations, information, etc.
• Finally, BPM provides the ability to track transaction status and the actions taken as they relate to customers to ensure that concerns are adequately being followed up with.

Customers determine whether businesses live or die. Thus, I can’t say enough about the importance of maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty. Is your company actively following up with customer service requests and doing all that it can to keep customers happy?  Remember, a happy customer may only tell one other person about their good experience, but an unhappy customer will tell everyone they know.  Which do you prefer to have!

Agility BPM, Business Process Management

Written by: Karie Barrett |