Customer Centric Processes for an Awesome UX

All processes within a company have the potential to impact customer experience. However far removed from the customer you perceive a process to be, there is a snowball effect for employees’ (and suppliers’ and partners’) behaviors that can eventually permeate end-users.

Customer-facing employees are only as effective as the rest of the company enables them to be. And customers learn the truth about a company’s customer-centricity as soon as they voice a challenge they’ve encountered in making your product or service work for them. Do all your policies and processes really support superior customer experience?

Boeing’s Airlift & Tanker (A&T) Division has excelled in optimizing customer experience through customer-centric processes. As a winner of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, Boeing A&T was recognized for process improvements that yielded a ten-fold increase in customers’ ratings of Boeing A&T as “exceptional” over a three-year period.

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To earn this massive gain in customer enthusiasm, cycle time was cut by 80% and efficiency improved by 70%. During that period, net asset turnover improved by a factor of seven, and return on sales nearly tripled. Supplier on-time delivery increased from 76% to 99.8%, and A&T’s on-time delivery to the U.S. Air Force was sustained at 100% for three years during this initiative. These achievements by integrated product teams, functional teams, and self-directed teams increased revenue per employee by 60%.

Customer-centric processes are the best strategy for achieving stellar customer experience. A study by the London School of Economics examined the revenue gains by increasing positive word-of-mouth and by reducing negative word-of-mouth. They found that reducing negative buzz pays off 300% over improving positive buzz. Negative buzz is caused by mis-alignment of products, services, policies and processes with customer priorities. Make sure your policies and processes are indeed customer-centric for the best business results.