Superior Customer Experience Goes Beyond Business Process Management
Customers expect quick, convenient and hassle-free interactions with companies in the digital age—from buying the product or service, using it, paying for it and resolving any problems. They want brands to know them and understand their needs.
Many businesses use business process management (BPM) to automate internal processes and workflows, improving efficiency and reducing costs. While it can speed up some of the internal processes that influence customer experience (CX), such as loan approval, BPM doesn’t provide the customer-centric, personalized approach needed to improve CX throughout the customer journey. To truly understand and meet customer needs, businesses must implement customer journey management .
What Is Business Process Management?
Business process management refers to analyzing, modeling, designing and optimizing end-to-end business processes to achieve organizational goals. BPM uses several technologies—such as artificial intelligence (AI)-powered decisioning, workflow automation and robotic process automation—to simplify and automate daily operations. BPM also improves the efficiency, effectiveness and agility of tasks and processes that are ongoing, often repeated and/or predictable. For example, banks use BPM and robotic process automation to improve the efficiency of processes such as accounts payable, mortgage loan processing, account closure and credit card processing.
Limitations of BPM
BPM is business-centric, not customer-centric
BPM doesn’t account for the customers’ context, needs, preferences, perspectives and intent. It can improve the mortgage loan approval process, but by itself it cannot determine when or even ask why the consumer stops completing the mortgage application. Nor can it send a message (via the consumer’s preferred communication channel) reminding them to finish and submit the application. BPM by nature is designed to be back-office, and it lacks a customer-facing engagement capability designed to combine the context of “in the moment engagement” that a customer expects.
BPM applies to predictable, linear processes
Its methodology doesn’t work as well for the less-predictable, non-linear path customers follow during their interactions with a brand. Today’s customer journeys rarely lead directly from seeing an ad, going to the store, and purchasing the product. Customers may take many, varied steps (that often loop back on each other) between awareness and purchase. They may view social media ads, place an item in the shopping cart, browse other companies’ websites, abandon the cart, complete the purchase a few days later, call to check on delivery status, and then return the item when it doesn’t fit.