Customer Experience Archives - USC Consulting Group

The idea of scaling your business can be both exciting and overwhelming. All companies want to excel, but not every leader knows the most efficient techniques for growth. Fortunately, you can maximize productivity, improve collaboration, and grow your business to the next level by optimizing time management strategies.

Optimizing Your Time to Grow Your Business

You could always use more time in your schedule to run your business. However, personal and professional time management is necessary to optimize and scale your business. It may not seem like a priority, but successful, efficient businesses become that way because those in charge practice optimal time management. Mastering this goal frees up more time to focus on growing your company.

Begin by setting both personal and professional goals, which helps you organize priorities and better manage your time. It also ensures a healthy work-life balance.

Once you are clear on your objectives, you can create timeframes for personal needs, like family time or fitness goals, and professional goals to expand your business. These tips will help you get more done in less time:

Embrace batch processing. This is a way to complete all software-managed tasks in regular sessions. For example, you can speed up your marketing efforts by mass-producing content and scheduling all your social media in one dedicated time block.
Automate business processes. Use software that runs mundane tasks more efficiently. It can take tasks like time-tracking, inventory management, and network monitoring off your hands while making them more secure.
Delegate your duties. As your business scales, you’ll need more help. Building a trusted team shifts duties, freeing your time to handle increased management responsibilities as your company grows.

By employing techniques that shave time off both mundane and critical tasks, you have more flexibility to focus on your business’ future. The next step in optimizing collaboration and time management is to assess your company’s needs.

Assessing Your Company’s Needs with Business Process Simulation

Assessing operations can be a complicated task. However, business process simulation can help you organize and prioritize all the data you need to plan for growth. It is a way to test out potential scenarios before they take place, saving you time and resources when scaling. This tool helps you plan resource allocation, build a visual overview of your operations, and test processes to resolve issues before they arise. It’s also an ideal tool for training staff without disrupting workflow.

There are five steps to a business process simulation:

Define what process you are simulating. For scalability, this may be a new product or service offering or a new way of engaging with customers.
Create a flowchart of business operations. For example, you can plot the customer buying experience, from sales engagement to final payment, to look for inefficiencies.
Run through the simulation. Make sure it flows as it would in real life, including all anticipated changes.
Assess the results. Check if they met expectations or if unexpected challenges arise.
Create changes based on results. Analyze the data and create processes and solutions to address the inefficiencies in your simulation.

This process will also help you discover challenges, such as workflow bottlenecks, to optimize collaboration. While it may take some time to run and analyze a business simulation, it will save you time, money, and resources compared to making an untested change in your business.

If you’re planning an important change such as reorganizing disparate teams to engage in cross-functional collaboration, your main concern here would be how much time it’s going to take. A consultant can help you run a simulation and analyze the potential time-spend for each step. Then, you can eliminate unnecessary steps or modify ones that are too time-intensive.

Effective Time Management Techniques for Scaling Your Business

We often think of time management as a tool strictly for personal use. However, you can deploy effective time management techniques on a company level to improve productivity and minimize downtime. Company time management options vary, depending on your industry. Traditional office operations can use scheduling software to coordinate online meetings with remote workers across different time zones. Employees can also coordinate recurring meetings with various stakeholders by creating a template programmed to add meeting members.

While efficiency in operations is crucial, maintaining customer satisfaction is necessary for growth. And there’s no more critical area in terms of time management than providing a stellar customer experience.

Optimizing the Customer Experience

As your company scales, you must ensure that quality and service are your top priorities. Efficient time management for customer service helps you to achieve that goal. Start by creating specific, measurable customer goals to help track your progress. As with the other areas already discussed, planning and prioritizing helps you to respond to their needs, simplifying procedures and eliminating distractions along the customer journey.

Artificial intelligence (AI) can also help you optimize the customer experience. For example, an AI-powered CRM tool can analyze customer data and provide insights and reports. It can learn customer preferences based on past touchpoints, thereby allowing your team to make recommendations. By automating the time-consuming data-crunching aspect, you give your team more time so they’re able to help the customer quickly and in meaningful ways. The faster your customers achieve their goals, the more satisfied they will be.

Additionally, AI chatbots can help your team schedule phone or video calls with customers. Incorporating scheduling tools and using advanced features also informs you of potential needs, for example, whether you have enough customer coverage or need to hire more hands. You’ll know exactly when to scale your organization, which can save you from making costly changes too quickly.

Optimizing time management strategies is an effective tool for scaling your business through collaboration. Consider the tips we’ve outlined above to get started today.

*This article is written by Ainsley Lawrence. View more of Ainsley’s articles here.

Supply chain technology has come a long way in the past few years. Improvements in AI technology and deep learning programs can help supply chain managers accurately predict shortages, adapt to current conditions, and operate more efficiently.

Supply chain technology can also be used to improve the customer journey. Effective supply chain management leverages the Internet of Things (IoT) to give consumers greater control over their orders. Emerging technology can also be used to reduce human error, increase operational efficiency, and improve security.

These breakthroughs in technology improve the customer experience and ensure that consumers get the products they want when they need them.

CX and SCM

At first glance, consumer experience (CX) and supply chain management (SCM) seem unrelated. However, as senior sales executive Sven Esser points out “the relationship between CX and SCM is symbiotic.”

Esser goes on to explain that effectively mapping the customer journey is an important facet of effective CX and SCM. Predicting consumer behavior ensures that supply chains are operating as efficiently as possible and that consumers have accurate information about shipping and order fulfillment before they check out.

Esser advocates for a model of SCM that gets to know consumers and uses AI analytics to accurately map and predict the typical consumer journey. This will help businesses connect with consumers’ personal needs and help supply chain managers shift to a more “customer-focused effort.”

Businesses can use AI analytics to map the consumer journey and improve their SCM through Google Analytics (GA4). GA4 is typically used by marketers who want to improve the materials. However, GA4 can also be used to track users from the referral page to the conversion or exit page.

Supply chain managers can work with marketing to get a better picture of the consumer journey and typical behavior. GA4 can be particularly useful for businesses that use the IoT to place orders or improve CX.

The IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is revolutionizing industries around the world. Consumers and businesses can use the IoT to link devices and create “smart” networks between products and machines.

The IoT can also improve the efficiency of supply chains by giving businesses an up-to-date assessment of inventory and potential problems. For example, a business that runs an IoT-integrated warehouse will be aware of issues like faulty equipment and disrupted supply lines earlier than competitors who do not leverage the IoT.

IoT-integrated supply chains can improve the consumer journey directly, too. IoT technology makes it easier for customers to place and edit orders. For example, folks who utilize smart home devices like Google Nest or Amazon’s Alexa can place and edit orders with a simple voice command.

Human Error

Emerging technology like AI software and the IoT is designed to improve operational efficiency and streamline the consumer journey. However, human error still threatens to derail business operations and supply chains.

Supply chain managers can reduce the risk of human error in the workplace by automating relevant processes. This is particularly important in warehouse management, where human error may result in injury due to repetitive motions or dangerous working conditions. Automated machines in smart factories and warehouses can take humans out of the firing line and ensure that customers have their orders fulfilled with minimal delays.

Supply chain technology can also improve post-sale communication with consumers. Consumers who have ordered expensive goods want regular updates on the status of their products. Businesses can send out automated emails when the customer’s product has passed production phases and is ready for shipping. Automated communication improves the customer journey by alleviating worries about order fulfillment without derailing operational efficiency.

Operational Efficiency

Operational efficiency is at the heart of a successful customer journey. Customers can tell when all departments are working in unison and will benefit from quicker order fulfillment due to higher efficiency in the workplace.

Maximizing operational efficiency is particularly important for businesses that use Just-in-time (JIT) inventory management. JIT inventory management relies on accurate consumer forecasts and robust supply chain management to ensure that businesses get the inventory they need just when they need it. This can result in major savings, which can be passed onto the consumer or used to otherwise improve the customer journey.

However, for inventory management methods like JIT to work, businesses need to hyperautomate their operations. Hyperautomation allows businesses to “rapidly identify, vet, and automate as many business and IT processes as possible.” Hyperautomation relies on deep learning programs that can successfully capture and utilize massive data sets. This will improve the customer journey, too, as the same data sets can be used to present personalized adverts and products to consumers.

Conclusion

Emerging technology like the IoT can have a direct impact on the customer journey. Consumers today can place, edit, and receive orders using a network of machines and devices that are connected by AI algorithms. Recent upgrades to supply chain technology can also improve operational efficiency and reduce the risk of human error in factories and warehouses. This ensures that consumers receive their orders with minimal delay and at a lower cost.

*This article is written by Ainsley Lawrence. View more of Ainsley’s articles here.

The 2010s are now a memory. Every decade has its fair share of ups and downs, but by most measures, this past decade was a good one for much of the country.

Granted, due to the Great Recession, the U.S. economy started out in a bit of a rough patch. However, thanks in part to regulatory changes and good old fashioned entrepreneurialism, the unemployment rate has reached record lows nationwide and extreme poverty globally is now in the single digits (8.6% from 18.2%, according to World Bank data).

“Operational excellence is the unyielding pursuit of greatness.”

There were many notable strides in the 2010s aside from sheer job growth. Such improvements were largely due to the role of operational excellence. Whether in terms of productivity, creativity or ingenuity, operational excellence is the unyielding pursuit of greatness, the constant and consistent refining of current processes in order to achieve a better outcome. According to polling conducted by the Institute for Operational Excellence, more than 70% of businesses professionals say OpEx is instilled in the very fabric of their company’s culture. Whether it’s business transformation, lean six sigma, process improvements or business process management, these methods are all designed to help businesses reach a little farther and dig a little deeper in terms of becoming better than they were yesterday, a month, or a year ago.

There are many ways to examine the OpEx lifecycle from 2010 to today, but perhaps the most salient examples are technological development, process management and ideologies, meaning the beliefs that help inform businesses’ strategy and understanding of what is the most important aspect of their operations. Here are a few examples from each category that show how the role of operational excellence has evolved over time.

Technology: Automated intelligence

Automation has changed the world in an extraordinary number of ways. From ubiquitous handheld technology, fast-food kiosks in restaurants and robotic installations in factory settings, automation today is everywhere. In the early 2000s, the share of new robot installations in hi-tech manufacturing rose 21% to a total of 21,000 worldwide, according to Oxford Economics. But by the mid-2010s, they grew an additional 31% to 91,000 in 2016.

What accounts for the surge? For starters, automation-related processes are not only better by today, but cheaper. As a result, more employees are working alongside robotics in order to manufacture and deliver products quicker and more efficiently. Much of this is attributable to growth and development in technological improvements in things like machine learning.

Karen Hao of MIT Technology Review wrote in 2018 that were it not for machine learning, many of the artificial intelligence advancements — such as viewing recommendations on Netflix or “fill in the blank” search suggestions on Google — would have stalled.

“Machine learning has enabled near-human and even superhuman abilities in transcribing speech from voice, recognizing emotions from audio or video recordings, as well as forging handwriting or video,” Hao explained, as quoted by Popular Mechanics.

While some presidential hopefuls and economists warn of significant job losses posed by automation, only 27% of respondents are worried about such a scenario affecting them, according to polling conducted by CNBC and Survey Monkey. This may be a function of employers retraining employees and repositioning them in roles where their skills can be better leveraged and in a better position for the company to achieve operational excellence.

Processes: Change management

In order to achieve results and get to a better place, change may be necessary. By its very nature, change is difficult, but in order to move forward, develop and learn from previous mistakes, structural or process-related changes may be required.

The roots of change management trace back to the early-to-mid 20th century from thought pioneers like Arnold van Gennep and Kurt Lewin. The last 10 years or so has resulted in change management taking on a life of its own, as not only have most businesses heard of the term, they’ve refined the process so whole-scale changes are less drastic.

“Change management is best accomplished through evolutionary changes.”

As noted by Oracle Technical Program Manager Burhan Syed, this has come from a greater focus on implementing evolutionary changes rather than revolutionary, using a more methodical, incremental approach versus those that are all at once. Today, change management is a process-related strategy as well as a profession, as companies hire individuals or operations management consultants to lead these sweeping efforts. Regardless of who pilots them, leadership is key.

“Leaders need to understand that their management styles must be able to adapt to the nuances of championing organizational change,” Syed wrote.

Ideology: Customer experience

While many would argue that the customer experience is every bit as important today as it was in 2010, few can deny the extent to which its become a singular focus. This is largely due to a greater number of companies vying over a smaller pool of consumers, so they must distinguish themselves to earn their loyalty. When it comes to measuring the success of improvements efforts, the third most common response among business owners point to is customer satisfaction, the Institute for Operational Excellence found.

Connie Moore of the Digital Clarity Group points to organizational change management, innovation, “outside the box” thinking and analytics as some of the key drivers to improving and refining the customer experience on an ongoing basis.

What will be the key takeaways in the 2020s and beyond? Time will tell, but you can make the decade a successful one by working with USC Consulting Group. From asset utilization to productivity improvements, sales effectiveness to cycle time reduction, we can help you achieve operational excellence so your greatest challenges in 2019 become your biggest strengths in the days ahead. Contact us to learn more.

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