One of the most pressing and crucial issues impacting SA businesses is the gap between the sales/marketing promise and the operational delivery i.e. the customer service experience. This gulf between the front-office and back-end of the business often results in a customer journey that is inconsistent, inefficient, and often extremely frustrating for customers.

The truth is that the people doing the work in the back-office lack the context to provide good customer service—they simply do not understand how their business process impacts on the customer’s experience. And yet there is a significant opportunity to improve customer service performance by aligning the back office people and processes with those staff who are positioned in the front line.

A clear cut solution would be a cross-functional approach to designing business processes so that they take on an integrated approach to training workers across different business functions. A further tip is to build interactive support tools into the systems they use every day so that they can access contextual help and guidance when they need it. The content should be scenario-based and presented in an easy to digest graphical format such as infographics.

Once workers have a sound, holistic understanding of how the business as a whole operates and how their role impacts the customer experience, they will be better equipped to ensure optimal customer outcomes.