Customer-centric service review

WCL has a reputation for bringing fresh thinking and innovation to service review and design - whether front-line delivery services or back-office services - we have worked with many organisations in the not-for-profit sector to improve service performance and customer experience using a highly engaging approach to work closely alongside service delivery teams - the real experts - to (re-) design services that delight and provide a seamless journey for users, customers and supporters, whilst minimising gaps and overlaps in the organisation of service teams.

 

Starting from the perspective of the customer/user ensures services are designed with customers at the centre and the organisation is aligned and focused to give the best possible experience to its customers. Where multiple ‘customers’ exist, we recommend initially creating separate journey maps and later comparing these to identify synergies.

 

We base our projects on our five-stage review process:

 

Getting up to speed- understanding the service outcomes, customers, patterns of use, customer feedback; and the capability of the service delivery team, costs, and context,

 

Customer journey - a customer- centric review examines and defines the user experience and seeks opportunities to delight customers. Working with members of the delivery team in a highly engaging workshop approach, this stage documents the service life-cycle, i.e. how the service is discovered, commissioned, used, and ended – working from a user perspective to develop a picture of the user journey and user experience, identifying ‘moments of truth’ where customers can be delighted (or can be let-down),

 

Mapping and alignment – with delivery team experts, we map service delivery functions to the user journeys and identify gaps, duplication, and areas of under- and over-delivery, understand pressure points, and identify opportunities for innovative delivery approaches and possible digital solutions. If appropriate, we segment users to determine how the journey differs for higher-need users compared with those who may be more able to self-serve – in this way the team can consider differentiating service delivery functions to efficiently meet user need. We aim to use existing data where it is available, and augment this with user-journey mapping workshops,

 

Business processes - a high-level business process review documents the key steps of service delivery, highlighting excellent practice as well as resolving issues such as errors and delays. This stage can also identify key performance metrics to track and improve service delivery and can identify repetitive or low-skill tasks that can be considered for automation or that may be better delivered by a partner. Importantly, our workshop approach provides an opportunity to involve key individuals in redesigning processes and in identifying performance and organisational health metrics, ensuring a good understanding of the improvements needed and setting the foundations for later changes,

 

Spans and layers - In the light of customer mapping and business process reviews, we are able to work alongside senior leaders to review team spans and layers – defining the current role types (e.g. strategic, coaching, coordinating, operational etc) to inform decisions on the optimal number of direct reports to optimise team sizes and make the best use of leaders’ and managers’ time. At the same time, an analysis of delegated authorities and decision-making levels will inform decisions on the optimal number of management layers that minimise overlap and duplication, and simplify decision making processes.