Determine who interacts with your workflow
Posted: Sun May 25, 2025 7:14 am
To automate successfully, you need to account for all the people who will interact with a customer service workflow across the front, middle, and back office. The front office includes all customer-facing departments. The middle and back include any other departments that aren’t customer-facing but need to support service, like contracts or order fulfillment (middle), or legal, compliance, and finance (back). Take these into account:
Each person’s role in the process. Are they interacting directly with the customer (front office) or doing something behind the scenes, like approving a warranty claim? Also consider people who don’t necessarily need to take action, but might want (or need) to be notified, such as a manufacturing product manager who needs to keep tabs on return rates, or a vice president who needs to approve exceptions to actions outside of the established process flow.
The departments where process stakeholders work. Depending on the situation, many different departments may need to contribute to a service process. For example, stakeholders from the contracts team might need to approve a warranty claim. Finance might need to step in to handle a question on an auto loan. Be sure to have a afghanistan phone number list clear understanding of how people in these departments like to work and how they prioritize service requests.
Communication and notification preferences. How do each of these stakeholders wish to be contacted, and with what frequency and urgency? Make note of each team and individual’s preference for contact via email, chat, instant messenger, or within your CRM system.
The systems they use and the screens they interact with. How do various stakeholders engage with the information they need to complete their role in the process? Take the case of the broken refrigerator as an example. The fulfillment team may use an order management application to ship parts, a third-party repair service may use its own application to book appointments, and the service team may use its CRM system. Users are most efficient in their go-to systems and most-used screens. A new application or Alt+Tabs between apps could add friction to the process right when the goal is to streamline customer service operations.
One of automation’s primary benefits is to make it easier for people to efficiently do their jobs. Understanding how they interact with the process you want to automate is a critical step.
Each person’s role in the process. Are they interacting directly with the customer (front office) or doing something behind the scenes, like approving a warranty claim? Also consider people who don’t necessarily need to take action, but might want (or need) to be notified, such as a manufacturing product manager who needs to keep tabs on return rates, or a vice president who needs to approve exceptions to actions outside of the established process flow.
The departments where process stakeholders work. Depending on the situation, many different departments may need to contribute to a service process. For example, stakeholders from the contracts team might need to approve a warranty claim. Finance might need to step in to handle a question on an auto loan. Be sure to have a afghanistan phone number list clear understanding of how people in these departments like to work and how they prioritize service requests.
Communication and notification preferences. How do each of these stakeholders wish to be contacted, and with what frequency and urgency? Make note of each team and individual’s preference for contact via email, chat, instant messenger, or within your CRM system.
The systems they use and the screens they interact with. How do various stakeholders engage with the information they need to complete their role in the process? Take the case of the broken refrigerator as an example. The fulfillment team may use an order management application to ship parts, a third-party repair service may use its own application to book appointments, and the service team may use its CRM system. Users are most efficient in their go-to systems and most-used screens. A new application or Alt+Tabs between apps could add friction to the process right when the goal is to streamline customer service operations.
One of automation’s primary benefits is to make it easier for people to efficiently do their jobs. Understanding how they interact with the process you want to automate is a critical step.