Web Enabled Customer Support - Self-Service Business Processes

Web Enabled Customer Support:

As businesses offer new products and services in new ways and to new markets, they need to integrate people into flexible, reusable and semi-automated processes-rather than rigid, fully automated processes-to keep the business running efficiently and effectively. Web enabled customer support with even some straight-through processes that at first seem to have predictive outcomes repeatedly sprout up in customer call centers or an executive's e-mail inbox because clients do not conform to the business's original view of the process. The business categorizes this as an escalation of web enabled customer support. The person who has to resolve the issue mentally files it in their "grief folder."

There are many explanations for why this phenomenon is so prevalent, not least of which is the disconnect between business units and IT's developer teams. The good news is that new technology is available to help solve these problems. What is most compelling is that it leverages the most cost-effective and user-friendly environment available: existing web sites.

Barriers to Web-Enabling Self-Service Business Processes:

The cost benefits of transitioning manual processes to the web are well-understood and well-documented. Many web sites offer transactional self-service capabilities web enabled customer support, such as online purchasing or bill-pay, showing tremendous ROI and efficiency gains. However, very few organizations have web-enabled more business processes, such as product returns or bill disputes. This is because the more complex business processes are not easily packaged into applications or reusable sample code.

Until now, web-enabling complex business processes required strong executive buy-in and organizational commitment because they required custom-coding. Custom-coding (with and without graphical studio toolkits) requires that:

1 The business user has to clearly articulate what is needed.

2 The development team has to prioritize, negotiate and manage multiple business requests.

3 The development team has to be competent in object-oriented programming and capable of grasping underlying business drivers.

Today, however, high-quality infrastructure is available at low-or no-cost, allowing software vendors to focus on developing web enabled self-service frameworks that give more control to business, and therefore derive more value. This white paper presents examples that will inspire business process owners to think about ways they can exploit the web for their own businesses. The paper concludes with some key requirements to consider in your quest to web enabled solutions to business processes.

As you read this paper, think of situations in which web enabled customer support will allow people you work with either do not understand a process, must make subjective decisions in a vacuum, or are simply unaccountable for delivering business value. Instead of taking people out of the loop through rigid automation, think of the business benefits of engaging and empowering people to make better decisions.