Investing money and time in a workflow solution holds the promise of significant value. However, if you have not utilized a workflow software solution in the past, you may be asking yourself: What benefits should I expect to gain from a workflow solution, and how can I make the right investment and deliver ROI? To help you think about this, in this series of blogs we’ll discuss five things you should consider. Previously we discussed increasing employee morale. Next, enhancing customer experience.
There are times when I reflect on the effort exerted into winning over the girl of my dreams (now my wife of over 20 years) as a metaphor to customer experience. In the case of my wife, there was much strategy involving flowers, poetry, special group dates, adventures, and so forth. My aim was to delight her and exceed her expectations so that she would want to stick around. As we consider our clients, we also want them to be delighted and for our client-vendor partnership to become something special — a long-lasting business relationship. To do this, we need to delight our customers by always delivering and even exceeding their expectations with “something more.” While a workflow solution is not romantic (to most), smooth-running workflow is one of the key ingredients that will help you delight your customers.
I recall a situation where a firm was hired to fix serious employee health and safety compliance issues in order to help their client meet government-mandated regulations. On the day they signed the contract, their client was grateful and eager to have their problems solved. The problems were soon fixed and subsequently managed on an ongoing basis. Over time the client soon forgot about the pain, the misery, and the looming regulatory fines. Some years later, the client asked the service provider, “Why are we paying you so much money?” In this moment, the client has lost sight of the value proposition so clearly understood at the start of the relationship. In response to the question, the service provider quickly generated reports from the workflow solution that documented the delivery of value through day-to-day tasks that were completed over the course of the engagement. The time, the effort, the details, the value invested into the work, it was all there! It was like customer-service poetry, they shared with me! When their client was able to see the empirical evidence, (very much like the moment my wife first realized I understood her perspective on life) the conversation quickly turned to “Thank you for keeping us safe and in calm waters, I’d like to renew for another year”. The empirical evidence organically gathered by an effective workflow solution serves to reinforce the value in a customer’s mind. Delight comes not just from having your expectations met and exceeded, but from when you can see that value being delivered.
Your workflow solution should delight your customers by:
- Ensuring fast response times.
- Ensuring exceptional customer experiences where every detail is tracked and delivered as expected.
- Ensuring effective two-way client communications and automatic artifact preservation.
- Increasing your client’s confidence that your organization is well organized, and their data is securely managed.
Next up in this series we’ll discuss how workflow solutions can drive competitive advantage.
Carl serves as a HighGear pre-sales engineer, where he passionately builds custom no-code solutions and delivers personalized product demos for customers to understand the power of our no-code workflow platform. He delights in dazzling new customers with HighGear’s process management nirvana and helping them see the transformative potential of building their own workflow solutions.
