Last week, I went with my wife to buy her a new car. We planned to pay part of the price with our current SUV. We were attended by a nice salesman, he explained the characteristics of the car, we drove the car in a test drive and executed all the normal steps that should make the experience of buying a new car a pleasant and happy one.
However, near the close of the deal (actually, we gave some money in advance to secure the model we wanted…), we were directed to the "used cars manager” to offer him our used SUV. At this point, because of "their established process" the customer experience started to go south. We were asked to give them our used SUV and the property documentation, and "hopefully" they will pay us the price in a term of "near" 5 days. It meant that:
- We don´t have nor our car neither the property documentation (with all the security issues you may imagine)
- We have to pray (or “trust them because they are a big company” as the manager said…) that they pay us in the expected term
- We don´t have a car until they pay us. So we have to stop doing our normal life because of that.
The excuses were based on "their internal processes and to comply with recent regulations”. We asked to other dealers (just to check...), and they told us that we will give our used car and at the same time, we will receive the new one after we pay the difference. So, this a case were the "process" ruined the "customer experience".
What I learned is that, especially for front-office processes, we have to start with the design of the Customer Experience, then the Services we will provide to our Customers, and then (finally…) the Capabilities required, which imply the Processes, People and Organization required to serve our customers.
We will talk about that in other post, but for now, I will share some links that may help you to start designing starting with the Customer Experience:
- How to map and study Customer Journey? http://klou.tt/i3bbdqcyu8tl
- 5 Tips For Building Great Customer Journey Maps http://klou.tt/1708nirs1zr8i
- Build your Product around your Client http://klou.tt/12tb86trimq12
(More links in my twitter: @abauza)
