Think ‘process work’ is stodgy and bureaucratic? I’ll challenge you to see it as the secret cornerstone of exceptional customer experiences.

Let’s talk about a term that’s become almost taboo in some circles: process. Yes, that “dirty word” that, mention it in the wrong company, and you might as well have confessed to hating puppies. In my two decades of navigating the corporate seas, I’ve seen firsthand how the mere mention of process work can send a shiver down the spine of even the most stoic operations team. It’s a peculiar phenomenon, considering that processes are the skeleton upon which businesses hang their promises to customers.

Take a moment to consider the irony here. In our quest for division and specialisation, we’ve segmented our organisations into silos that often lose sight of the overarching goal: delivering stellar customer experiences. I once worked for a global organisation where, in a moment of what I assume was bureaucratic madness (or par for the course depending on how you see it), CX and process work were cleaved apart like some ill-fated Shakespearean romance.

The reasoning? Process work was deemed too “back office” or too technical with applications being integrated and not sufficiently customer-centric—a perspective as fascinating as it is flawed. Having sailed the oceans of process, service design, and CX, I’ve yet to meet anyone in the process domain who isn’t deeply committed to customer satisfaction. After all, if a process doesn’t ultimately serve the customer, what’s the point?

My musings on this topic were sparked over coffee with a friend, so it felt appropriate to use a restaurant analogy to depict the folly of what was happening. Through organisation design decisions we’d separated menu design (read: CX) from the ability to actually deliver the dishes (process work). What’s the use of a redesigned menu if the kitchen lacks the means to bring these culinary visions to life? This disconnect is detrimental to value creation.

And don’t get me started on the trend of digitalisation for its own sake. Being nudged towards an app to order a simple coffee, entering details more suited to a medical exam than a caffeine fix, feels less like progress and more like an obstacle course between the customer and their desired experience.

I can see a situation where, let’s call it CX is a separate function but it would only be if they were obsessed and specialised in research, analysis and hypotheses testing to feed these insights to the “process folks”. Like an essential connection to the ever changing operating environment to enable the process folks to make better decisions about how to enhance the customer experience

Organisations balance exploration and exploitation. The money today is usually in exploitation which for most places hinges on being able to deliver on a promise again and again to the same level of quality. For most organisation this is through process, one way or another Depending on the context the granularity of required process specification and level of step by step adherence will differ and that must of course the accounted for.

Yet, it’s not all doom and gloom. The evolution from rigid to adaptive process design, embracing flexibility and acknowledging the vast grey areas of operation, offers a beacon of hope. Adaptive case management has been around for a long time and we can take a less myopic focus on defining processes to the nth degree to show a path forward where a balance between efficiency and customer-centricity can coexist.

Here’s where we circle back to the crux of the matter: value. Whether a process impacts the customer directly or operates in the realm of compliance, its ultimate measure is the value it delivers—both to the customer and to the business. This brings us to the strategic principle of the “critical few,” where not all processes are created equal in their impact on customer satisfaction. Identifying and prioritising these key processes is where the true art of business strategy lies.

As we stand at the crossroads of tradition and innovation in process design, the mandate is clear. We must champion a holistic approach that recognises the intrinsic link between effective process management and unparalleled customer experiences. It’s time for businesses to take a hard look at their processes, asking not just how they can be more efficient and effective, but how they can more dynamically serve the beating heart of any business—the customer.

Innovative products like Apromore and Capsifi will no doubt tap into ways to utilise AI combined with some human ingenuity and creativity to reshape how we approach process management and business architecture in general in different ways, no doubt with a speeds that we now will think are impossible.

In the end, the message is simple yet profound: the future belongs to those who can reimagine process work as an integral, vibrant part of delivering exceptional customer experiences. Nobody should put process in the corner thinking it’s not integral to CX outcomes, lift her out and up in the air.

What’s your experience? Is process a dirty word in your organisation? Is it relegated to the corner or out on the dance floor?