Setting the stage for great customer experiences though excellence in operations
06 January, 2023Customer experience has become the guiding light for businesses. However, the biggest factor impacting the customer experience is not necessarily front-line employees or the last-touch customer-facing applications — it is operational systems buried a few layers down in the enterprise architecture. So, essentially great customer experiences are a result of operational excellence and companies have begun to drive competitive advantage by taking a holistic view of their operations, processes and data.
To gain from the insights of industry leaders and their experiences with streamlining operation as the starting point to delivering an exceptional customer experience, ServiceNow in partnership with Forbes India hosted a Round Table discussion. The panel comprised thought-leaders, predominantly from the healthcare space, including Karthik Rajagopal, COO, Manipal Health Enterprises; Viren Shetty, COO & Vice Chairman, Narayana Health; Dr Sundar Narsimhan, SVP - Operations and Supply Chain, Neuland Laboratories; Krishna Prasad, VP Operations, Suguna Foods and Rubal Sahni, Regional Director, ServiceNow.
Setting the context for the discussions ahead, Rubal Sahni shared his thoughts on how operational excellence and customer experience two ends of the same thread. In the race to capture the loyalty and recall of customers, companies are recognizing the importance of delivering an experience that makes them stand out from the competition.
Coming from different segments of the healthcare sector, with unique offerings and customer asks, each of the panellists narrated their journeys of enhancing CX.
Karthik Rajagopal explained how Manipal Health Enterprises deployed new-age technologies and tools to improve interactions between patients and healthcare providers.
Offering a more macro perspective, Viren Shetty talked about how the hassle-free accessing and sharing of health records digitally though Ayushman Bharat Health Account would bring in operational efficiencies for healthcare service providers.
Extending the argument, in an era where currently, data related to tests, treatments, scripts sit in isolation from each other, Dr Sundar Narsimhan explored the IT solutions that would be needed to merge and integrate data, elaborating on the synergies that would emerge from such an exercise.
ServiceNow’s Rubal Sahni explained that supporting an omni-channel journey would require streamlining operations. Against that backdrop, he delved into how an enterprise could go about rationalizing data points across channels and derive a cohesive workflow within the organization.
While automation and the use of bots are gaining popularity as means of enhancing operational efficiency, and thereby CX, it can sometimes create a disconnect with the customer if not executed in the right context. Krishna Prasad offered his insights on how businesses could go about making interactions between customers and bots more convenient and easier by building systems and processes that innately empathize with customer needs and deliver a frictionless experience to every customer.
On a different note, Rubal Sahni pointed out that as today’s customers demand customization and personalization, it could present challenges to the standardised operations of an organization. He went on to discuss some key tenets that could strike the right balance between deriving excellence in operations while simultaneously delivering customization and standardization.
Before the deliberations concluded, everyone at the round table offered their suggestions on how the operations of an enterprise could be synchronized to deliver a seamless yet differentiated CX.