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Offer location flexibility

Let customers interact with the company wherever they want to

Frank, L., Poll, R., Röglinger, M., & Lea, R. (2020). Design heuristics for customer-centric business processes. Business Process Management Journal, 26(6)

Description

Rather than confining engagement to specific physical locations, organizations must embrace a customer-centric approach by designing business processes that empower customers to choose where and how they interact, regardless of the organization's office or branch locations. By granting customers the freedom to determine the interaction setting, companies can foster a seamless and personalized experience, nurturing stronger connections and driving business growth.

Companies should not restrict their interactions with customers to distinct physical locations. Instead, business processes should be designed such that customers can decide themselves where interactions take place, regardless of the location of the organization’s offices or branches.

Real-world application

Nextbike enables renting bicycles in large cities. Unlike other providers, bicycles can be rented and returned not only at specific stations but also in socalled flex zones, i.e. on public roads. This allows customers to arrive close to their final destination even though there is no nextbike station.

Selected source. This heuristic has been derived from Bohmova et al. (2016).

Performance considerations

Individuated interaction capability, empowered interaction capability, concerted interaction capability.

Discussion

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Foundational free Patterns

Deploy extra resources

If capacity is insufficient, consider increasing the available number of resources

Apply Integral technology

Elevate physical constraints by applying new technology

Establish standardized interfaces

Consider a standardized interface with customers and partners

Minimize numerical involvement

Too many cooks spoil the broth

Resequence activities

Move activities to more appropriate places

Offer temporal flexibility

Let customers interact with your organization whenever they want to.

Generalize your process

Explore whether a process can easily be used for additional products or services

Task delegation

Reassign tasks along the organisational hierarchy

Quality-based task assignment

Allocate task based on past feedback or quality metrics

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Offer temporal flexibility

Let customers interact with your organization whenever they want to.

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