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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.

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Isolate exceptions

Design business processes for typical cases and isolate exceptional cases from the normal flow

Fail Early

Order knock-outs by least effort and highest termination probability first.

Green Compensation

Start implementing actions that can offset or counterbalance the environmental effects generated by business processes that cannot be changed.

Offer location flexibility

Let customers interact with the company wherever they want to

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

Preference-based task assignment

Let people do what they love to do

Cost-based task assignment

Delegate tasks according to resource cost

Teamwork-based assignment

Allocate task based on collaborative experience: handover time, interactions, diversity

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Offer temporal flexibility

Let customers interact with your organization whenever they want to.

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