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Offer temporal flexibility

Let customers interact with your organization whenever 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

Companies should analyze at which times customers want to get in touch and adjust their business processes accordingly. From a customer perspective, the implementation of this heuristic will be perceived as the possibility to interact with the company whenever customers want.

Real-world application

The grocery store REWE extended its opening hours until late in the evening, as its customers prefer to do their shopping after work. In addition, the call center of National Bank, which is responsible for blocking credit cards, is available 24/7, as in the case of a lost or stolen credit card customers expect immediate assistance. In case no employee is available, a phone service or chatbot can be used.

Selected source. This heuristic has been derived from Strohle et al. (2018).

Performance considerations

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

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Foundational free Patterns

Appoint case managers

Assign a responsible individual for handling each case type

Work in customer teams

Form cross-department teams for end-to-end case handling.

Deploy extra resources

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

Fail Early

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

Resequence activities

Move activities to more appropriate places

Offer location flexibility

Let customers interact with the company wherever they want to

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

Department-based assignment

Distribute tasks by interdepartmental interactions to enable or restrict involvement

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Offer location flexibility

Let customers interact with the company wherever they want to

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