The ideal processes usually evolve serendipitously over a period of time. There are times, however, when external triggers dictate process transformation such as customer dissatisfaction-led business losses and the need for significant cost reduction.
The long-life cycle of process transformation and maturity for complex customer service processes can be shortened using modern methods and tools such as design thinking. By taking an innovative approach and methodology, design thinking can help organizations develop the right processes from the get go, rather than after tribulation.
It is a stakeholder-oriented team approach for understanding the problem space by researching users in their persona and context, challenging assumptions and defining the right problems. The design basis envisages the “first-time-right” approach.
There are other modern methods alongside design thinking that help develop processes such as user interface (UI), user experience (UX) design or gaming theory. Design thinking, as exemplified in Figure 1 below, best fits the bill, as it is all-encompassing and exhaustive in developing transformative processes.
Figure 1: Developing transformative processes through design thinking
Source: Interaction Design Foundation
Two examples from my professional experience highlight the importance of design thinking to businesses. Years back, without any formal knowledge of it, I unwittingly used some of its elements, resulting in revolutionary cost reduction and evolutionary business increase at telecom organization Reliance Communications, an ADAG company.
How we used design thinking to achieve substantial business growth
About 16 years ago, Reliance launched internet services and this brought about the need to address various internet abuse issues from a law enforcement perspective. There were a number of regulatory internet spam monitoring agencies working on 24/7 basis to trap spamming IPs.
When a spamming IP was detected, the whole IP subnet would be invalidated by the monitoring agencies and would remain under close surveillance for the next few hours before they could be revalidated. This meant hundreds of thousands of innocent customers using the IPs from the affected subnets could not gain access to internet services for a while.
A 24/7 monitoring process was immediately put in place by the business process outsourcing (BPO) department. The solution was to identify invalidated subnets and inform the telecom network team, who would then remove the affected subnets and replace them with fresh ones, albeit at an additional cost of procuring more IPs.
Although the process developed led to a solution, it was less than an optimal one, full of manual interventions. We decided to move to a collaborative approach which involved all of process stakeholders with a user-centric focus. This co-creative participation induced extensive research, pain areas-focused problem definition and out-of-the-box thinking that were followed by solutions synthesis and trail testing.
The complex task of integrating the BPO with the relevant telecom network when needed became a feasible reality. The enhanced process auto-deactivated and activated clean IP subnets via seamless input triggers from the BPO to the telecom network.
The sales effect of this ‘unconscious design-thinking methodology’ which redefined the problem and included solutions testing reversed the declining customer trend. It led to an increase of the internet customer base by 50 percent within months of deploying the new process. This example shows that customer service was the real business driver in this case.
How design thinking led to radical cost reduction
As per the directive from company directors, the CFO informed me I needed reduce the cost of our clients’ IT infrastructure support by one-third within three months. As head of the department whose activities spanned more than 350 locations and 1,100 staff who took care of our database of more than 10,000 clients, it was a massive challenge.
After exploring the issues, we were able to reduce about 30 positions and devised ways to run the operations without making new essential purchases. Yet we were far away from the target. With a closely huddled team, we set about defining a radically new problem statement, an unthinkable one: how do we maintain acceptable customer service levels without the 125 people working in the call center?
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After extensive thinking, insightful exploration and negotiations with sub departments, we came with the idea of a call center self-driven by our clients. This was a path-breaking thought process of integrating the CRM trouble ticket (TT) creation module with the clients’ mobile text messaging and emailing system, so that the clients could self-create their TT without calling the help desk.
Another proposition that at first was deemed “undoable and seemingly risk-laden” was given shape. This was an innovative move to provide CRM TT creation module screen to users, in a limited secured way, to self-create their own TTs directly in the CRM system, which became the clincher. These three automations removed the need for the front desk call center without any loss of user convenience.
It became a case of one innovation driving another. Self-learning tools for using these automations were developed for our clients and within a few months, cost reduction was achieved, along with a stable and efficient system. We even made some of the earlier service level assurances (SLAs) redundant.
How design thinking challenges the traditionally accepted long metamorphosis for process maturity
The long arduous journey from manual to automated processes can be averted by using methods like design thinking to get the processes right the first time. By being a problem-solving approach through creative thinking, it is increasingly seen as a competitive advantage, both at the strategic and operating levels.
Thus, design thinking helps organizations move into the solution space through divergent-convergent thinking, which leads to synthesizing and co-creating innovative solutions for prototyping and testing in an iterative way. It is most useful for tackling problems and processes that are quite often ill-defined.
The solutions are filtered and sieved through the trifecta of user desirability, businesses viability and technological feasibility, in order to arrive at the most optimal solution: the intersection of the three circles as shown in Figure 2 below.
Figure 2: Trifecta filters and intersection for best-fit innovative solution
Source: IDEO codified Venn diagram
The core belief of design thinking is that process innovation should not just make good business sense, but it should also make good economic sense.