Backend effectiveness does not equate to customer satisfaction

There are many projects I have been involved with, where the product design or implementation has been driven by the need for reporting, analysis or compliance, but backend effectiveness does not equate to customer satisfaction, and businesses should be more aware of this in their product releases.

A key example that I have recently experienced is related to job searching. Some employers want you to create an account for their application tracking system, upload your CV/resume, give approval for the ATS to connect to your LinkedIn profile, and then type in the same information that is in your CV or LinkedIn profile about your work history and qualifications. This system is great for the recruiter / HR, but terrible for the candidate. Does the HR department need the information on every applicant (including those who are immediately rejected), neatly entered into a table so that it can be searched in the future? Is there a requirement to index candidates by their High School or first job? Even with all this information gathered, will there really be a time that HR decides to review previous applicants for newly created positions, or will they just advertise the role? This is backend effectiveness, but it does not equate to customer satisfaction – and may not even add effectiveness to anyone in this example.

War stories from the field

I was helping a government department with a consolidation of departments from different portfolios, where a differing culture and systems were being amalgamated. During interviews with acquired teams, they complained about many  ineffective processes, particularly a new process for leave applications which was especially onerous and complex. If they wanted to book holiday leave or record sick leave, there was an online “form” that was really an Excel sheet with macros and cell protection, abstracted by a web app. For the employee to complete the Excel form, they needed to complete each cell correctly before moving to the next field, but the employee did not have access to much of the information that was required. Many employees had a direct line manager that differed from what the HR system recorded as their approving manager – so employees needed to find out who to choose from the list (often someone they had never met or even heard of) and the system would simply not allow them to progress unless they made the right selection. Then the employee had to enter a staff ID that did not match any reference they had on their payslip/ID card/login credentials – this was an ID for the acquiring department that the employee may not have known about. The system had many other unique codes that the employees could not work out and needed to ask their manager for. Sometimes it could take an employee a week to complete the form due to the wait for guidance on the code numbers they needed. When I interviewed the HR department, they were confused, because as far as they were concerned the new leave form was great for them as it had all the information they needed in one place! The HR department were very happy with the form, because it streamlined their back office operations, but the customer experience was horrible.

Similarly, in another organisation that had a legacy expenses system implemented by their US-based parent company, there were complaints from users that the extensive categorisation requirements for expenses was inflexible and took the user too long to complete. If the user claimed business travel, they needed to upload the same receipt multiple times and categorise every transaction individually – accommodation, booking fees, taxes, food (with a separate category for breakfast, morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack, dinner, late evening(!)), drinks – alcoholic and non-alcoholic, and more. If the receipt did not break down the taxes, then the end-user needed to calculate the tax from the total and break it down manually. The process would take employees hours, and frequently be rejected because categorisations were not exactly correct – “entertainment with customers” instead of “employee meals”. The finance department were not made more efficient by the system, as they frequently needed to “clean up” the categorisations made by staff who were not intimately familiar with the meanings and implications of categorisation decisions that they made, as they infrequently did this process.

Focus on the client experience

When it comes to online systems that are open to the public, you can guarantee that they have not been trained on the system. It is also highly unlikely that every person using your service will have a high level of computer skill, and so a poor experience with your customer-facing system will cause annoyance and frustration, and could end up turning customers away.

Your customers are not paid or incentivised to do your work for you, instead of redirecting the effort that may frustrate or deter customers (internal and external), make it easy for them, and put the efforts into streamlining and automating your internal processes for efficiency and appropriateness.