Companies design application processes to provide the best possible experience for their customers. These processes rely on application and customer-originated events to function. These events and their outcome form the basis of the customer’s experience. Therefore, event-driven philosophy is an ideal way for companies to measure customer experience.

Many variables can be used in event-driven processes:

These variables are specific to the customer. Some examples are age, gender, city/state, income, educational background, and job title.

These variables are related to how and where the product is sold – what distribution channel, region, and the branch office it’s sold from. This is dependent upon company operations and helps in determining customer segmentation.

Variables such as product type, product name, and premium indicate how the company and the customer are related to each other. It is common to see an overlap in the relationship and operational variables.

Event variables are payments, purchases, and general interactions. These events can have common as well as unique attributes among themselves. 

Event variables provide the ability to discover new variables in terms of absolute existence or derived nature. For example, a digital channel purchase has variables like a mobile phone which is directly available. However, a variable like affluence can be derived from the mobile phone’s make. Mode of payment and payment method (check, EFT, etc.) is another great example of a rich source of event variables – both direct and derived.

The Origin of Events Matters

The origin of an event has high value. Application-triggered events are things such as processes and don’t provide much input to actual customer behavior. Alternately, customer-triggered events can provide a deeper insight into the psyche of the customer and their outlook towards the company. For both types of events, their value dramatically increases if the customer’s voice is available verbatim. The event defines the context, and the customer’s voice provides an individualistic expression of experience.

Customer-triggered events can be classified as “expected” and “unexpected.” Within the expected domain, the events can either be present or absent. When an organization builds a process to connect with a customer, it does so with a list of expected events or outcomes, and responses. Inconsistencies in the responses and treatment of the customer are the core reason for the customer’s discontent.

Time as an Implicit Ingredient

When data is captured, the time of occurrence is an essential ingredient, therefore making the time variable implicitly obtained. This time variable is the framework which provides many variables such as turnaround time, time since last interaction, delayed payments, etc. All these variables help to identify customer behavior variables, which also impact experience. The expectation of timeliness, on the customer’s side as well as the company’s, is a vital requirement of business.

Customer Journey

Experience builds over time. The experience of a customer at any point in time in the past as well as now is essential to understand and model. All companies build products, services and delivery models to give all their customers a consistent experience. However, some customers are happy with a specific product/service while other customers may be unhappy. This is due to the lack of consistency in the outcome, expectations created, communication, processes, etc.

Conclusion

Both happy and unhappy customers express their delights/concerns in a verbal way. Companies need to build MORE mechanisms to capture and analyze the customer’s voice and act upon it. Customer voice must be analyzed in context. The best way to analyze this in context is via event-based approach.

Interested in learning how Aureus can help you use event-driven processes to understand your customer's journey? Click on the link below to get more information.