Most of what I see written about ‘Customer Facing Systems’ is about technology. Most writers are talking about telephone call centers or web sites or CRM systems or whatever. When you dig in a little, what you find in many cases is that their perspective is shaped by the company they’re working for and the products their company is selling.

Think about it for a minute, the customer interacts with the company through a variety of channels. They might receive letters with marketing materials (’A guaranteed credit card just for you’), they might pick up the phone to call about the letter (’You call is important to us, the first available agent will take your call as soon as possible’), frustrated, the customer goes online and starts searching through the company’s web site to find some information (sorry, but it takes 2 weeks to get an update to the web site), finally, the customer might just drop by your company’s store front to see if they know anything (’Thank you for coming in sir, we have this brochure …’). EVERY one of these channels contributes to the customer’s mental image of the company. They all are part of the ‘face’ of the company. All of them are part of a single ‘Customer Facing System’. Problem is, they’ve all been put together in isolation, so it’s unlikely that the messages in each channel match up.

A customer facing system is not a technology, though technology is part of it. It is not a process, though processes are part of it. A customer facing system is a combination of many aspects including people, technology, processes, and organization. It’s a ‘Human Activity System’ and making it work right is a challenge even in the best circumstances.

Categories: Human Activity Systems