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Ever wondered how you got the technology right but gained no benefits?

Ever wondered how you got the user acceptance and still see no benefits?

Ever wondered how the best capture experts could not improve on a working capture system?

Well, you have done no wrong, at least, not with your systems and trainings. You simply forgot to include the customer experience quotient.

Now, take a close look at the two capture processes below and try to spot the differences.

Capture Process 1 is for a Government Services Agency and Capture Process 2 is for a Retail Financial Services Company.

Obviously, you see no difference between the two by concept, process or technology.

So, let’s take a closer look at the business services in both cases.

Capture Process 1

In this case, the government agency had plenty of customers walking in to submit their visa and residency documentation to the Receiving unit. The high volumes required an optimized capture solution in place while a tight budget required the solution to maintain if not decrease manpower.  A solutions package including an appropriately automated capture solution and hands-on training was put in place. Not only was there no manpower impact, the business saw Turn Around Time (TAT) performances improve by 80%. In addition to a better customer experience, the business also ended up with a mature ERM system.

Capture Process 2

In this case, the retail financial services entity found customers walking in, filling application forms and submitting supporting documents to its sales advisors. In order to improve the efficiency and transparency of the process until delivery of the final service, it was decided to digitize the documents at the sales interface and route it to the back office for further processing. A similar solution to Capture Process 1 was also deployed here as technically, it was the right solution. However, in this particular case, the TAT experienced a negative impact of 35%. Disgruntled customers not only made a hasty exit to the next competitor but they also aggressively campaigned in the media about the poor customer experience.

The key lesson to learn from here was that while the first enterprise deployed a capture at customer interface through a receiving unit whose single task was to receive, scan and index the documents. The second enterprise on the other hand required their customer interface to advise and sell in addition to the paper and digital admin tasks of receiving, scanning and indexing the documents. An exercise that, by business behavior, they could not do while dealing with the customer. They were also finding it difficult to do this after the current customer had left because the next customer had already rushed in to be served. Add to it any paper jams or other issues that may arise during a capture process. Obviously this diverted their focus and efforts away from their core competence – customer service and sales. In reality, it meant they took longer to deal with a single customer leaving other customers to a longer waiting period. Peak business seasons only added to the boiling disaster.

Moral of the Story? Choosing the right capture system and implementing it is only beneficial if deployed in the right business environment to the right business user. When things go wrong, do look beyond technology too. There is equal chance that the cause lays there.