Expanding GBS Adoption Through Increased Focus On Customer Experience

Global business services (GBS) is a powerful structure that enables operational excellence with cost efficiency at the forefront. While GBS organizations have delivered on their commitments to transactional savings, a perceived lack of trust often limits GBS’s ability to fully deliver on a more comprehensive value proposition. GBS organizations can shift the traditional mindset and position themselves at the heart of the business by evolving their strategy and purposefully focusing on customer experience.

Real or perceived performance and value continue to be underestimated in many GBS models. Client trends indicate that by shifting the GBS strategy from cost focus, to one which puts the end user customer experience at the center, this enables GBS organizations to address the hidden costs that are traditionally overlooked and position themselves for increased adoption of their GBS organization. Insights on positive experience and increased customer satisfaction serve as tangible results that CEOs can use to drive enhanced decision making and increase utilization of the GBS asset.

Organizations point to common issues like fragmented systems, lack of global process ownership, low trust, and limited understanding of operational efficiencies and their root causes limiting their value proposition of GBS adoption. However, we find the true impediment often is derived from failing to bring a customer-centric approach to address these challenges in a holistic way. Even the most advanced GBS organizations often have not considered the real impact or hidden cost of neglecting to prioritize the customer experience. As a result, we see an increased focus on customer experience as key to addressing the hidden cost and the fundamental changes to our workforce. Shifts we are seeing include the following:

• The workforce of today values trust, transparency, convenience, and digital delivery. They demand personalized and seamless experiences across multiple channels and devices. Deloitte studies indicate that when trust is high, employees demonstrate 3.6 times greater motivation to work and improved productivity1 . Organizations that focus on the customer experience of their internal and external customers that enhances “trust” find that they can expect significant “discretionary effort” from their workforce and expect “discretionary revenue” from customers willing to pay more for excellence in their interactions with a business.
  
  
• Remote ways of working have enabled a more flexible and global talent model. GBS work no longer requires co-location of employees. Ninety-five percent of companies are now adopting hybrid work models with 5 percent not in the office at all. The personal touch of an onsite helpdesk, or the ability to quickly ask a colleague is gone. This exacerbates frustration and a sense of connection to the company’s support functions.
  
  
• Digital advancements in data and generative AI, have created new ways to serve customers in transparent ways. Data analytics can help GBS understand customer needs, preferences, and behaviors, and provide insights for improving service quality and personalization. As a result of personalized services powered by data-driven insights and self-services, GBS can significantly improve customer satisfaction by 3 times.

Integrated customer experience, the adoption of tools and processes that enable end user performance and transparency, is increasingly utilized as the foundation of the GBS customer experience strategy. Moments that matter in the customer journey are the heart of the design to ensure the value of GBS is reaching its full potential and scaling up across the business. The integrated customer experience provides a unified portal for customers to access services and receive updates, bringing a sense of reliability which instills trust.

Addressing the needs of our workforce and customers through a human centric focus helps achieve the following outcomes:

Greater customer satisfaction and loyalty: By focusing on “moments that matter” in the customer journey and creating a transparent and trustful relationship with customers, GBS can enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Increased GBS adoption: By providing a unified, personalized and convenient customer experience, GBS can increase the adoption of its services, both by existing and potential customers. This can be measured and utilized to support enhanced decision making by functional, business and GBS leaders.

Increased productivity: By building on positive customer experiences, GBS can increase the productivity and performance of its employees and customers. GBS can also reduce the costs of service delivery, by using digital tools to automate and optimize processes. This can help GBS improve its efficiency and effectiveness, as well as its quality and outcomes.

Senior business leaders should focus on the following changes:

• Develop and communicate a customer-centric strategy for GBS utilizing key moments that matter in the customer journey as the foundation.
• Invest in digital capabilities and leverage existing and emerging technologies to activate a self-service, integrated and unified customer experience.

• Drive end-to-end GBS process ownership to enable a full orchestration of customer journey that delivers a unified experience.
• Collect and analyze customer experience data to provide personalized services and enable enhanced decision-making.
• Create a feedback loop with customers to measure and improve customer satisfaction, loyalty, and build trust.