Back office optimization is the process of streamlining and automating workforce tasks that occur in a contact center. It also aligns back-office functions with front-office workflows to improve customer experience across the customer lifecycle.
An optimized back office is key to providing a consistent and positive customer experience and is dependent on their performance. Many mid and back offices are struggling to measure and improve their productivity and are also facing growing year-on-year operating costs.
In organizations such as banking and insurance where much of the customer value is created behind the scenes in the back-office, increased backlog and delays not only impact back-office staff but also the front office workload for example, if customers repeatedly call chasing their approvals.
Improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your back-office processes can lead to significantly reduced costs, greater productivity, and, of course, better customer experience across the entire organization.
Creating a plan to optimize back-office operations is critical. A good plan aligns all the different moving parts in the environment—systems, people, schedules, tasks, and business priorities. This in turn unlocks new efficiencies and cuts costs. Back-office operations are critical to your business; however, some organizations are running at an operational deficit, resulting in a loss of time, profit, and client trust. If the front office is the division designed to make money, your back offices should run interdependently and complimentary to support those efforts.