26 ISE Magazine | www.iise.org/ISEmagazine

IISE Body of Knowledge

Applying BoK to client and employee experience

By Sreekanth Ramakrishnan

Client advocates are the most inﬂuential

assets to grow your business and client

base. Client experience (CX) is a disci-

pline gaining traction across enterprises

to understand the competitive landscape

and implement features and functions to

products and services.

Chapter 9 of the IISE Body of Knowl-

edge (iise.org/bodyofknowledge) focuses on

engineering management, which has

time-tested practices for translating cli-

ent requirements into value. It also

highlights the need for an organi-

zational culture to support clients.

Industrial and systems engineers are

perfectly positioned to address these

challenges.

First, an enterprise needs to de-

velop a robust framework to collect

feedback from end users. This requires

understanding stakeholders and the

nature of their interaction. A detailed

client journey map can outline the mo-

ments of truth and pain points.

Service blueprinting and functional

deployment maps are useful ISE prac-

tices. Many use the Net Promoter Score

measure as a way to capture end-user

feedback and experience drivers through

a simple question: “How likely are you

to recommend a product or a service?”

The feedback captured is typically used

to develop speciﬁc and measurable criti-

cal customer requirements. Teams can

then use voice of the customer and Kano

analysis to determine clients’ must-have

primary satisﬁers and delighters.

Second, identifying and addressing

pervasive systemic issues from client

feedback is a challenge for CX teams.

Using quality tools (Pareto Charts, root

cause analysis) and statistical methods

(correlation and regression models),

teams can understand the critical drivers

of client dissatisfaction and devise strate-

gies to address them. It is imperative to

involve cross-functional teams working

across silos to deﬁne the best course of

action and a common outcome. Some of

the best results are achieved when we in-

clude clients as team members (sponsor

users) and create solutions with them.

Third, client experience is a team

sport and leadership needs to set the

right tone by creating a culture that fo-

cuses on feedback rather than the metric

itself. Ample evidence in the literature

shows the strong correlation between

employee experience and client experi-

ence. While not easy to achieve, simple

yet effective strategies can go a long way.

Leaders need to clarify the “What is

in it for me?” to every employee, share

all actions teams have taken as a result

of client feedback, encourage cross-

functional collaboration through team

huddles and Kaizen events and recog-

nize teams who strive to improve client

experience. Leaders also need to ensure

any process or technological barriers are

addressed that could impede progress.

Fourth, operations research, data and

artiﬁcial intelligence concepts are in-

creasingly employed to help enterprises

predict client behavior using feedback,

usage patterns and other data. Using

structured and unstructured data, CX

teams employ predictive analytics tech-

niques (artiﬁcial neural networks, ma-

chine learning) to deliver insights that

are otherwise not obvious.

For example, teams can build

models to predict whether a cli-

ent has a low propensity to renew a

subscription or upsell opportunities

to generate revenue. Enterprises

can also employ these techniques

to see which feature or function

most affects proﬁts and prioritize

release cycles accordingly. Using the un-

structured text feedback data, CX teams

can monitor client sentiment at a given

time to adapt and respond to concerns.

CX is the next frontier for indus-

trial and systems engineering. ISEs are

primed to take a leadership role as our

skills blend rational problem-solving

skills with interpersonal skills (listening,

differing) – a recipe critical for sustain-

ing any transformation effort. 

Sreekanth Ramakrishnan, Ph.D., is the se-

nior technical staff member at IBM Corp. and

leads the CX program for systems. He is an

adjunct professor at San Jose State University,

where he teaches operations management and

total quality management. He is an IISE

member and newly elected as a technical op-

erations board vice president.

Client experience is a team

sport and leadership needs

to set the right tone.