AT&T is betting on digital simplicity

We started by taking the time to look at our processes and workflows, and the data associated with each step in a flow. We wanted to know things like: What were the actual tasks assigned to each digital flow? How much time were people waiting for information? And how many defects were there in various steps along the process?

It doesn’t help to jump straight into automation if you don’t have those answers.

We needed a framework that people could easily follow, so we came up with our “Triad of Value.” Think of it as a triangle with three sides—revenue growth, cost, and customer experience—with the customer in the center. We examined revenue impacts, CX, and cost implications of everything with did. This allowed us to not only explain the vision but to simplify our key performance indicators.

Instead of having hundreds of indicators, we whittled it down to a few big ones, like net promoter score, order completion cycle times, mean time to resolve. That made it easier to rally people around our strategy.

We recruited our operations teams, sales support, and customer service agents to serve as change agents. They best know end users’ needs and pain points. We created a structure for gathering feedback on what digital transformation needed to address. We let data guide our decisions. Then we applied technology to solve those pain points. Responding quickly gives teams confidence that their feedback is heard. That, in turn, produces more ideas, feeding a cycle of innovation.

Any effort like this has to bring people, processes, and technology together. Technology was certainly a part of transformation, but simplifying processes, focusing on people, and building a culture of empowerment, innovation, and engagement is equally important.

We started by taking the time to look at our processes and workflows, and the data associated with each step in a flow. We wanted to know things like: What were the actual tasks assigned to each digital flow? How much time were people waiting for information? And how many defects were there in various steps along the process?

It doesn’t help to jump straight into automation if you don’t have those answers.

To break people out of the legacy mindset, we created solution labs. There, we would gather operators, user experience experts, and IT resources to identify opportunities and test solutions on a smaller scale to measure the impact of change before we scale it.

We also conducted test-and-scale labs in which experts from different backgrounds and organizations provide concierge service to real orders, while we observe their challenges, opportunities, and defects.

When you identify ways to get people involved, they more fully embrace the vision and become less resistant to new ways of doing things.