Your service may be fast, orders may be prepared on time, and employees may follow operational procedures, yet a customer can still leave the café with a bad experience. How does that happen?
What do operational numbers measure?
Operational performance and customer experience look at the experience from different angles. Operational performance focuses on measures such as: order preparation time, waiting time, number of orders, operational errors, compliance with procedures, and more.
What does the customer experience?
Customer experience looks at what the customer lived through during that journey. It covers arriving at the café, being welcomed, placing an order, interacting with employees, waiting, product quality, and the impression the customer takes away.
The wait may be only two minutes, but an employee's manner may leave the customer feeling that the experience was poor. An order may be ready within the target time, but the product may not meet the customer's expectations.
Connect operations with customer experience
Operational performance metrics therefore cannot replace customer experience metrics. Operational performance does not necessarily improve customer experience measures, but managing customer experience well can support and strengthen operational performance.
When you map the customer journey, identify touchpoints, and measure the experience at each one, you begin to understand the relationship between what happens inside operations and what the customer feels. Rihla helps you connect the customer journey with touchpoints and measurement tools, instead of looking at operational numbers in isolation from the customer's experience.