For example, it’s 5-25x more costly to find new customers than to keep existing customers. Therefore, if you put a little effort into maintaining a high level of customer retention, it’s a good use of time and money to look for new customers.
Furthermore, customer retention can significantly impact revenue for businesses. Even a five percent increase in retention rates can boost a company’s income by 25 to 95 percent.
All of this is to say that the customer experience is crucial.
In addition, chaotic growth, high turnover, or a bad customer service experience may be the cause of the harmful retention of customers.
There is an effective way to minimize risks and ensure that your company grows efficiently and sustainably. The solution? Business infrastructure.
This article will help you define business infrastructure, the best way to begin creating it, and what it appears like. Let’s take a look.
What is the business infrastructure?
The business infrastructure system connects the people of an organization, their processes, and technology tools to ensure that expansion is durable, repeatable, and profitable.
When people hear “infrastructure,” they are thinking of transportation.
Transportation infrastructure links roads, trains, ships, and airplanes to transport people and goods.
In the same way, business infrastructure is the link between the essential operational elements required for a business to run continuously, with the least amount of interruptions.
It is a solid foundation to assist during times of danger by focusing on the operations unnoticed back-office and the heartbeat of every organization.
How to Build Business Infrastructure
It could be shocking to find out that many companies of all sizes need help explaining how they appear on the inside.
Divisions or departments need to be better defined, task duplication runs all the time, and the reporting chains of command are rudimentary at best.
Most importantly, the left hand, as the saying goes, needs to learn how the other hand operates. These factors result in low employee turnover, silos, and angry customers.
Business infrastructure is the reason why it covers the entire organization by addressing four significant questions:
- Here are some analog and low-tech exercises you and your team could do to help tackle these questions.
1. What needs to be completed?
Brainstorming the tasks and activities essential to keep your company running is critical to establishing the business infrastructure of your company. Consider it the basic building blocks on which other elements of your business infrastructure are built.
The image below illustrates the first task.
- Bring your team together, whether in person or remotely.
- Create a list of all tasks and tasks that are performed across your entire company, regardless of how simple or complicated.
- Note the tasks or activities on individual index cards.
- Keep brainstorming until you’ve nailed all the tasks.
Benefits:
- It takes the knowledge that is in the heads of people and into paper
- It provides a clear picture of exactly what everybody does
Pro Tip: Kickstart your ideas by taking job descriptions that your company might use and taking the tasks from them. You could also ask the people you contract tasks (i.e., your accountant or lawyer, graphic designer, etc.)) to provide an outline of the jobs they’ll be performing for your business. They might be doing tasks you need to be aware of!
2. What is the process of organizing the work?
After you and the group have identified all the tasks you need to complete, It’s time to divide them into divisions.
The following illustration shows the division of tasks into six divisions: Operations, Legal Compliance Accounting, Technology Marketing, and Human Resources.
- Distribute all index cards created during the brainstorming session on the table.
- Invite your team to join in.
- Group index cards with similar tasks in smaller or nine columns.
- A blank index card, ideally in a different shade, on top of each column.
- Note an official name for the division each column of tasks identifies.
Benefits:
- Informs your audience about what your business appears to be on the inside
- Eliminates ambiguity regarding the flow of work as well as information
Pro Tip: In his well-known study, The Magical Number Seven More or Less Two, Harvard cognitive psychologist George A. Miller theorized that the average person could easily recall seven plus with two information bits. If you divide tasks into nine divisions in a smaller amount, you make a system that is simple to grasp and follow.
3. Who will perform the job?
You and your group have now identified the tasks and arranged the jobs into divisions. It’s time to allocate roles for those duties within each department.
The image below illustrates the structure of reporting for the Operations department.
Three tasks are assigned to the Technician and two to the Chief Operating Officer (COO). The colored circles beside them signify that the COO job is a full-time employee position and the Technician position is not filled.
- One department at a time and the tasks it entails.
- Get rid of all the other index cards from the table.
- Spread the index cards on the table.
- Make a stick figure or an index card and write down the position title that must perform for each job.
- Identify each role by type: employee, outsourced/freelancer, intern, volunteer.
- Determine the role(s) are unfilled in writing down your title(s) with red ink.
- Repeat steps 1 through 4 until the roles are clearly defined for every department.
- Record the outcomes.
Benefits:
- Clarifies the things everyone needs to be doing
- Sets clear boundaries for the definition of a job and its scope.
Pro-Tip The fact that you cannot mean that you must! This exercise will help you determine the best way to delegate. When you assign tasks to roles, note the person who is responsible instead of who’s currently accountable. You might be surprised by the results!
4. How does the work get done?
It’s time to organize the tasks that you and your team came up with earlier into procedures.
The image below illustrates how tasks within Operations are handled. Operations departments are subdivided into an order-to-delivery process. The lessons are then put in order of priority using the tools used during the method being defined.
- Concentrate on only one department and the duties and responsibilities at a given time.
- Take all index cards off the table.
- Spread the index cards on the table once more.
- Sub-group tasks are grouped to make up a distinct process.
- Create a unique colored index card for each task sub-grouping.
- Enter your name in the procedure title that the sub-grouping of the tasks describes.
- Recognize the tools (including equipment, software checklists, templates, and other devices) by putting a colored index card in every sub-grouping of tasks and noting the names of the tools on the card.
8. Record the outcomes.
Benefits:
- Offers suggestions about how to carry out the tasks that were identified.
- Provides a reference for prioritizing and records
Pro Tip: Processes are where you’ll find the “rubber meet the pavement” It is they are too rigid, and individuals feel enslaved by them. Too flexible, and people will create their methods of doing things. A bottom-up structure for reporting with clearly defined process metrics enables individuals to be in charge of their work within a specific framework.
What does the Business Infrastructure Have to Look Like?
What’s the point of creating index cards, moving them constantly, and sticking figures on them?
The outputs!
These outputs act as your company’s armor. They comprise:
- Job Descriptions and Organizational Chart. Including specific tasks for each position in updated or new job descriptions offers a degree of transparency, which provides you with the necessary information to select the most suitable candidates. The established departments and roles allow you to explain your company’s reporting structure and process for promotions.
- Records Management. Understanding the departments within your company makes it easier to arrange physical and digital documents. Your team can quickly find data by setting records and files according to the department and assigning the appropriate access levels. This can be a game changer in responding to customer requests to offer assistance.
- Workspace Layout. The ability to arrange your space into zones that mirror the departments of your company is essential in ensuring efficient workflow and flow of information. This is especially true for home offices and one-room offices.
- Documenting the methods based on the roles identified in every department helps ensure product and service delivery consistency. Documentation removes uncertainty and helps communicate how performance is evaluated.
It is Gateway to Customer Experience
After you’ve finished this exercise, you’ll see how your business infrastructure links all aspects of your business and how a change in one part can affect other areas. There are no more silos or confusion. They’re replaced by seamless workflows transparent to every aspect of the company.
It’s essential for companies that focus on customer service to have an efficient business infrastructure. Much like Revenue Operations, a subset of the business infrastructure provides a high-quality, consistent customer experience and a support structure that informs customers of what to expect and why you value their business.
