Where does customer friction start?
Follow the problem across teams, systems, rules, and handoffs until you hit the source. Not the symptom. The source.
Diagnostic 01
Find what’s causing customer friction.
Your customers don’t care which team dropped the ball. They just feel it. This diagnostic follows a repeated problem across workflows, ownership, CRM signals, service rules, and handoffs, so you can see where it starts, why it keeps happening, and what to fix first.
Questions answered
Turn a messy customer problem into a clear decision.
I start with what customers go through. Then I follow the evidence until the next move is obvious.
Questions this diagnostic answersView questions
Which breakdowns matter most?
Separate the one-off from the repeat offender. Then name what it’s costing you: revenue, retention, cost to serve, or risk.
Who owns the decision and the work?
Find the gaps in ownership, the fuzzy decision rights, and the handoffs where context or urgency gets dropped.
What should you change first, and how will you prove it worked?
Pick the business value you’re moving before you design anything. Then put the workflow, data, ownership, and system changes in order.
Scope and evidence
Look at how the work really gets done.
What I look at depends on the problem and what you can share. I test the patterns, compare the process on paper with the one people actually run, and tell you where the evidence is thin.
Evidence we reviewView evidence
Customer and service signals
Complaints, escalations, contact reasons, feedback, service exceptions, renewal concerns, and other signs of repeated friction.
Workflows and handoffs
How work moves across teams, including queues, approvals, transfers, workarounds, delays, and places where context gets lost.
Ownership and decisions
Who owns the outcome, who can make decisions, how issues escalate, and where ownership breaks down in practice.
CRM and system behavior
Fields, records, automation, routing, reports, knowledge sources, and the system signals teams use during customer work.
Frontline operating reality
How people really use the tools, read the rules, handle exceptions, and work around processes that don’t fit the job.
Measurement and review
What you measure today, what’s missing, how often anyone looks, and whether the numbers show outcomes or just activity.
Deliverables and decisions
See what’s broken, why it matters, and what to do next.
A list of findings isn’t much use on its own. Each deliverable answers a specific decision, so your team can move in the right order.
Cross-functional friction map
A shared view of the customer problem across touchpoints, teams, systems, decisions, and dependencies.
Supports the decisionWhere to focus, instead of treating every symptom like its own problem.
Ownership and handoff analysis
A clear view of where ownership is missing, duplicated, delayed, or separated from the power to act.
Supports the decisionWhich roles, decision rights, and handoffs need to change.
Prioritized operating issues
Findings ranked by customer impact, the business value at stake, how strong the evidence is, and what depends on what.
Supports the decisionWhich issues need action now, which need more evidence, and which can wait.
Practical improvement sequence
The order to change workflows, ownership, data, measurement, and technology, with the business result each step should move.
Supports the decisionWhat to do next, who needs to be in the room, and what has to be true before you scale it.
Engagement fit
Use this diagnostic when the problem crosses teams and systems.
I’ll need access to the people, systems, and evidence around the work. And your team needs to be open to an answer that isn’t the one everyone assumed going in.
Strong fit
This is likely a good fit when
- Customer friction crosses teams, systems, or stages of the experience.
- You keep seeing the same problems and nobody can say what’s causing them.
- A sponsor can bring the right business, service, operations, and technical people together.
- Your leaders are willing to change ownership or workflows when the evidence says so.
Limited fit
Another path may work better when
- The answer’s already been chosen and the review is just there to justify a purchase.
- The problem is limited to one clear task that a focused process fix can solve.
- The right teams, evidence, or decision-makers can’t take part.
- Success means launching technology, not improving things for customers or your team.