Where does customer friction start?
Follow the problem across teams, systems, rules, handoffs, and decisions to find its source.
Diagnostic 01
Find what’s causing customer friction.
The CX Systems Diagnostic follows repeated customer problems across workflows, ownership, CRM signals, service rules, and team handoffs. You’ll see where the friction starts, why it keeps happening, and what to fix first.
Questions answered
Turn a messy customer problem into a clear decision.
We start with what customers experience, then follow the evidence until the next useful move becomes clear.
Questions this diagnostic answersView questions
Which breakdowns matter most?
Separate one-time issues from repeated problems that hurt service, trust, retention, revenue, or team capacity.
Who owns the decision and the work?
Find gaps in ownership, unclear decision rights, and handoffs where context or urgency gets lost.
What should you change first?
Set a practical order for workflow, data, ownership, and system changes before you fund a larger program.
Scope and evidence
Look at how the work really gets done.
The evidence depends on the problem and what your team can share. I use the available sources to test patterns, compare the intended process with the real one, and point out where the evidence is weak.
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 teams use tools, interpret rules, handle exceptions, and work around processes that do not support the job.
Measurement and review
What you measure today, what is missing, how often leaders review it, and whether the numbers show outcomes or just activity.
Deliverables and decisions
See what’s broken, why it matters, and what to do next.
You’ll get more than a list of findings. Each deliverable helps your team make a specific decision and move forward 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 each symptom as a separate 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
A focused set of findings ranked by customer impact, business impact, strength of evidence, and dependencies.
Supports the decisionWhich issues need action now, which need more evidence, and which can wait.
Practical improvement sequence
A recommended order for changes to workflows, ownership, data, measurement, and technology.
Supports the decisionWhat to do next, who needs to take part, and what must be true before the work expands.
Engagement fit
Use this diagnostic when the problem crosses teams and systems.
A useful diagnostic needs access to the people, systems, and evidence around the work. Your team also needs to be open to a cause or solution that may differ from the first assumption.
Strong fit
This is likely a good fit when
- Customer friction crosses teams, systems, or stages of the experience.
- You see the same problems repeat but do not know what is causing them.
- A sponsor can bring the right business, service, operations, and technical people together.
- Leaders are willing to change ownership or workflows when the evidence supports it.
Limited fit
Another path may work better when
- The answer has already been chosen and the review is only meant to support a planned purchase.
- The problem is limited to one clear task that a focused process fix can solve.
- The right teams, evidence, or decision-makers cannot take part.
- Success is defined only by launching technology, not by improving the customer or team experience.