Are you still choosing between happy customers and efficient operations?

Business leaders face relentless pressure to cut costs while keeping customers happy. Most believe they face an impossible choice: deliver great customer experiences OR run efficient operations.

This false dilemma could be causing your organisation to miss significant opportunities for improvement.

'Either/or' is a myth

Most organisations tackle improvement through one of two ways:

• The Experience Path: Adding more services, features, and staff to delight customers – usually increasing costs.
• The Efficiency Path: Cutting costs through standardisation and automation – more often creating new customer frustrations instead of solving old ones.

But forward-thinking leaders are discovering a third way – a sweet spot where better experiences and smarter operations come together, creating wins for everyone.

'Better and cheaper' is possible

When you focus on efficiency in the right way, customer experience gets better too. Here are three examples:

Example 1: Fixing broken systems

When your staff juggle five different systems to help one customer, efficiency and experience both suffer. By simplifying these fragmented systems, you can cut costs and make everyone happier. Staff work faster with fewer headaches, and customers get what they need without the wait.

Example 2: Self-service that works

When designed properly, self-service options reduce costs while making customers happier. Service NSW proved this by placing digital kiosks in their centres with helpful staff nearby. Customers received faster service, and more transactions moved to cheaper digital channels – a win for everyone involved.

Example 3: Cutting red tape

Bad processes will defeat good people almost every time. We saw this at the Australian Department of Defence, where removing unnecessary paperwork and approvals freed staff to focus on important work. Staff got time back for valuable activities, and Defence reduced costs while simultaneously improving employee satisfaction and service delivery.

Three steps to balance efficiency and experience

Ready to find the optimal balance between experience excellence and operational efficiency? Here's how to start:

1. Start with real people

Listen to your customers and staff first. Understand what genuinely matters to them. Research consistently shows people want things to be simple, fast, and reliable – which aligns perfectly with operational efficiency.

2. Fix what matters most

Not everything deserves equal attention. Identify the moments that significantly impact how people feel about your service, like first impressions or when problems arise. Concentrate your improvements there for maximum impact.

3. Track both sides of the equation

Track both customer metrics (satisfaction, effort, loyalty) and business performance (cost, time, resources). This reveals the direct connections between operational improvements and customer experience gains.

Don't keep choosing between happy customers and efficient operations – start creating both today

Organisations that stop seeing this as a trade-off gain a powerful competitive advantage through better experiences delivered more efficiently. To succeed, you'll need:

• Clear insights about your current situation
• Smart design that balances customer needs with operational realities
• Practical implementation that delivers real results

At The Customer Experience Company we help organisations design and deliver streamlined, cost-efficient operations that create better customer and community outcomes. Michael Pratt AM, former Secretary of NSW Treasury and founding CEO of Service NSW, serves as a strategic advisor to our team.

Want to know more? Contact us.