The last Mile Customer Experience

A further reality is that, especially in large organizations with large numbers of employees interacting with customers, the majority of these people typically have limited knowledge/education/training/experience. They are among the lower paid of the organization’s staff, and they churn fairly often. Yet as the “Last Mile”, the organization relies on these same employees to carry the brand torch and deliver exceptional customer experiences. They are expected to correctly and consistently understand and apply policies and procedures, to know when and how to make proper exceptions to those procedures, to know the products, to know the business domain, to understand and use the information resources being delivered to them in the 360-degree view of the customer, as well as have the skills to dynamically access and transform all of this into an empathetic and effective interaction. And, more often than not, they are expected to do so on the first call. To add to the complexity, all this information and these processes change fairly often.

http://winningconversations.cincom.com/2010/11/recognizing-understanding-and-solving-%e2%80%9cthe-last-mile%e2%80%9d-constraint-in-customer-interactions/