The folks at CustServ had a piece on The 3-Minute Promise to Avis Customers that made me think. If you wanted to make a similar promise - that some process of yours would be quick, efficient, flawless and seamless - would the systems you have help you or hurt you?

• Would your systems be able to handle approvals and eligibility? What percentage of your customers would be handled straight through?
• Would your system be able to be specific to each individual customer or would it treat them as an amorphous lump?
• Would your system be able to take account of each customer’s preferences and prior behavior?
• Would the systems make the same decisions about prioritizing good customers, about fraud risk and about pricing as your experienced staff would?
• Would you be able to demonstrate that your automated systems were compliant with all the relevant policies and regulations?

In other words, would your systems be able to handle the operational decisions that have to take place quickly and effectively in these kinds of situations? If you were using enterprise decision management they would.