To grasp the importance of customer interfaces you must first broaden your thinking to take in all the ways that a shared services organization interfaces with the consumers of its services. Every one of these points of interaction are interfaces. An intuitive customer interface speaks to the ease and value, from the customer’s viewpoint of course, of that interaction.

Take a moment to think about interfaces. The term interface was first used prominently in information technology. GUI (graphical user interface) is an acronym application designers and IT specialists use to define the graphical interface between the user of an application and the application. But expand this definition to encompass all the touch points between the service provider and the customer or consumer of services. This expanded definition takes in web sites, pamphlets, form letters, and standard emails as well as an application interface. But it also takes in processes since a service provider touches or interacts with customers through processes. Processes are the bridge between the customer’s objective in interacting with your organization and the product or service the shared services organization provides to satisfy the objective.