What is a workflow?
Every company follows a workflow, even if those steps might be manual. Figure 8.1 gives a sample workflow that our chocolate shop might follow in responding to customers:
Figure 8.1 – Sample customer service workflow
This workflow is pretty simple – take a customer call, look up previous details, use that knowledge to make a product recommendation, then share that recommendation with the customer. You’ve probably written or followed workflows that are much more complex, but the basic building blocks remain the same:
- Interaction with external actors – in this case, a call from the customer triggers the start of the workflow, and an email from us to the customer completes it.
- Reading and writing from internal systems – for example, noting the question asked, and looking up the customer details in our system.
- Making a decision – in this case, recommending the best product (including...
