The New Automation Mindset

CHAPTER 12The Customer Experience

“Even when they don't yet know it, customers want something better, and your desire to delight customers will drive you to invent on their behalf.”

—Jeff Bezos

We all say customers are our top priority. It is a claim everyone can agree on. After all, the customer experience leaves a lasting impression. It is the difference between whether people become promoters or detractors of our brands. The way companies think about customer experience is key to how the customer journey plays out. Thus, creating and obsessing over a great customer experience is a smart approach.

It has been said that the companies that can drive the best customer satisfaction will be the ones that end up on top. Yet, in 2022, Gartner published research that found most customer experience programs are not delivering on the promise of improving differentiation or helping brands compete.¹ The reality is, most CX (customer experience) programs are mired in metric optimization and may have lost sight of the real goal, which is crafting moments that matter between people. A recent Deloitte article, titled “Customer Experience Is Dead,” observed: “It sounds so obvious, yet somewhere amidst the myriad of changing business models, commercial rhetoric, and fast‐paced technology, the customer became just another term—faceless, nameless and less‐human.”²

Being a trusted partner to our customers is easy to say but much harder to do. Because so many customer interactions happen in ...