I have been reading a lot of customer experience articles and posts.  Most of it is softball stuff, lots of syrupy language and like love your customers and think about the customer experience in all you do.  Unfortunately, as I dig deeper the traditional design and management approaches make all this stuff a real yawner.  Yet, people make a ton of money telling you obvious things with speeches and writing.

Traditional approaches still are based on incentives and having the “right” data.  One is based on the flawed thinking that performance is down to the individual.  And then – of course – data is needed to figure out ways to improve the customer experience . . . bring in the IT!

Sorry folks, dead end.

Getting a great customer experience requires a better system for front-line employees to work in.  The 25 – 75% failure demand that customers experience is pathetic.  Designing the work to customer purpose and demands.  Management learning counter-intuitive truths about how system perform and that it is not down to the individual.

The fluffy and feel good customer experience gurus need more depth to what needs to happen to change the poorly designed systems.  Just using words like “seamless” and “customer friendly” advances nothing.  Some depth . . . please!