Think of Customer Experience (CX) as a river. A great river like the Nile or the Amazon. Where does it begin? Chances are that there are many tributaries. Over time, the course may change. Large bends become billabongs or oxbow lakes. Sometimes, the river may run dry and water never make it to the sea or the delta may spread out into multiple channels.
Now think of the customer experience like dropping a stick or leaf into one of the feeder creeks or streams. Will it get sucked into the main current and get swept through the rapids, or will it languish in a slow eddy in some backwater? Will it make it all the way to the sea?
You can manipulate the river. Maybe you want to harness the power, so you build a dam. The dam is in your interest, and it makes you money, but it adds friction to the flow. Are you customer-centric or do you do things in the best interests of the company?
Or maybe, the river can only be navigated through a series of locks. If you’ve ever had to wait to pass through a lock, you will know that it’s a fairly labourious and frustrating way of navigating a river. So perhaps, your customer journey has become so un-navigable that you have to engineer ways through it that get the job done, but again, the experience is sub-optimal.
There are so many definitions of CX. Many focus on only part of the river. Some see customer acquisition (the tributaries) as CX. Some confuse user experience (UX) with CX and some have rebranded customer service as CX.
Have you ever raced leaves or sticks down a creek or stream? Sometimes you get lucky and your ‘boat’ finds the main current and shoots ahead. Sometimes your vessel gets stuck – blocked by an obstacle or caught in a slow moving pool.
Sometimes, you have to pick up the leaf and reposition it, and that is the role of any CX function anywhere along the journey. Everyone in the organisation has one goal. To get the customer from source to sea – then do it again.