What is customer experience

- Whatever your responsibility at an organization, everyone has a role to play in customer experience. One of my first jobs was working for a company that provided business communication systems, telephone and computer systems, and I remember some uncomfortable situations that helped me better understand customer experience. So I was the youngest and lowest ranking employee and my job was to run cable. And I spent a lot of time underneath the floors of corporations and hospitals and other buildings. Much of my day was crawling through spaces in the dark with a light on my head where I'd squeeze past utility pipes and through spiderwebs. It was dusty, hard work. In those early days, my supervisor worked closely with me to ensure everything was done right. If you install or connect a cable the wrong way, it can fail months or years later. I learned that what we do today can impact customers well into the future. There were times I worked directly with customers helping them use and understand the new equipment. On those days, I wore a collared shirt and was coached to smile. One day I got scolded, and I mean really scolded, by my supervisor for leaving fingerprints on a computer monitor. He said, you know, they're excited about this new system, and the first thing they're going to see are your fingerprints. And I felt about this high. But he was right. That organization had made a huge investment. They'd spent months planning and preparing. And before that, teams around the world had contributed to the design of this, what at the time was a very cutting edge system. And yet, something as small as smudges could impact the customer's perception and experience. It was a message I needed to hear. And in fact, it inspired me. I began studying what successful companies were doing. I read the book "Moments of Truth" by Jan Carlzon. He was CEO of Scandinavian Airways at the time. And he would discuss practical examples with his employees, such as, you know, if a customer boards a plane and they find a coffee stain from the last flight on their tray, they might wonder, is that how you maintain the engines? Here's how I define customer experience. It's everything a customer hears about your organization, every interaction they have with your organization and its products and services, and ultimately, how they feel about your organization. Customer experience is both far bigger and much smaller than many realize. It's more than products or customer service or your technology platform. You know, it's all those things working together and more. But it also comes down to any one interaction that can make an indelible impression on the customer. With so much involved, how do we even begin to understand customer experience? An important part of the answer is to identify the 10 key pillars that support and strengthen customer experience. That's where we'll discover areas that may be missing or weak. It's how we'll grasp the important role we all have in customer experience. And as we explore these areas, that's where we'll likely get very excited about opportunities that we find to improve and innovate.