CX has Ruined me as a Customer

Why Understanding CX has Ruined me as a Customer

My Journey from Skeptic to Advocate:


Although I now could talk your ear off about the benefits of CX, not long ago, I didn't really know what it could do for a business. I was a skeptic. I had questions that kept me from engaging. Let me explain how an automotive shop, Hulu's "The Bear," and my birthday party changed my ways.  

Assumption One: Focusing on CX is a nice add-on.

Coming from a different field, I always saw CX as a corporate buzzword – one of those terms that gets thrown around in boardrooms to sound impressive. My image of CX was a team in the background, occasionally reminding us, "But what about our customers' thoughts?" It seemed like a soft, almost optional part of business strategy. Like me, many view CX as a feel-good factor, a vague notion far removed from the tangible aspects of running a business. It's often mistaken for customer service, the people you call when something isn't going right, or customer success, the part that ensures customers are making the most of your services.

I had the dreaded check engine light come on in my car. As a young woman, more comes to my mind when I forecast this experience than the daunting cost of the fix, due to prior experiences of being patronized and swindled by automotive shops that look down upon me. Not the case at my new car shop. Throughout the time my car was in the shop, every employee I interacted with provided me clarity on the nature and purpose of the fixes, upfront pricing, and clear timelines, all the while treating me with respect and dignity. I got a working car, and they got a customer for life.

That's when it clicked: How wrong I was to think of CX as peripheral. CX is about the entire human experience with a firm or service. Integrating CX into the ecosystem of a firm shapes clients' holistic and subjective perceptions of the firm. Customer experience is distinct from customer service and customer success. While these elements are reactive, CX is proactive. CX-centric firms design a journey that eliminates problems at their source, creating ease for the customer’s journey which keeps your customers coming back and also attracts other ideal customers from positive word of mouth. This leads to the problem every company wants to solve: how do we handle all the business we are getting?

Assumption Two: Isn’t CX just collecting feedback?

Aren’t most places already doing that? I thought that firms that had customer service phone lines or sent out “How did we do?” email surveys were doing what they could to be in tune with their clients. But the truth was, how many customers are making those calls or submitting those surveys? Data says about one in 26, and as a customer, I’m often amongst the 25 who are silent.

A scene from Emmy- and Golden-Globe-winning drama The Bear showed me how proactive client centricity—even when explicit feedback is absent—creates a positive and distinct memory of how a company is experienced. In this scene, Richie, played by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, is promoted from being a dishwasher to a server in an elite, high-end restaurant. He rises to the challenge and delivers exceptional customer experience by expertly anticipating needs, personalizing guest interactions, ensuring operational efficiency to prevent service delays, and maintaining clear communication with his team, all culminating in a moment where he goes above and beyond to fulfill a guest's missed opportunity for a quintessential Chicago cuisine not even served at that restaurant: deep dish pizza.

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That's CX – an active, engaged approach that uncovers and acts upon what’s not said as much as what is.

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New Understanding: Engaging Beyond Feedback: Engaging in CX means diving into that silence. It's about embedding a culture of customer-centric thinking within your team, aligning every service with the overarching corporate strategy, and leveraging every piece of feedback to enhance the client journey. This isn't about appeasing the few who speak up-- it's about anticipating the needs of the many who don’t. It’s a complex challenge, but when you start to see your services through the lens of CX, you begin to find improvements you didn't know were needed, and that's where true growth happens.

Assumption Three: Companies exist to sell their goods and services, and they already know how to do that. ‍

It's easy to become complacent in business, relying on established marketing strategies, service innovations, and sales tactics. We attend conferences and we network. Companies just focusing on making sales won't last in a market driven by what clients want. The strategy needs to identify the ultimate goals through opportunity framing, foster a culture deeply rooted in experience delivery via a CX Charter, and address any points of friction while crafting moments of delight for the customer through service blueprinting and journey mapping.  

I cannot overstate that I am a huge birthday person. I plan my party months in advance and host upwards of fifty people—it's my favorite event of the year. I hired a caterer that drove home the need for a CX perspective: despite the excellent food and presentation, the experience was marred by unprofessional behavior and a lack of respect for our agreement, leaving me to contend with frustration rather than celebration. This taught me that an exceptional product is only one slice of the business pie. CX is the secret sauce that completes the meal.

CX Transcends Basic Service Fulfillment.

‍As "Outside In" author Harley Manning explains, a service that meets basic needs can still leave customers feeling they've worked too hard to get what they wanted and didn’t enjoy the process of getting there. The true measure of success is not just in achieving goals but in the ease and joy with which they are accomplished. That's the hallmark of a CX-focused approach—going beyond the functional to make emotional connections, turning satisfactory into delightful, and transforming customers into advocates.

Now that I’ve cleared up my assumptions, it’s obnoxiously obvious when I encounter a business that lags in CX. My individual needs are felt to be a burden to the company, their communication feels automated and impersonal, and my wall is up against every interaction, bracing for aggressive sales pitches instead of genuine engagement or support. While those companies gain a profit from their single transaction from me, I’ll be taking my business and my influence on my family and friends to the companies that build their service around the client’s experience.