Why brands urgently need to rethink CX

Marketers love buzzwords almost as much as they love acronyms, and as everyone knows, putting an ‘X’ in something makes it even cooler (just ask Elon), which is how we ended up referring to customer experience by the handle CX in the first place. But what is CX, really? Are we talking about customer experience or merely discussing best practices in the digital world? After all, the term originated at digital agencies, shops building websites and apps, companies staffed by those proudly called “makers” to distinguish themselves from their campaign-centric counterparts on Madison Avenue. Now that CX teams are fully integrated into agencies, however, you’d think the conversation about customer experience would have gotten bigger, yet most agencies still focus on navigating the digital landscape. That’s not to say a good website and killer app isn’t important, but now it’s table stakes. If your app isn’t as intuitive as Uber or your website doesn’t one-click as easily as Amazon, you’re not even in the game. Where CX has fallen short is the analog realm of good old-fashioned customer service, where humans want to interact with other humans and have tangible—not digital—experiences. See our Year in Review stories here There are countless examples, so where to begin? Try getting anyone on the phone at Apple, American Express, AT&T, Verizon or any big company that once prided itself on customer service. Remember those DRTV ads from Amex back in the day that featured an operator with a headset eagerly awaiting your call? Today entire websites are dedicated to “get a human” hacks because the voice-activated virtual assistants are infuriating. Show me someone who claims to have never shouted “associate” or “operator” at a bot incessantly and I’ll show you someone who’s lying, heavily medicated or both. The reality is these elaborate systems are not designed to make your experience better, they were built to save the company money by laying off employees from call centers. And no one would complain—except the people with soothing voices who lost their jobs—if the robotic voice actually got you the right answer, but in most cases they’ve made it harder to get help, stealing time from their customers without compensation. Time is valuable, so let’s talk about spam, arguably the most venal and obvious example of what we’re discussing. When cookies started to crumble, any company with anything to sell became obsessed with first-party data and proceeded to gate-check their sites, flood your social feed and dupe you into giving up your email. The result? The average person will spend a minimum of six months deleting unwanted emails before they die. Think about that for a minute and ask yourself, where is the CX in the CRM strategy? Let’s go to dinner and talk about it, but wait, first we have to scan a QR code and look at the virtual menu! Sharing a meal is one of the last civil moments left in society—when we look someone in the eye and put our phones away—but the restaurant insists we start by staring at our screens. Paper menus, on recycled paper, cost next to nothing, but the difference in the moment is priceless. Once again, the obsession with what we can do digitally is at odds with what we should do—as hosts, as people in a service business, as humans. The gadget gurus who engineer our commerce aren’t really interested in treating you like a guest or family member. They’re keen on saving money by stealing time and data from you and the people you love. Some technology is well-intentioned but misused by companies that lost the plot. Consider self-checkouts at major retailers. Once we learned how to scan a barcode it was often easier for many of us to check ourselves out with our five items or less rather than wait for the nice old woman in the checkout aisle to count her coupons and talk to the cashier about the weather. But once the finance department at corporate HQ saw the savings from bagging all those cashiers, they went nuts installing more self-checkout machines than we wanted. (We’ve all stood in endless lines when the machines are down or our baskets are full on a busy day.) Also, many shoppers at groceries or drugstores are older and don’t want to self-checkout, they move slowly or need help with produce lacking an obvious barcode. And those ex-cashiers were their friends, bringing cheer to an otherwise impersonal errand. Those customers aren’t happy with the pace of change because their customer experience wasn’t considered, which strongly suggests they don’t matter. That is neither CX nor customer service, it’s corporate callousness, lethargy and greed. We pay lip service to digital detoxing, yet virtually every customer touchpoint is being rerouted through our phones to a chatbot or automated “self-service” digital experience. And it’s only accelerating now that AI has become the weapon of choice. God help the poor of sight, the poor of health or just the poor. That thousand-dollar phone is the only reason you exist, and without it, you’re invisible. To be clear, this is not a Luddite’s screed against technology, it’s a clarion call for customer service to remember that customers are people, not digital transactions. All too often innovation gets ahead of itself, and we build something simply because we can, without fully understanding the unintended consequences. Just ask Oppenheimer. Answer the damn phone. Lend a helping hand. Take an interest. Pretend every customer is your favorite aunt instead of expecting them to be another young, hip, fast-fingered phone addict. Make it easier, faster and fun, even if it costs you more money, because the loyalty you’ll get in return will be worth so much more in the end. People helping people, more human connections made easier through technology. I’d say that’s the natural evolution of CX, but I could be wrong. Give me a minute to ask Siri and I’ll let you know for sure. Ad Age Creativity Bookmark our section covering the best in brand creativity every day Read more here

Why brands urgently need to rethink CX

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