Do I want an experience or just damn good service?

Remember the days of customer service? It was eons ago, lost in time, before the days when we were conditioned to expect an ‘experience’ every time we checked our bank balance. I’ve looked for this experience everywhere - online, in cupboards, under the rug and in the backyard shed, but I still haven’t found it.

I’m not saying that life is not a series of experiences. We’re living through a pandemic labelled ‘novel’. That’s not a misnomer or misdirection. The pandemic is novel. It’s true to label. But unlike a trip on Canada’s Rocky Mountaineer, or climbing Mt Kinabalu, COVID is not one that I want to live again.

There’s a whole industry built around shaping customer experiences, or at least our expectations of them. For the most part though, we never realise the dream, either as promoters or consumers.

With Melbourne in week number X of lockdown (I’ve actually forgotten what life beyond 5 km from home looks like), customer experiences have been few and far between. Wearing a tangled COVID mat on my head and experimenting with multiple extensions of the life of disposable razor blades are evidence of this.

Eating in has replaced dining out and when we do go out to buy in, we’re choosing and purchasing online from faceless providers through apps like Menulog and Eat Club. Our excitement and our experience is following the progress of a delivery as it pedals or two-strokes the few kilometres to our front door.

The metrics of the experience are: did my order arrive, how long did it take and did it arrive at an edible temperature and, of course, was the food any good and, maybe, did I get a discount?

Across the board, behavioural constraints are reshaping the way we research, choose and purchase products and services. Even technophobes are adapting to tapping phones and cards instead of unfolding cash. What does a coin look like? Ask the Ancients, they’ll know.

COVID is redefining customer experience for all of us far more successfully than the best CX and UX designers of the past decade. We’ve come to admire the simple beauty of utility - the quality of the goods and services and the effectiveness of their delivery. Hell, we’ve even ramped up our expectations for the effectiveness of returning stuff that doesn’t cut the mustard. And we expect to return it free.

But perhaps that is all we even wanted. The experience industry was stretching credulity anyway, particularly in sectors that weren’t in the business of making dreams come true.

The problem is that the evolution of strategy and process from the days of Total Quality Management (TQM) in the 1980s through customer satisfaction in the 90s to experience and net promoter score today, has typically tried to overlay great thinking and innovation from one sector to the other without any real intellectual firepower applied to considering whether it’s appropriate.

Can we expect the endorphin rush of an adventure or 5-star luxury travel experience from the process of buying health insurance or buying a packet of nails at Bunnings? If the answer is yes, then I promise to either acknowledge the outstanding CX/UX designer of that experience or just send condolences to the euphoric customer.

The point is that being true to brand or achieving a high level of brand attraction and loyalty is often not linked to our ability to deliver an ‘experience’. Often it’s down to quality and utility - my ability to get in, choose, purchase and get the job done with minimal interruption to my day. Anything beyond that is an intrusion and detracts from or prevents me doing more rewarding things.

As in all professions, we can expect our knowledge, skills and sophistication to evolve, but I often wonder whether some of the reframing and narrative around the concept of customer service has been turbocharged by people who just wanted to transform the uncool utilitarian focus of customer service to something more chic and attention grabbing at executive and board level.

There’s been wide discussion about the psychology of the COVID-19 pandemic and its transformation of the way we think, interact and prioritise. As consumers, it’s might mean a reappraisal of what is truly an experience and what is a contrived narrative about an experience we never realise.

It might mean rediscovery of the old fashioned version of what we expect and deserve - customer service.