In Trinidad and To­ba­go, some busi­ness­es live in ser­vice res­cue mode. They fight cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence fires all day, every day. They are caught in a cy­cle of hav­ing to lift them­selves out of an un­end­ing stream of ser­vice fail­ures. Op­er­at­ing this way in the cur­rent cus­tomer-first, em­ploy­ee-first and dig­i­tal-first era, is nei­ther smart nor ef­fec­tive. There are far too many cus­tomer ex­pec­ta­tions that need to be met, far too much rev­enue that is just wait­ing to be tapped and far too much com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage to be gained, for busi­ness­es to be list­less in their ap­proach to cre­at­ing mag­ic for cus­tomers.    

Here’s the thing. Many busi­ness lead­ers with whom I in­ter­act, say they want to achieve cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence ex­cel­lence, on par with the “Dis­ney” ef­fect. Few, how­ev­er, are will­ing to put in the work to achieve this lev­el of bril­liance. In re­al­i­ty, they want what I call the “Mag­ic dust” ef­fect. Ba­si­cal­ly, this means want­i­ng the max­i­mum out­come of an ex­cep­tion­al cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence, while ex­pend­ing the min­i­mum in­put and not the Her­culean ef­fort re­quired to de­liv­er the mag­ic. The re­sult, of course, is per­pet­u­al res­cue mode.  

The prob­lem with liv­ing in this mode is that it is ex­haust­ing. It’s like a ham­ster held hostage on a tread­mill that’s spin­ning per­pet­u­al­ly. Sim­i­lar­ly, a busi­ness caught in this trap be­comes ha­bit­u­at­ed to the cy­cle of fix­ing ser­vice fail­ures. This mode will redi­rect the pre­cious hu­man re­sources of the busi­ness to en­er­gy-drain­ing tasks and cause sys­tems and process­es to col­lapse un­der the weight of hav­ing to func­tion in re­ac­tive mode, per­pet­u­al­ly. Es­sen­tial­ly, this busi­ness will be drained of the in­ter­nal en­er­gy need­ed to pro­pel its cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence to new heights. 

The big­ger prob­lem with liv­ing in this mode is that it does not ad­vance the de­liv­ery of cus­tomer val­ue. Cus­tomers can­not reap ben­e­fits in an ex­pe­ri­ence war zone, where a busi­ness is pre­oc­cu­pied with hav­ing to res­cue it­self from for­feit­ing cus­tomer benev­o­lence con­stant­ly.  

The way out of this res­cue mode is, first­ly, build­ing cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence wis­dom and sec­ond­ly, ex­e­cut­ing above and be­yond the de­liv­ery ef­fort bar that has been well-es­tab­lished as the in­dus­try norm. It is about how far a busi­ness is will­ing to lift above its com­peti­tors to achieve per­ma­nent dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion in a com­pet­i­tive mar­ket. 

I am a strong pro­po­nent of busi­ness­es build­ing cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence wis­dom that re­quires mov­ing away from the tra­di­tion­al and per­sis­tent ac­cep­tance of su­per­fi­cial play­books that pro­mote train­ing as the pri­ma­ry path­way to cus­tomer nir­vana. Noth­ing can be fur­ther from the truth. In fact, there is a whole com­pendi­um of guide­lines for build­ing out a cus­tomer-cen­tric busi­ness, of which train­ing is a sig­nif­i­cant, but not the on­ly key com­po­nent.  

For those busi­ness­es that are not faint of heart, de­ploy­ing the full com­pendi­um of cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence wiz­ardry in­cludes cre­at­ing the in­fra­struc­ture that will sup­port the sweet spot where su­perla­tive busi­ness earn­ings and cus­tomer hap­pi­ness in­ter­sect. Typ­i­cal­ly, this in­fra­struc­ture will in­clude the right peo­ple, stan­dards of care, work­flow au­toma­tion, dig­i­tal tools that sup­port the ease of do­ing busi­ness, friend­ly process­es, ex­pe­ri­ence mon­i­tor­ing, out­come mea­sure­ment and an of­ten-over­looked com­po­nent … the voice of the cus­tomer ma­chin­ery.  

The next of kin to cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence wis­dom is “go­ing above and be­yond” the in­dus­try norm of ser­vice de­liv­ery. Now, again, in T&T, amongst ex­ist­ing busi­ness­es, there has hard­ly been an “over­whelm­ing” ap­petite to stand head and shoul­ders above one’s com­peti­tors. The heavy pro­mo­tion of en­tre­pre­neur­ship over the past few years presents a won­der­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty go­ing for­ward, to shift the nee­dle and to make the sci­ence be­hind cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence wis­dom, de­sign and man­age­ment, cen­tral to the busi­ness-build­ing agen­da.   

We can­not ig­nore our dis­dain for the heavy-lift­ing ef­fort as­so­ci­at­ed with achiev­ing su­perla­tive cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence, giv­en the sheer enor­mi­ty of such an un­der­tak­ing. What we can do, as we look in­to the fu­ture and wit­ness the chang­ing pro­file of the cus­tomer in­to a dig­i­tal na­tive and ex­pe­ri­ence fa­nat­ic, is ac­knowl­edge the need for an ap­proach to cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence man­age­ment that is more pris­mat­ic and there­fore, more sys­tem­at­ic.  

This means any busi­ness fol­low­ing the tra­di­tion­al ser­vice de­liv­ery route that in­tends to ex­pand its win­ning streak with cus­tomers in the fu­ture, will need to re­think its cur­rent ap­proach. It means cast­ing a new vi­sion for how cus­tomers will ex­pe­ri­ence bril­liance when they in­ter­act with the busi­ness. 

It’s time to say good­bye to the luke­warm at­ti­tude to cus­tomer hap­pi­ness that keeps busi­ness­es in ser­vice res­cue mode and to wel­come cus­tomers to the op­por­tu­ni­ty to live their best lives with their cho­sen busi­ness brands.