Creating Customer Experiences that Don't Matter... yet

It was the breathing that seized my soul.

As the final moments of 2021 seeped out of the clock, my wife and I were anchored in San Carlos Bay on the leeward side of Sanibel Island. Alone in the bay on a quiet, clear night with the stars beckoning eternity above us, we stepped onto the deck to watch the distant fireworks and welcome the birth of 2022.

In the still of the that night we heard the breathing. Leisurely gulps of air bracketed by barely audible laps of water. It was too dark to see the source, but we could hear and feel the presence. We were not alone, after all.

The dolphins. The dolphins who had so often been our playful companions when we were on the move were relaxing in the bay with us. Our unseen friends were sharing our moment.

It was a magical moment the memory of which thrust itself into my consciousness as I watched the devastation of Ian tearing apart that very island and much more. I pray for safety and a speedy recovery for the good people of Florida.

Thinking about that night, I marvel at the quirky human condition and our place in the world. For me, the dolphins’ breathing sparked an emotion. A flash. A connection. In that nexus of time and space, I felt an emotional connection and a shared experience with a fellow mammal. We were sharing a moment together. We were breathing the same air. We were relaxing in the same bay. It is a spark that will never fully extinguish in me, or, at least, I hope it never does.

For the dolphins, however, I am sure that their feelings toward me were far less profound. No doubt they felt, if they felt anything at all, an overwhelming indifference perhaps frayed at the edge with a niggling wariness. Doubtless, my sense of interspecies connection was not reciprocated.

This imbalance of emotional engagement is something to remember when crafting customer experiences that matter. That spark of emotional connection is the gold of customer loyalty that companies are continually trying to mine. People make rational decisions for emotional reasons and companies, rightly, strive to touch our emotions.

If I may be unorthodox, perhaps sometimes we shouldn’t. Sometimes that customer is not in the headspace to welcome an emotional connection. Sometimes your customer is a dolphin who is indifferent to your needs and your desires and just wants to conduct a transaction and otherwise be left alone.

In such conditions, when we attempt to force an unwelcome emotion, we actually create a poor customer experience. Sometimes your customer just isn’t that into you right now, and that’s okay. Our responsibility is to meet customers where they are, in the way they are, in the moment they are. Sometimes the best customer experience is the one in which the customer gets exactly what they need with no fuss and doesn’t think about us anymore. When they need us again, however, they will recall that frictionless interaction and appreciate it.

Returning to my theme from last week of creating individual experiences that matter at scale, sometimes the best experience is the one that the customer doesn’t think about at all.

Just a thought…?

#customerexperience #dolphins