Entropy Is Coming For Your Customer Experience

If we want things to stay the same, there will have to be some changes. We can’t expect things that are working well today to work well tomorrow. Nor can we expect moments that surprise and delight our customers to continue to do so.

Entropy is real - without constant attention, effort, iteration and improvement, things get worse

Today, we are seeing so many companies, frustrated by their slow or nonexistent progress in customer experience pulling back from their efforts at improvement. Even if they “quit while they were ahead” with a good or even great experience – and, to be clear, the vast majority did not – they’d still be setting themselves up for trouble.

This is not going to end well. When you stop tending the garden, it doesn't take long for weeds to grow.

For the rest of us, who are not giving up on Customer Experience, on making improvements on behalf of their customers, you must push back against entropy.

3 Tips For Pushing Back On Entropy

What we need are simple strategies for ensuring that are customer expeirence does not deteriorate - all the aspects of our customer experience, from the mundane to the memorable.

Ensure That What Need Only Be Good Enough Remains Good Enough

There are vast stretches of your customer experience, of any customer experience that need only be good enough to be good enough. There are so many parts of our days as humans, as customers, that are forgettable and that is totally fine for most parts of your experience.

But are you sure these forgettable parts remain effortless and effective enough to remain mundane in the minds of your customers?

Or have they deteriorated?

Or, have customer expectations shifted in a way where it’s no long good enough that they’re good enough?

The irony of having vast swathes of an experience that are forgettable is that you can’t forget about them. You need to ensure they remain good enough that it’s good enough.

There are vast stretches of any customer experience that need only be good enough to be good enough, but they still require vigilance.

Subject Your Signature Moments To A Higher Level Of Scrutiny?

The second simple strategy is to pay even closer attention to any signature moments or differentiating elements of your customer experience. The erosion or erasure of these really undermines your experience.

The challenge is that many of these moments can easily be copied or become less differentiating at any point, and so you must be constantly vigilant.

If Doubletree Hotels finds that their nearest competitors all started serving fresh, warm cookies at the check-in desk, that would be the time for a rethink on what is otherwise a very nice signature moment. If Enterprise rent-a-car found other rental car companies copying its Enterprise Pause at the check-in counter, they’d have to revisit that staging.

Brands with the best experiences have built signature moments into their experiences. But the enduring challenge with a signature moment is that it gets noticed, and remembered. If your competitors are paying attention, they’ll see that as something to take inspiration from. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after all, and also the surest way to losing the edge you get from a signature moment.

It can't be your signature moment if it's everyone else's. Ensure your points of differentiation remain distinct.

Look For Entropy In Others You Can Capitalize On

But let's come back to the start of this problem - all of those companies cutting their CX teams, their design teams, reducing their focus on customer experience. Take advantage of them while their backs are turned.

I was traveling last week, and had sub-par experiences across the travel experience – I’ll leave the guilty unnamed for now. These are companies that have in the past ranked highly for customer experience, and who have made promises about the quality their customer experience. Needless to say, they didn’t keep their promises or live up to their former rankings. And I believe they’ve all slipped in the rankings anyway.

For those of us who are still looking after the customer experience, we should be watching to note our competitors taking their eyes off the ball. That is an opportunity to capitalize on entropy – the entropy of other companies experiences.

Signs of slippage in your competition is your queue to take advantage of the entropy in their CX.