What is one of the biggest mistakes companies make when focusing on customer experience?
- The AHA Group
- Feb 2
- 2 min read
They confuse service with experience.
These CEOs can’t wait to tell me about the “experiences” they create for customers. They usually show me their high survey scores. And all the “training” their organization has had over the years on Five Star this or that.
Here is what I know from speaking to hundreds of CEOs with this same story:
⛔ Your survey often measures expected baseline service for your industry. Expected. Baseline. Service. Everyone should get a high score on delivering the bare minimum. When I rewrite those survey questions to reflect the criteria for excellence, and we sample customers, the reality is more likely a two instead of a ten. And without that knowledge, these CEOs are flying blind.
⛔ Your “experiences” are just good service. When I speak with their customers and evaluate their customer experience program using modern criteria, it is very clear they understand very little about true experiences. And even less about what modern consumers expect or want. Delivering just good service gives you zero differentiation - sooner or later, these companies learn this the hard way.
⛔ Your “training” program was likely delivered by a firm that stopped innovating in 1990. You have a false sense of security that you have this all figured out, and your organization is executing on principles that have become the baseline everywhere. Therefore, they are the bare minimum. Often, I see teams with a sense of arrogance that they are ‘Five Star” when, by modern standards of excellence, they are Two. And that’s strictly on service - no experiences in sight.
How do you know if this is you or your company?
If you aren’t delivering experiences at scale that all of your customers will remember in 2-5 years, you aren’t delivering an experience at all. And I don’t mean because you delivered some magical, expensive, time-consuming thing tied to some big purchase or moment. I mean every day, every employee, every customer, elevating the mundane to that level.
Consumers expect so much more than you think, more than they tell you, and delivering against outdated standards is downright dangerous to revenue, retention, and referrals.