Customer Experience or CX is the sum of all the interactions between a customer and an organization. Many organizations fail to account for this sum. A lot of focus and investment is usually placed on the acquisition part of the customer journey. This is the marketing and sales side of things and usually, it’s a fantastic experience.
Flashy marketing or great sales experience is very common. However, that is usually not how one builds an emotional attachment to your customer. At the end of the day, however much automation or technology you have, the connection is always human. And guess what? Humans are emotional creatures. Emotional attachment is how you seriously build brand loyalty. I’ve written about the sum of interactions here: Customer Experience is a the Sum of all Interactions – CXO and you can also read how Disney has done CX well by leaning heavily on the emotional attachment here: Digitizing the Happiest Place on Earth – Brandt International
Peak Design is a small company in California catering to photographers and videographers. They make straps and bags but recently, got into designing a really compact tripod. Something that can really travel well when you have limited baggage or with family. The products are well designed and customer support is excellent but what happens when the rubber meets the road?
The tripod has an attachment for phones – the acknowledgement of the mobile generation. Well, it cracked at the hinge after countless uses. I searched for a solution since I love the way I could use the tripod – phone, camera, even for microphones or lights. I wasn’t sure I could find the replacement part in Malaysia so I reached out to their customer service. After some basic questions and submitting a photo of the cracked part, I went off to make breakfast. I got an email about a Peak Design order shipped. This was followed by a email from support saying that they’ve shipped me a replacement part!
Remember this article about service recovery? Failure is unavoidable. Service Recovery is mandatory. – CXO
In the end, things break, services screw up but how you recover is always key and many organizations don’t invest enough here. These brands stand out among the crowd and if you want to discuss profitability, the emotional attachment allows them to charge higher and get away with it. So yes, good CX is a good business strategy.
Oh, yes, as an emotional human being, I went out and bought more Peak Design products later that day.

Customer Experience Transformational leader and strategist | Sustainable Future Initiatives | Building People Excellence