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I am grumpy about customer experience these days. Recently, I vented a bit of my frustration on LinkedIn and asking has the world gone mad? This realization came with a bunch of different things in my life as a customer went wrong, from gate delays on the tarmac for transcontinental flights on both sides of the pond to a house in shambles because of materials delays and poor project management. 

 

Interestingly, it is not simply a case of a single company or industry experiencing failures; the problem is everywhere. From theme parks to airlines, the responses to my rant revealed issues that seem to encompass a wide range of businesses. 

 

The reader's replies voiced many opinions about the possible causes and solutions for these declining experiences. One reader suggested that the lack of good service is due to a lack of motivated workers wanting to be paid more for less work. Another commenter theorized that the culprits might be high expectations, insufficient staffing, and a lack of empathy. 

 

 

In this episode, we talk about many of the problems with experiences we are seeing today and what we can do about them—and how we can adapt to the new normal.

 

Key Ideas to Improve your Customer Experience

 

While many may be quick to blame the entire situation on COVID, many of the problems we are seeing today are also influenced by other factors. For example, many labor pool shortages in the UK are affected by population migration resulting from Brexit, which makes organizations hard-pressed to find warm bodies, let alone the right warm bodies, to fill their open positions. Also, some of the problems are cultural. For example, one reader shared her perspective as a Dutch person living in Britain. Then, of course, there is the computer to deal with, and sometimes it says no (Warning: Fruity language at the end of this video). Regardless of the causes for this shift in customer service quality, we must begin to repair some of the damage.

 

Here are a few more key moments in the discussion:

 

• 1:38 Colin talks about his frustrations with flights to and from JFK Airport and the subsequent LinkedIn post about the world going crazy.
• 04:30: We discuss the declining customer satisfaction index and some of our listeners’ responses.
• 08:05: We evaluate a commenters assessment that customer service quality has declined due to a shrinking labor pool. 
• 12:40: We look at COVID-19 and how it may have affected quality of Customer Experience by raising consumer expectations.
• 17:12: We examine a listener’s poor experience with Disney and how it is representative of a larger labor shortage problem around many larger corporations.
• 22:52: We explain how COVID did not cause all customer service issues but rather worsened previously existing ones. Specifically, we look at Brexit and economic downturn in Europe.
• 32:40: Ryan discusses a listeners review of good customer service and then we look at solutions for these customer and employee experience issues.

 

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Customer Experience Information & Resources

 

LinkedIn recognizes Colin Shaw as one of the 'World's Top 150 Business Influencers.' As a result, he has 290,000 followers of his work. Shaw is Founder and CEO of Beyond Philosophy LLC, which helps organizations unlock growth by discovering customers' hidden, unmet needs that drive value ($). The Financial Times selected Beyond Philosophy as one of the best management consultancies for the last four years in a row. Follow Colin on LinkedIn and Twitter.

 

Click here to learn more about Professor Ryan Hamilton of Emory University. 

 

Why Customers Buy: As an official "Influencer" on LinkedIn, Colin writes a regular newsletter on all things Customer Experience. Click here to join the other 35,000 subscribers. 

 

 

How can we help?

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