An operating system

In this article you’ll find
• why customer experience is generated more by operations than by communication alone
• how touchpoints and moments of truth shape customer perception throughout the journey
• why friction and inconsistency can silently destroy value and experience

Customer experience is often associated with service quality, store atmosphere, communication effectiveness or the presence of positive interactions with staff.

All of this is correct. More broadly, however, customer experience should be defined as the perceptible consequence of the interaction between the customer and the company’s operating system.

Customer experience is not something added on top of operations.
Customer experience is the result of the interaction with operations.

More generally, customer experience is the set of perceptions, sensations and emotions a customer experiences throughout all interactions with the system made available by the company.

For this reason, customer experience does not exclusively coincide with a single isolated moment, but involves the entire customer journey.

From brand discovery to information research, from store accessibility to layout clarity, from waiting times to product availability, from payment simplicity to problem resolution, all the way to the continuity of the relationship over time.

Customer experience is everything that happens when customer perception meets the company’s world.

The customer journey as the structure of the experience

A retail customer normally goes through several stages while interacting with the retail system.

Before entering a store, for example, customers evaluate the alternatives available to them.
Before purchasing a product, they compare different options.
After the purchase, they may need assistance because they encountered a problem.
And so on. This is the well-known customer journey.

Each stage generates different expectations, levels of attention and perceptual vulnerabilities. During the exploration phase, for example, customers typically seek:

  • clarity
  • relevance
  • recognizability

During operational phases, such as purchasing or service consumption, aspects such as the following become more important:

  • fluidity
  • reliability
  • simplicity
  • predictability

Over time, these perceptions progressively accumulate until they shape the overall retail experience.

Customer experience therefore does not originate from a single point, even though it may definitely end at a single point. Instead, it emerges throughout the journey, within the transition between the different stages of the customer journey.

The quality of the experience therefore also depends on the system’s ability to guide customers throughout the customer journey without generating unnecessary friction.

Touchpoints and Moments Of Truth

Every interaction between the customer and the company can be interpreted as a touchpoint.
A point of contact where exchanges of information, perceptions and emotions occur.

The customer journey can therefore also be interpreted as the sequence of all touchpoints the customer interacts with throughout the relationship with the retail system.

Along this journey, however, not all touchpoints carry the same perceptual weight. Some moments influence much more significantly:

  • trust
  • perceived quality
  • likelihood of return
  • word-of-mouth propensity
  • future tolerance toward mistakes

These moments are often referred to as Moments Of Truth (MOM). In retail, moments of truth frequently emerge during:

  • storefront visibility
  • welcoming
  • waiting management
  • product availability
  • service delivery
  • problem resolution
  • complaint management

In these moments, customers often unconsciously reassess:

  • the quality of the organization
  • the quality of the products and services offered
  • the reliability of the system
  • the level of attention received
  • the overall quality of the experience

For this reason, MOM’s often represent vulnerability points within the system itself. Customer experience can deteriorate very quickly when one or more moments of truth generate:

  • inconsistency
  • friction
  • instability
  • loss of trust

Understanding which touchpoints most strongly influence customer perception therefore becomes fundamental in customer experience design.

Not every moment necessarily needs to amaze.
But some moments absolutely need to work.

From the imagined experience to the real experience

One of the most common mistakes in customer experience design is failing to transform the experience the company wants to create into the experience the customer actually perceives. It is an excellent starting point to clearly define:

  • the desired positioning
  • the emotions the company wants to transmit
  • the tone of communication
  • the type of experience imagined for the customer

However, it is equally important to remember that customer experience is not perceived based on the brand’s intentions. It is perceived through the concrete functioning of the retail system. Therefore, after deciding to offer:

  • a premium experience
  • a simple experience
  • a fast experience
  • a memorable experience

it becomes necessary to understand through which operational elements that perception will actually be built and which operational procedures will be required to generate the desired experience. For this reason, every touchpoint should be designed by answering at least two fundamental questions:

  1. Which customer experience do we want customers to live through?
  2. Through which operational elements will this experience actually be transmitted?

Customer experience is therefore not only what the brand intends to communicate. It is what the operating system actually transmits throughout the entire customer journey.

Designing a customer experience

A strong customer experience therefore requires a structured design of the customer journey, touchpoints, moments of truth and the mechanisms through which the experience will actually be transmitted and perceived by the customer. For this reason, customer experience design normally requires at least four levels of analysis.

Journey mapping

The first consists of mapping the customer journey by identifying:

  • the different stages of the journey
  • the touchpoints included in each stage
  • transition points
  • moments of truth

The objective is not simply to describe the customer’s path, but also to understand:

  • where perceptual value accumulates?
  • where friction emerges?
  • where the system generates operational vulnerabilities?

Experience transmission design

Once the touchpoints have been identified, it becomes necessary to understand:

  • which experience the company wants to transmit?
  • through which operational elements this experience will be generated?

It therefore becomes extremely important to avoid building inconsistent or weak customer experiences. It is essential to ensure that the operating system is capable of transmitting the desired experience in a stable, continuous and coherent way over time.

Friction analysis

Another fundamental level of analysis consists of identifying where the system generates friction. For example:

  • unnecessary waiting times
  • unnecessary complexity
  • decision overload
  • interruptions
  • operational inconsistencies
  • loss of fluidity

Very often, customer experience does not deteriorate because of the absence of spectacular elements, but because of the accumulation of friction throughout the customer journey.

Consistency analysis

Finally, it becomes necessary to evaluate the overall consistency of the system. A strong customer experience requires:

  • perceptual continuity
  • operational stability
  • consistency across touchpoints
  • coherence between environment, people, processes and communication

throughout the entire customer journey.

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