Standing Out From The Crowd

“Hey,” – said the little boy. – “You have a very scary house…”

Given the circumstances, I took that as a compliment. After all, it was Halloween and all kids were going from house to house in search of candy and the best spooky experience.

But the comment got me thinking about how Customer Experience can be relative. If I had received that comment on a typical day, I would be concerned about my house’s lighting, security or just on how to avoid being embarrassed in front of my neighbors’ kids. It is really amazing how the customer experience depends entirely on the customer perspectives and expectations.

It is pretty easy for a large company to forget that and start interpreting their customer’s complains and suggestions from a wrong point of view, without really understanding what the customers mean at first place.

Customer Experience may be about looking for and reacting to customers’ inputs, but it is much more than that.  It is also about understanding the subtle context that sometimes affects the customer perception.

You better be prepared to understand your Customer and not just listen to them. Or else, next time you hear something like “hey, you have a very scary house!”, you could be changing your whole company’s strategy because of a simple compliment.

*Originally posted at Customerspective Blog