TCXT (Tuesday Customer Experience Thoughts) is a section of our blog where our Director of QuestionPro Customer Experience reflects and shares his thoughts on everyday moments and their relationship to customer experience.
Want to hear Ken Peterson’s thoughts directly? Watch the video summary here:
I may need to check my email more often. Once a day is not enough because I have an email that has been sitting there reminding me that my four-year “prescription” for McAfee Protection Guarantee-630710 is up for renewal. Apparently, the payment was already processed and will be final in the next twelve hours. Fortunately, they gave me a familiar (808) number to call for questions or report any unusual activity. I did not realize that McAfee had a contact center based in Hawaii. I guess I’ll have to visit sometime. At the very least, to give gratitude to Wanjie Kniight 630710 for bringing this oversight to my attention (and caution him against using his personal Gmail address for McAfee business).
I must have quite a few “prescriptions” to McAfee, GeekSquad and others because I have several of these emails in my SPAM folder (I’ll have to speak with my ISP on why these seemingly important messages are not getting through to me however). I guess it would be great if these companies would help me to see where I have duplicate subscriptions and save money – that would be great customer experience even as it would cost them revenue.
I am certain that you would recognize by now the facetious tone that I am taking, but to provide confirmation, I am well aware that these are scam emails trying to get me to provide a credit card number to “refund” my supposed purchase. So what does this have to do with the customer experience? Just as much as any interaction, survey and closing the loop.
The customer experience does not start and end inside the walls of the brand. It carries throughout every interaction with your brand, whether the image of the brand is presented by you or by others. Frequently, I speak about the term “Total Experience”. Really, the Customer Experience is all about the “Total Experience”. It encompasses everything that can be associated with your brand. The easy concepts are the interactions, the condition of your locations they visit, and the employees that customers interact with during and after transactions.
Then there are the not very obvious ones, but still controlled by your brand. The survey experience is often overlooked. No matter the topic, customer experience surveys will undoubtedly leave an impression with customers. Too long, spelling errors, or boring flow can create negative impressions. Beyond these, even what you do afterward with the information customers provide to you will be evaluated. A few weeks back, I wrote about this in detail (you can see that here), but if you do not bother to take action on the feedback you receive or just provide canned responses, your customers will realize that you do not really care about their feedback and – by extension – their experience.
Then there are many more that are out of your control but can still affect the customer experience, like the above email – and the many others like it. This goes beyond these spoof and phishing scams. It can also include things like fake reviews, counterfeit products, social media impersonation, negative publicity from unaffiliated individuals, misguided boycotts and domain squatting/redirects. All of these can impact your brand – significantly.
Some brands will throw their hands up in the air and plead that nothing can be done – but that isn’t exactly true. While the brand is not obligated to rise against these scams, they should still educate consumers, specifically their customers, on how to look out for such scams. I am a customer of the brand for one of these more common scams. Yet I have never received an email or message from that brand, and even when I specifically look up that brand along with the words “email scam”, it does not show up at the top of the search results. With how many scam emails that must be sent out in this brand’s name, one might think that they would be willing to pay for some keywords to have it on page one of the search results. Instead, it sits on page two – and makes me think of the quote that the worst place to appear on a web search is on page two of the results. It does not demonstrate a proactive approach on behalf of the brand.
Good or bad, controllable or uncontrollable – your brand is constantly being evaluated. How you manage those assessments of your brand is all a part of the Customer Experience (or the Total Experience if you need to hear it phrased that way). Where do you start? The best start is to take a first step. Perhaps create a journey map of “uncontrollable experiences” and link them to your controllable experiences – and make specific your actions are relevant to your customers and potential customers, not just your image.
Building a strong brand goes far beyond marketing efforts or investing in a great product — it’s about creating meaningful experiences where your customers take center stage. If you’re looking for a tool to help you manage and elevate those experiences, QuestionPro Customer Experience is the platform you need.
From journey mapping and persona development to AI-powered workflows and feedback management, it equips you with everything required to understand your customers, take action, and drive real impact. Start turning insights into loyalty — all in one place.
