TCXT 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:
“Yep… I still write by hand. I still read books.
Movies give you everything. The world is built. The characters are cast. The emotions are framed for you. You watch, you ‘consume’ while you don’t have to imagine anything.
When you read … Nothing is given. You have to build the world yourself. Imagine the faces. The places. The movement. The atmosphere.
That effort matters. It’s a crucial creative muscle.
If you don’t use it… you lose it.
Writing works the same way. Typing is repetition. Handwriting forces involvement. You remember what you write. You feel the thought form. It slows you down just enough to make it matter.” – Zoltan Bathory (Source)
There is a lot to unpack there. I had intended to spend this post talking about AI and its impact on customer experiences. Sometimes the unexpected happens, and suddenly you start thinking about how technology is forming experiences.
Nearly every commercial website has an automated chat function. We continually see more purchases using online tools in some way – either for research or to make the purchase. And sometimes we use mobile applications to order dinner to be delivered without any real human interaction. An introvert’s favorite.
I had one of those planned dinners recently. Most of the time, I only have to worry about being ready to get to the door once the food is delivered. This recent time, I was in a hotel, so I needed to be ready to go down in the elevator at the appropriate time. The app told me 20 to 40 minutes, so I planned my time accordingly and figured I might be waiting downstairs in some cold weather for a maximum of 20 minutes to await the delivery.
Twenty minutes slowly became forty minutes, then an hour.
Checking the app, it asked if my food had been delivered. When I clicked “No”, it gave me an option to check status, which then led me to a page that told me to call the store. No real information, just a push to a call I really did not feel like making. Yet I still made the call, over and over again, because I just kept getting a busy signal. I tried to look through the app to see if I could find more details or help anywhere.
As the wait time rolled into ninety minutes, I was wondering if I would ever see my meal – and I was getting hungry.
The problem in this case was that the inputs provided to the application were wrong. I’ll probably never know the source, but suffice to say that somewhere the algorithm was not working correctly or the inputs were not accurate.
In one of the most recent analyst reports surrounding Customer Journey Management, much of the discussion revolved around using AI to create everything in the journey practice.
Every persona, every map – from the top level all the way down to individual customer journey maps.
Seems to me like that would take all the fun out of it if everything was generated by AI, but certainly more “efficient”. However, with all the AI training available, a customer journey map will not be complete without some human interaction. In fact, the broader the map, the more likely human eyes need to observe the map and make recommendations. It is that human element that makes the map come to life and have empathy.
We often talk about customer experience, technology, and the role of AI. However, the creative muscle in humans is what makes the experience human. It is not about nostalgia, instead it is about empathy and understanding, where AI is not yet ready. So take a step away from the computer, grab a piece of paper, and get your start on the first map.
When it is time to organize multiple maps and share them with your organization, contact me, and I’ll get you started with QuestionPro Customer Journey Management.
If you would like to learn more about how we guide experiences through Customer Journey Management or using AI guardrails in CX, please do not hesitate to reach out to me and schedule a time. I’m always excited to talk about the future.
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