More seriously, reading articles and books it looks like the word “management” is getting outdated really quickly. As much as I hate the “buzz”, we still have to get a way to get people getting interested in what we do. If people think management is boring and outdated… would there be a need for a name that sells better?

Using a product, which is designed, can influence the user’s customer experience. Same with a service, an ad, a store layout, etc.

Note that customer service protocols, IVRS and such are also part of the experience with a company. But you don’t see designers throw themselves at designing that. Is is a question of visibility? Prestige? I bet that in a few years when the breadth of applications Customer Experience management is well know, people will start talking about Customer Service Design (unless the new buzz-word “Service Design” starts covering it).

David Jacques
Customer input Limited

In fact, I would go a step beyond what you suggested… that “an experience is created out of the interactions between a company and an individual.”

Although you could argue this endlessly, we’ve found that the most productive and customer-centric definition of “customer experience” is… “a customers rational and emotional reactions… across their end-to-end process… of achieving one or more goals that important to them.”

Once our clients have been able to get their head around this way of thinking, they’ve realized that a lot of the customer experience happens at the non-touchpoints. And that understanding what happens at these non-touchpoints is the key to designing a platform that enables the customer to have a fundamentally better experience.

One of the other great ways of thinking about this… design for emergence… comes from Chris Alexander’s “A Pattern Language” which describes how an architect can design physical space in a way that encourages the emergence of compelling experience. Definitely worth checking out.

Cheers,
Frank Capek
SVP, Customer Driven Innovation
BSG Concours