When Did We Stop Designing Customer Service for Real Life?
I am an avid reader and there’s nothing I like more than knowledge (yes, you can call me a geek!). I love to learn and still feel inspired by something new grabbing my interest and this week, that interest is all about our service models.
I have worked in the contact centre industry for over 30years and serving customers has always been front and centre of my work, so I always have one ear listening out for what’s needed to keep our customers happy. Something I have noticed more and more is customer dis-satisfaction with service design. In short, there’s so much evidence that customers do not feel helped by our service models and this leads me to believe that too much of customer service is still designed around the organisation, and internal operating models, not the customer.
Historically, we have been guilty of creating channels that we believe will work for customers because our CRMs or software solutions required us to build in a specific way, and for years, that worked well enough. Customers adapted and they waited in queues, they called back, and fitted themselves into opening hours, processes, and policies. But that quiet agreement has gone, but customers haven’t suddenly become more demanding; they’ve simply stopped bending.
The Gap Between How We Design and How People Live
Think about how your customers actually live their lives.
They’re not sat at home between 9 and 5, ready to contact you.
They’re:
Checking something quickly between meetings whilst working
Trying to sort an issue while making tea
Calling on a hands-free from the car while collecting kids from daycare
Messaging from the sofa in the evening after a long day
And in the midst of all of these other activities, they are looking to your business for reassurance at the exact moment that something feels uncertain.
Customer service doesn’t happen in a neat, controlled environment, it happens in the middle of everything else, and yet many contact centres are still designed as if customers have the time, patience and context to navigate structured journeys, long IVRs, or multiple hand-offs.
They don’t and increasingly, they won’t. So what are you doing about that?
The Rise of “In-the-Moment” Expectations
What’s changed isn’t just technology, it’s behaviour and expectations.
We’ve all become used to doing things instantly:
Ordering something in seconds
Getting updates in real time
Switching between channels without thinking
Multi-tasking with limited timespans and attention
So, when something doesn’t work or when an answer isn’t immediate, or when a journey feels clunky, it really stands out and creates dis-satisfaction, irritation and sometimes aggravation.
Not because it’s catastrophic but because it feels out of step with everything else going on in that customer’s life and that’s where frustration begins.
It’s Not About Faster, It’s About Easier
A lot of organisations respond to this emerging customer expectation by trying to be faster. There’s a belief that shorter wait times, quicker responses or more channels will make customers happier, and whilst these elements of customer service are still important, speed alone won’t solve this problem. Because if a journey is confusing, repetitive or unclear, doing it quickly just means the customer experiences that frustration sooner.
What customers actually want is something much simpler: they want their interactions and solutions from you to be easy. Easy to connect with you, easy to understand, and easy to resolve, and that doesn’t come from adding more, it comes from designing better.
The Hidden Friction We’ve Learned to Accept
One of the challenges in contact centres is that we become used to our own processes. We know where the gaps are and we know which steps don’t quite make sense. We also know where customers are likely to struggle, but because we work around them every day through our frontline, they stop feeling urgent.
But customers don’t see it that way. They experience each point of friction in isolation, without context.
Being asked to repeat information
Being moved between channels
Being given partial answers
Being told to “go online” when they’re already trying to solve something
None of these things are major in isolation, but together, they create a sense of effort, and effort is what customers remember.
Where AI Can Help (And Where It Can’t)
This is where AI has real potential, but only if it’s used with intention.
Used well, it can:
Remove simple barriers
Provide instant answers where appropriate
Reduce the need for customers to “start again”
But it can’t fix poor design. If the journey itself doesn’t make sense, AI won’t make it feel better, it will simply guide customers through the same flawed experience more quickly, and, surprise, surprise, your customers will still feel it.
Designing Around Moments, Not Channels
One of the most useful shifts I’ve seen in recent years is this: moving away from designing around channels, and towards designing around moments.
Instead of asking:
“How do we improve our phone channel?”
“How do we optimise live chat?”The question becomes:
“What is the customer trying to do in this moment, and how do we make that easier?”
Your customers don’t think in channels, they probably don’t even know what a channel is. Instead, they think in terms of what they want, need and expect in that moment, e.g., they think in outcomes.
“I need to fix this”
“I need to understand this”
“I need reassurance”
So, moving a customer around channels just because that’s the operating model design, creates a fragmented customer experience, it hurts your customers’ belief in you, causes frustration and without doubt, there will be customer loss for the worst of these situations. But if you design around customer intent, you have a whole new playing field to make things feel seamless and so much easier.
The Cost of Not Adapting
When doing some research for my recent book, I established that there’s an often-unrecognised risk in failing to appreciate the need to build for ‘moments,’ and that risk is customer attrition, because customers don’t always complain, sometimes, they just simply stop engaging.
They avoid contacting you.
They switch providers.
They lower their expectations.
They fail to renew.
They give you low CSAT scores.
And that’s far more damaging to your business in the long term, because you don’t just lose that interaction, you also risk the relationship.
So, What Needs to Change?
This isn’t about a complete overhaul (I can hear your sighs of relief!), but it is about a shift in perspective.
Start With Real Life
Look at when and how customers actually need you. Invest your time consciously into reviewing your customers’ experiences and what’s needed today that may not have been obvious a few years ago.
Reduce Effort, Not Just Time
Focus on making journeys simpler, not just faster. What can you learn from the step above that will now simplify the customers’ effort?
Design Around Intent
Build experiences around what customers are trying to achieve, not the channels you offer.
Use Technology Thoughtfully
Let AI remove friction, but don’t expect it to fix design issues; design issues are your responsibility!
A Final Thought
I shared my thoughts on this via LinkedIn a few days ago and someone messaged me to say that ‘I am advocating for unrealistic customer expectations.’ I laughed and silently questioned why this person called themselves a CX ‘expert,’ but let me answer that challenge….for me, customer expectations haven’t become unrealistic at all, they have actually become realistic for the world we live in now. A world where things are immediate and where experiences are joined up, a world where effort stands out.
I truly believe that the organisations that will stand out for customer care, customer retention, growth and customer advocacy, are the ones that recognise a simple reality: customer service isn’t something people plan their day around, it’s something they need to fit into their lives.
If we design for that properly and intentionally, and with a lot more empathy for real life, the experience starts to feel very different. Not more complex, but a whole lot better.
What are you going to do to make your customers’ experiences simpler?