Excellent Customer Experience isn’t Optional – It’s Foundational

When customers enjoy their experience, companies grow faster. Better CX drives larger wallet share, makes cross-sells easier, boosts engagement, and ultimately, increases revenue. However, delivering consistently great experiences is becoming increasingly challenging: new competitors emerge rapidly, many products appear similar, and firms face constant pressure to adopt new technologies.

Therefore, businesses must do two things simultaneously: continually improve product capabilities and ensure every interaction feels smooth and consistent. If they fail on either, customers will move on — often to rivals who offer a simpler, friendlier journey.

Example: Apple combines polished products with services (retail, Genius Bar, software updates) to provide customers with a consistent, premium experience across all touchpoints. That integration helps explain high loyalty and repeat purchases.

The common trap: great product, weak experience

Many organisations launch exciting features or products without setting up the teams, processes and support required to deliver the whole experience. The product may look excellent in marketing, but the customer journey — from billing and onboarding to support and returns — feels broken.

This is evident in teams celebrating internal KPIs (downloads, ad metrics, campaign reach) while customers face confusing support paths or clumsy interfaces. To a customer, these are not separate problems — they are a single brand experience. One failed touchpoint can undo the goodwill built elsewhere.

Example: A consumer might love a phone’s specifications but abandon a brand after a poor post-purchase support interaction. Conversely, Zappos built a reputation by making returns and customer service effortless — turning an operational policy into a competitive advantage.

Why a piecemeal approach doesn’t work

Gathering CX data (surveys, NPS, support logs) is useful — until those insights sit in silos. Product, marketing, sales and operations may each chase their own metrics, with no one accountable for the end-to-end journey. That closed-loop model means the business never joins the dots.

Think of it as an orchestra without a conductor: talented players, but no unified performance.

Example: Some super-apps that add many services (payments, commerce, travel) can unintentionally create clutter. When functional teams operate separately, users who want to complete a single task quickly (such as paying a bill) can experience friction.

Real-world examples: the promise vs the experience

• Amazon: Choice and reliability are huge strengths. But the massive catalogue and complex navigation can overwhelm shoppers who prefer simplicity. Many users love Amazon for availability and delivery; some find the interface noisy when they want a quick, focused purchase.
• Swiggy/Zomato: These platforms excel in logistics — offering reliable delivery windows, order tracking, and attractive offers. Their investments in operations and customer communications have made food delivery a near-seamless experience in many cities.
• Paytm: The convenience of multiple services in one app is powerful, but rapid feature expansion can sometimes make everyday tasks less obvious for new users. That trade-off highlights the need for focused UI and journey thinking.

These cases show that product breadth or innovation alone doesn’t guarantee a frictionless experience.

How organisations should respond — a practical checklist

1. Make CX everyone’s responsibility

Don’t confine CX to product or support. Create cross-functional ownership — product, marketing, operations, legal, and sales should share goals and measurable outcomes tied to the whole customer journey.

Example: Some banks (both Indian and international) appoint a Chief Customer Officer and run cross-departmental teams to align product launches with branch and call-centre readiness.

2. Adopt journey-level metrics

Move beyond siloed KPIs. Track end-to-end metrics such as conversion across the funnel, time to resolution and Customer Effort Score. Link these metrics to decision-making and incentives.

Example: Ride-hailing firms measure the success of complete trips (from booking to drop-off) and driver/rider ratings to monitor the entire experience, rather than just app installs.

3. Close the feedback loop across teams

Ensure insights from frontline staff flow rapidly to product planners and executives. Customer-facing teams must be able to escalate issues and track fixes to closure.

Example: Grocers and supermarkets utilise store manager feedback loops to refine online fulfilment and reduce order errors, thereby improving both the app experience and physical fulfilment.

4. Test the real experience often

Run cross-team simulations, mystery shopping and journey audits. Walk the entire path customers take and fix the pain points you discover.

Example: Retail chains frequently use mystery shoppers; digital businesses conduct end-to-end user tests and beta cohorts before rolling out their products to a broader audience.

5. Design for simplicity, not feature density

Ask whether a new capability truly simplifies a user’s life or adds cognitive load. Often, fewer choices and clearer paths deliver better outcomes.

Example: Google Pay focused on a clean payment flow rather than bundling too many unrelated features into the checkout path, making payments fast for first-time users.

6. Invest in the foundation — people and processes

Train support teams, define escalation paths, and document procedures. Technology helps, but people and processes are the glue that holds CX together.

Example: Hospitality brands that train their frontline staff to resolve minor issues swiftly often recover customer satisfaction more quickly than those that rely solely on automated responses.

The pay-off: stronger products, stronger brands

When organisations reorganise around the customer, they don’t face a trade-off between innovation and experience. They achieve both: a product that solves a need plus a business that reliably supports it from discovery through after-sales becomes a durable advantage.

Example: In India, companies like BigBasket have invested heavily in operations and customer support, enabling customers to trust online grocery shopping by pairing product availability with reliable delivery and easy refunds.

Final Thought

Customers don’t see your organisation chart; they see a single brand. Treat the entire customer relationship as your product. Get that right, and customers will reward you — not just once, but over the course of a lifetime.