The idea of pleasing customers goes back as far as the beginnings of human history. A 3,800 year old clay tablet with cuneiform writing from the city of UR is perhaps our evidence of customer complaints. A man named Nanni complained about the quality of copper he received to Ea-Nasir, along with issues with subsequent delays. A quote from the tablet says, “What do you take me for, that you treat somebody like me with such contempt?” The letter goes on from there with complaints about the lack of customer service and experience. In fact, this might be the world’ first Yelp review.

So clearly customer service and experience are not new concepts, even if they are relatively new terms. Why then does it seem like we are still struggling in the same way that Nanni struggled. Despite various technological advances, why does it still seem like in many ways customers are moving backward in terms of their experiences? Is the Customer Experience movement helping or hindering the creation of good customer experience? And perhaps most interestingly, on a scale of 0 to 10 how likely was Nanni to recommend the copper vendor Ea-Nasir to his friends and family?

To explore these questions, and many more, we welcome Alex Mead to the Experience by Design studios. Alex is well known in CX circles for his strong positions and ideas on what the field of customer experience needs, as well as what companies need to do to create better experiences.

Alex knows that to improve customer experience, you have to start with employee experience. Companies often fail to conduct a systems analysis to get to the root cause of their issues. And if they do, they seldom want to hear the results and actually act on them. The outcome is a replay of the same kinds of issues that Nanni had to deal with 3,800 years ago.

Alex takes us through his EPIC framework for customers, which stands for Easy, Personalized, Intuitive, and Contextual. We also talk about his TIME framework for employees, standing for Time, Information, Motivation, and Empowerment. Ultimately, we need to focus on delivering the experiences that people want, and not the ones we force them into.

It was great to hear Alex’s decades of experience dealing with employees and customers, and trying to build better connections between them.

Scaling Climate Technologies - Elemental Excelerator COO Avra van der Zee