Originally published August 18, 2009

Where does customer experience start and end?

The folks here at IQ Services live in a world of contact centers, communications technologies and business solutions. When we think about customer experience, our brains jump to images of the good but harried people who install contact center solutions and our desire to make them more successful. Visions of IVR performance spreadsheets, speech analytics dashboards, agent training programs and more dance in our heads. We don't often think about marketing. It isn't natural for this Midwest company to think that anything beyond hard work and good customer service matters much. Many of us were raised to believe that you don't talk about your good work...you just do it...you just make the customer happy. We forget or don't recognize that good customer service and good customer experiences start with the trust a company's brand holds. We forget that a brand is a promise and that a good customer experience means our customers liked the promise and we delivered on it.

So where does this lead me today? It leads me to a silo a few miles south of Le Sueur, MN on Highway 169. Since at least the 1970s, this silo has been painted to look like a pop can...most recently, a 7-UP can. Whenever you make the 5 hour trek to see grandma and grandpa in Iowa, the 7-UP can serves as an exciting milestone filled with shouts of "I saw it first" or "we're getting closer" or "we're almost home." It adds a glimmer of fun to a boring, routine car trip---even for the kids. We often grab 7-UP at the grocery store just because we'll be passing the silo/can. Last week, on a trip to see the folks in Iowa, we found out the 7-UP can had been commandeered by a kitchen countertop manufacturer!! WHAT?! It was painted black with the gold name of the company--CAMBRIA. Now granted the company is located in Le Sueur, but come on! That 7-UP can made life just a little better for generations of kids traveling 169 to go to Valley Fair, the Mall of America or grandma's house. How could they take it away? Will the 7-UP or Cambria brands suffer from this decision? I know I'll be a little less eager to buy from Cambria. My experience with them has been tainted before I've even considered a purchase (an easy decision since I don't need new countertops.) And 7-UP is in the dog house as far as I'm concerned. They broke an unwritten promise (one they probably didn't know they'd made with me) and now my experience has been tainted even though my last bottle of 7-UP tasted just fine. We'll be buying Sprite for at least a few months. So I guess you never know when the customer experience starts and ends for each unique customer.

Do you have any questions or comments about this blog? We would love to hear from you! Please send us an email!

Marla Geary

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