Customer experience (CX) is a hot topic across business and our experience as consumers.

We have all experienced (I hope!) both great, as well as woeful, CX . . .

We all accept the principle that a positive service or customer experience builds loyalty, reputation, repeat usage, recommendation and can turn customers or users into advocates for the brand or service provider.

Conversely, poor service or customer experience delivers the opposite.

Frustration at best.

Worse, it can impact revenue (disgruntled customers), reduce productivity and drive excessive cost and liabilities for no business value.

Not a good equation.

Positive customer experience drives Productivity, P&L and Working Capital.

The challenge is that customer experience can seem like a mythical “Shangri-La” that, in reality, turn out to be more of a “journey” than a “destination.  

It certainly feels like that sometimes in our ticket-driven, agentic, task and action-flow paradise!  😉

“Failure Demand” is the virus that attacks CX and saps productivity, P&L, working capital and the very motivation to perform at our best.

It is the nemesis of CX.

There are two sorts of customer service request (or “ticket”, if you are that way inclined);

• Value demand – a contact or request that’s about getting “the thing” that the service is intended to provide, that solves a problem or meets a genuine demand.
• Failure demand – a contact or request that results from a problem with the service that has not delivered “the thing” that was required in the first place. For example:
  • Reporting that the service did not deliver
  • Reporting that the service request process itself is broken
  • Asking how to use or navigate the service
  • Trying to determine if the service provides what I need
  • Trying to determine progress in the requested service provision
  • And so on . . . . .

We have all “been there” . . . 

The concept of “failure demand” was first described by John Seddon, an occupational psychologist specializing in organizational change.

“Failure demand” was initially called “demand we don’t want”.

But “failure demand” is so much catchier 😉

You can join a brief discussion on “failure demand”, its manifestation in GBS and business at large, and strategies to eliminate it, with Isabella Kosch here . . . .

Customer or Service experience is the overall impression a customer, stakeholder or user forms about a service provider (internal or external) through all their interactions, from discovery and engagement, service or product provision to support and follow-up.

Thanks for reading.

Customer experience & failure demand.