Lately I’ve been watching CX slide into farce. What was once about real people, real needs, has turned into a stage play. A ritual of “as if.”
Companies pretend to recognize you, inspire you, value you, even transform you. But mostly, they don’t even bother to help you.
I get it. Times are rough. Profits are evaporating. Some see black snow. The default reflex? Cut. And the first thing cut is not the overhead, not the bonuses, but the relationship with the very people who keep the lights on: customers.
Suddenly CX is just a buzzword. A slogan on a slide. A label on a website. A hollow echo in a mission statement. Something you talk about, not something you do. Meanwhile, the real playbook is simple and is called 3F: Find. Fuck. Forget.
We’ve been here before. Entire libraries groaning under the weight of books on “customer centricity.” New titles every season, as if the last bestseller expired like yogurt. We could build an extra Chinese wall with all those books. Add the battalions of consultants milking the CX cow. Add the executives who buy the books, hire the consultants, and clap like seals at keynotes.
An entire industry built on the art of pretending to care.
My grandkids are naturals at pretending. They pour me an empty cup of “coffee” and giggle: “It’s as if, Grandpa.”
That’s CX today. “As-if caring.” Launching a tear-jerker video, praying it goes viral. Hiring an influencer because it looks cool. Inflating NPS like a balloon at a children’s party. Dreaming up quirky names for departments, quoting Tony from Zappos: ‘Create fun and a little weirdness.’
But it’s so simple. Really. Care. About every customer. Every day. Every single interaction. Not “one fan a day” as the gurus preach, but all of them. Always. Just do it.
Do we seriously need yet another book, another canvas, another consultant to tell us that?
The other night, we sat by a summer campfire. My wife, our daughters, the grandkids. We drank ‘as-if coffee.’ I looked at my daughters. How they really really care for their kids. They are kids-centric. They don’t pretend to be. No consultants. No child-centricity books. No viral clips. Just joy, and the occasional bit of silliness. Even the grandkids know how to care and they’ve never read ‘Deliver Happiness’.
And I thought: so this is what it takes. Not another ritual. Just doing it.
Dear companies: stop pretending. You know how.
Rik Vera is a futurology speaker, author of “The Guide to the Ecosystem Economy” and “The Net Curiosity Score”, and lecturer in digital strategy at London Business School.
