The concept of customer experience has become one of the main focuses of customer-facing teams, and for good reason. The customer experience is at the forefront of everything a company does for its customers, whether it's the products and services they provide or the simple, everyday interactions between them. Concepts like customer-centricity and being customer-first are now at the forefront of a pioneering spirit in customer support and related fields, yet many companies are still falling behind.

Like people, a lot of businesses like to think that by saying that they have certain traits, then they automatically have those certain traits. Take being customer-centric, for example. Just because a business declares that they are customer-centric and therefore always put their customers first, does that make it true? Not so much, no.

Some words are used so often that their meaning is blunted or outright transformed. One of these such words is “success,” and depending on the reader, can mean anything from “victory” to The Weather Girls’ album. As far as Customer Success teams are concerned, it leans towards the former (sorry fans of 1980s post-disco, your day will come).

Ever wish a robot could cook or clean for you? We might not be on Jetsons-level technology, but for customer service and sales professionals, the robot assistants are already here. When you hear “chatbots” what do you think of? Helpful robots, conversational cannon fodder, or malevolent machines bent on siphoning off human employment? Well for one, chatbots aren’t coming for Customer Support jobs. Secondly, the others are both correct, but only to an extent.

What colors our imaginations? When it comes to our concepts of artificial intelligence and robots, how much of it is affected by what we’ve seen on TV and in the movies, from The Matrix to Blade Runner? Beyond that, how prominent is the fear of automation taking jobs from humans? Evidently, it has been a very real thing, ever since the Luddites first destroyed textile mills in early 19th century England.

Human brains are wired to process images 60,000 times faster than text. The age-old adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words” is apparently severely undershooting it. Not only that, but an image has the ability to instantly traverse cultural and lingual barriers. Heard of the painting The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh?

What can be more important than patient satisfaction? Patient health naturally, but patient satisfaction isn’t all that far behind. For essentially any healthcare organization, patient satisfaction is the backbone of success, yet all too often it’s left on the backburner. There’s really only one way to improve the happiness and satisfaction of patients – a better experience. But what ultimately entails an ideal patient experience?