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WaterRemarks -- March 2024

News and views from customer experience advisory firm Watermark Consulting

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A Message From Watermark Founder Jon Picoult

Here's a contrarian view to consider: Customer experience will never be more important than price.


Kind of shocking to hear those words from a customer experience (CX) expert, right? The statement is true, though -- just not for the reason you might think.


Fact is, lots of CX gurus and consultants routinely proclaim that "customer experience trumps price." That declaration makes for a good sound bite, but it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding about the concept of customer experience. This month's top story explains why.


Best regards,



Jon Picoult

Founder, Watermark Consulting

Author, From Impressed To Obsessed

Why Customer Experience Will Never Be More Important Than Price

Business gurus often argue that, when it comes to differentiating a brand, customer experience is more important than price. In his latest Forbes column (republished here on our paywall-free blog), Watermark founder Jon Picoult explains why that assertion is fundamentally flawed. [3 minute read]

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Boeing's Mixed Signals

The Wall Street Journal recently published an exposé on the crisis at aircraft manufacturer Boeing. As Jon Picoult wrote in this LinkedIn post, the Boeing debacle illustrates how influential a company's work environment can be in shaping customer-centric behavior. [1 minute read]

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Here's Why Your Customer Experience Project Might Not Get Approved

How To "Account" For Companies' Neglect of Customer Experience

Why can it be such a struggle for well-intentioned business leaders to get their companies to invest in a better customer experience? The surprising answer: It's often, in part, an accounting issue. That's among the topics Jon Picoult covered in this episode of the Consumerpedia podcast. [30 minute show]

Listen To Interview Clip

ICYMI: A Road To Nowhere -- Why Customer Journey Maps Fail To Deliver Results

A stunning 83% of companies report disappointing results from their customer journey mapping efforts. Here's how your organization can avoid a similar fate. [3 minute read]

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Calendar flipping

Last Month's Edition Of WaterRemarks

Did you miss out on last month's edition of WaterRemarks? No worries, here's a link to access the newsletter and its lead story: "A Self-Checkout That Customers Love? This Company Created It."

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THE LAST WORD

“I can say, ‘you’re a piece of s—!’ But if I say it with an upward fluctuation at the end of the sentence, the AI likes it.”


-- Chasity Miller, a Comcast customer service rep, describing how she games the company's AI-powered call center agent monitoring system so it rates her performance more highly.


Source: The Wall Street Journal (Feb 18, 2024)

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