Customer experience begins where traditional customer support ends – transforming reactive problem-solving into proactive, strategic relationship building. But realizing this, and understanding how to treat this evolution isn’t always easy. 

Yet organizations can bridge this chasm, by integrating cross-functional collaboration with product and engineering teams, empowering support teams through enablement, and elevating the customer journey to create lasting impact. Shall we get into it?

Grounding customer experience in touchpoints

I want to start with a fundamental question: What is customer experience? What does it mean to you? Someone might say “perception,” and they’d be absolutely right. 

Another might connect it to word of mouth or net promoter score (NPS) – how likely someone is to recommend a product or company. These are all correct because customer experience is the perception a customer has of the brand you represent, shaped by their interactions with it.

Let’s consider an example. Think about the last time you flew somewhere. What were you actually buying from the airline? Most people would say they’re buying transportation – moving from point A to point B. If we’re being technical about it, you’re renting a seat on a plane. But before you even sit down, there are numerous touchpoints with the airline that shape your overall experience.

What are some of these touch points? Booking your ticket is one. Checking in is another. Checking your luggage is yet another. Airlines have clear rules about luggage weight limits, yet, as customers, we might push those limits, bringing 23 kilograms and hoping for a free upgrade or waiving baggage fees. Why? Because that interaction has become part of our experience with the airline.

Before you even board the plane, the product you purchased – a seat – has already been influenced by countless touchpoints. Each one shapes your perception of the brand and impacts whether you’d recommend or criticize it later.

For me, customer experience is the culmination of every interaction a customer has with your brand throughout their journey. That’s why I want to dig deeper into how customer support can evolve into customer experience. 

Specifically, I’ll focus on three key groups:

  • Product
  • Engineering
  • Enablement

These are three critical touch points where support can play a pivotal role in transforming the broader customer experience.

Align your customer support and product teams

When it comes to integrating customer support with product, my goal is crystal clear: I want my support team to: 

  • Help the product team build better products
  • Provide actionable insights from customer interactions
  • Enhance the customer experience 

To achieve this, I focus on two key areas: 

  1. Roadmap and testing
  2. Launch and feedback 

Roadmap and testing

One of my primary recommendations for any organization is to involve customer support leadership in roadmap conversations. 

I’m not suggesting that customer support should dictate the roadmap; roadmap decisions are influenced by many factors – market demands, top-tier customer requests, sales priorities, and more. 

But what I am advocating for is including customer support leadership in realistic, grounded discussions about the roadmap.

Instead of focusing on high-level six-month or yearly visions, why not have down-to-earth conversations about what’s coming in the next one to three months? These discussions allow support teams to prepare effectively and contribute valuable insights based on their frontline experience.

And while we’re at it, another underutilized resource in many companies is the customer support team’s understanding of user experience. Product teams should involve customer support in beta testing. 

Support teams bring a unique perspective because they see the challenges customers face firsthand. However, product teams need to be open to receiving critical feedback and willing to act on it, something which can be initially challenging.