In customer experience, perspective is a powerful force.

Each participant in the customer journey has their own, individual perspective, and often, the gaps amongst these varying perspectives lie at the heart of dissatisfaction, displeasure, and misunderstanding.

Whether it be an unwillingness to take a step back and try to see the experience from the perspective of another or a failure to empathize with the other person’s emotional journey, this perspective gap is at the root of all too many customer experiences.

To remedy this disconnect, it can help to turn our customer experiences inside out.

That means, if you’re on the outside, look from the inside. If you’re close, look from far away. Endeavor to hear, see, and feel the experience from the perspective of another.

Turn your customer experience inside out. If you’re on the outside, look from the inside.

This idea is about more than creating customer personas and engaging in periodic journey mapping exercises; it is about perspective shifting various parts of the customer experience from a variety of angles on a regular basis.

• Why was the customer being so unreasonable? He seemed very focused on fairness. What in our journey could be a trigger for someone with a high sense of fairness?
• How does this vendor view its relationship with us? Its management team defaults to the contract in the face of any small request. Why do they approach it this way, and what can we do to get them to be collaborators in helping us deliver great experiences to our customers?
• What is the experience of the Claims department employees who are working with the new system? We know that the system is buggy and unpopular. How is this truly impacting their lives, and what can we do to make them feel supported and to ease their pain?

While we may not ever to truly be able to walk a mile in the other person’s shoes, we can always, as the great Stephen Covey once advised,  “seek first to understand.”

Turn your customer experience inside out whenever possible. At minimum, you’ll gain more empathy for those who share the experience with you, and more than likely, you’ll find new ways to improve the experience for them that you might not have discovered otherwise.