I hear a lot of people talking about the science of customer experience these days. This confuses me because there isn’t one.

To describe customer experience as a science suggests there is a body of universally reliable truths, or cause-effect relationships that pertain to the interactions between a brand and their customers. Yet I’m not aware of any, our experience as human beings remains largely subjective, and for every CX principle there are cases where doing the opposite can be more effective. There is no equivalent of Ohm’s Law in customer experience, for example.

I think these people might be confusing the idea of approaching something scientifically — gathering data, testing hypotheses, and seeing what happens — with the possibility of creating a body of scientific knowledge for the field.

While the former is certainly a sensible approach, what works will always be highly contingent on the context of the business in question. You can approach the discipline as scientifically as you like, yet still not create a science out of it.

Happy to change my mind if anyone can share a non-falsifiable, universally applicable law of customer experience, and the evidence to support it. Good luck!

#customerexperience

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