The Customer Engagement Stack

More so than ever before, the executive leadership face a crisis-like state in the field of customer service. 

Unlike its close cousin, marketing, it is not supported by a sustained academic inquisition. Absent any mainstream study of the field, it lurches from one unsupported area of practice to the next, and many of the activities that do endure, do so out of popularity, and a failure to test the theory.

Chief among the contemporary misadventures has been a general confusion between marketing and customer operations, an obsession with and yet broad incomprehension of the term "experience", a distorted reliance on the culture of data, and the over-indexing on surveys, in lieu of technical know-how and broader critical insight. And yet, the social sciences, aspects of marketing science, and quality independent studies and models in various associated fields, already provide so much rich knowledge. 

In this report, we return to the basics, whilst maintaining a contemporary context. Readers can expect to learn about the following:

• The historical context

• The critical elements of the modern Customer Engagement Stack (c)

• Key characteristics separating Service from Experience - and their component parts

• The roles of choice architecture, customer journeys, and individualization

• Case studies & operating principles