Why Do Some Experiences Miss the Mark?

Poor customer experiences can be improved once you know what’s going wrong. Learn why experiences fail to meet expectations and use these insights to design experiences that work.

Is your brand contributing to the experience delivery gap?

We all want to think our customer experiences meet expectations. Without evidence that proves otherwise — like poor customer satisfaction surveys — one might assume that people are content with their company’s experiences and that there’s no need to improve upon them.

That would be a detrimental assumption. 

Most companies wildly overestimate customer satisfaction. A classic benchmark study on this found that 80% of leaders felt their companies provide “superior experiences” while only 8% of customers agreed. A more recent report shows the dissonance varies by industry, reaching a high of 67%.

Across the board, the research agrees: Most of us aren’t providing the experience we think we’re delivering. This article explores the implications of a bad customer experience and why they happen.

Consequences of a poor customer experience

Customer experience issues are more than just experience issues. A bad customer experience affects retention, reputation, and ultimately, revenue.

The importance of customer experience can be measured across every part of a business. When customers have poor experiences, it could result in: 

• Reduced trust and retention: Customers feel let down, lose confidence in the brand, and begin looking elsewhere — leading to churn.
• Poor reputation: Stories about customer experience problems spread quickly and damage brand perception.  
• Wasted marketing spend: Even the best campaigns can’t sell a broken experience. Driving people to a flawed journey is not only fruitless, but costly.
• Referral leakage: After a poor touchpoint, customers may drop off mid-journey and abandon the referral process — impacting downstream revenue.
• Employee frustration: Staff morale and retention decline when teams are stuck delivering bad customer experiences. 

There are many ways to fix a negative customer experience. The right solution depends on what’s causing the problems. By identifying the root causes of a bad experience, you can design a better one. 

Curious if anything’s getting in the way of your experiences? Here are 8 common causes of CX issues that we see in our work as human-centered design consultants.

Common causes of customer experience problems

1. Missing key consumer insights

Many customer experience issues stem from a lack of insight into the customer’s voice. Too often, organizations rely on internal opinions rather than asking customers directly, “What are we doing well, and where can we improve?”

And while asking that question is the first step, the most effective way to design an experience is to collaborate with the people who know it best — customers and employees. This brings friction points and unmet needs to light and ensures you address them in a way that’s meaningful to the end user. 

See this in practice: Read how OhioHealth co-created the ideal experience with patients, staff, and leaders, and what they gained from it.

2. Disjointed customer experience

Sometimes, individual touchpoints work well, but the overall experience feels disconnected. Customers can get caught between steps or feel unsure of what comes next, creating a sense of friction even if no single interaction seems “bad.”

In healthcare, for example, it can be easy for patients to lose track in the scheduling process. They might call to schedule before insurance approves the service, or referrals may stall between providers. These breakdowns leave customers confused, making it harder than it should be for people to move forward.

3. Neglecting the importance of emotions in experience

Sometimes, teams place an outsized emphasis on speeding up processes and cutting costs. While efficiency matters, hyperfocusing on it can cause teams to accidentally ignore customer’s emotional needs throughout the journey. 

Designing with emotions in mind helps deliver moments that resonate beyond the surface level. 

Plus, when you’re tackling something you can’t directly change, you can find creative workarounds by looking at issues from multiple angles. For example, it’s not always possible to reduce patient wait times, but you can still improve the experience of waiting. 

4. Poor alignment with marketing

Another common issue is when marketing sets expectations that the delivery can’t meet. When campaigns promise “quick” and “personalized,” and the service doesn’t reflect those traits, people feel duped. 

To avoid this, marketing and experience teams need to work hand-in-hand, ensuring that promises match reality.

5. Lack of innovation in experience design

Many organizations inadvertently take an “inside-out” approach to experience design. Instead of focusing on what people need, they design around: 

• Their own technical capabilities (“here’s what we can do”)
• Leadership preferences (“Andy doesn’t want that”)
• Existing products and services (“let’s just add this feature”)
• What competitors are doing (“we can do that same thing, but better”)

By doing this, teams miss the opportunity to design streamlined experiences that differentiate the brand. Co-creating with customers and diverse stakeholders can spark creative breakthroughs. 

6. Missing the bigger picture

Customer service and customer experience are often used interchangeably, but they aren’t the same. Service focuses on resolving immediate issues, while experience covers the full journey, from touchpoint to touchpoint.

When organizations focus only on service, they risk overlooking other gaps. For example, a retailer might have great in-store service, but if the online store is hard to navigate, the overall impression is still negative. Taking a holistic view ensures every touchpoint adds up to something greater.

7. Absent or outdated experience strategy

Some customer experience problems come down to the fact that the experience was never intentionally designed in the first place. Processes evolve organically, and as the organization scales, old systems stop working.

Without creating (or revisiting) your experience strategy, friction points will continue to emerge. These breakdowns are signals that it’s time to map the journey from the lens of consumers and source their perspective on what needs reworking.

8. Challenges with execution

Even with the right strategy in place, execution can fall short. You might have a vision for the experience, but without the right technology, staff training, or company culture, it’s difficult to deliver on it.

Strong experiences require alignment between the designers, leaders, and employees. Leadership needs confidence that the ideas will work, while staff need the support and tools to implement them.

Our human-centered design process helps build this alignment. By involving leaders and employees in design from the start, everyone shares ownership of the outcome.

Fix customer experience problems with a human-centered strategy

Customer experience problems aren’t permanent. Think of a bad customer experience as an opportunity you can tap into to improve retention and revenue. 

At Cast & Hue, we help organizations co-create experiences that:

• Drive long-term customer loyalty
• Strengthen brand perception 
• Improve employee retention
• Provide results you can measure against business objectives

Interested in what this looks like? Learn how we can help:

Design effective experiences