Look at the number of devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets; social platforms — these have all become sources of consumer data. One would think companies could easily combine them into flawlessly tailored customer experiences. The reality is that not many of them are delivering anything mind blowing. What gives?

The problem can be seen in all of those surveys and interviews — in the inbox, on YouTube, on the customer-service line, etc., according to Annette Franz (pictured), founder and chief executive officer of CX Journey Inc. The probing itself isn’t bad. On the contrary, it tends to collect rich details about consumers’ likes and dislikes. But, regrettably, that information is rarely converted to anything valuable, Franz pointed out.

“They just don’t execute. They just don’t act on it,” she stated. “And they’ve got such rich feedback, and customers want to tell them, ‘Hey, you’re doing this well; hey, this is not going so well, so please fix it, because we want to continue doing business with you.'”

Franz spoke with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Comcast CX Innovation Day event at the Comcast Silicon Valley Innovation Center in Sunnyvale, California. They discussed the reasons why companies aren’t turning raw resources into great CX (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Doing something about customer data

Many companies focus on the same old metrics without really parsing customer feedback for new, actionable ideas. Instead, they need a “people-first” approach that takes the real-life experience of customers — not just data points — into account, according to Franz, who is the author of the book “Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the ‘Customer’ in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business).” The problem is that most companies lack the culture and top-down mandate to work in this way.

“They don’t have the system in place to actually then take what they learned and go do something with it,” she said.

Some practical strategies that can humanize customers include developing personas and customer-journey mapping. The latter allows experience designers to walk in the customer’s shoes through every touchpoint. They can ask: What could be better about login, requesting service, checkout, etc. They can inform journey design (and much else) with insights from consumer-survey data.

The notion of delighting the customer at every touchpoint seems far-fetched to Franz. Most business would improve just by learning to listen to customers and applying their feedback in real life. “Most businesses are still very primitive even when it comes to that,” she said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Comcast CX Innovation Day event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Comcast CX Innovation Day event. Neither Comcast Corp., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE