When Customers Have to Chase the Experience.

"X has granted your admission request from…"

It should have been a moment of relief.

Instead, when I received the SMS, I found myself thinking about everything that had happened before that message.

My pre-admission request had initially been declined. I called twice seeking feedback. No update. No call back.

I escalated to Level 1 and received no response. I escalated again to Level 2, only to be referred back to Level 1.

At least, I thought, someone was finally looking into it.

Then came another ten days of waiting.

After I followed up again, I was asked to provide additional information. I did so. Two days later, there was still no response to my email.

Then, without an email or a conversation, an SMS arrived informing me that my admission request had been approved.

The request was resolved. But the experience was not.

And that made me wonder: 

Are African organisations using digitalisation to improve customer experience or, sometimes, inadvertently using it to create distance from customers?

Because the problem isn't simply that a response was delayed.

The deeper issue is that the customer began to feel that being visible was necessary to be heard.

Digital does not mean distant

We often talk about digital transformation as though technology is the destination.

It isn't.

The destination is a better customer experience.

Technology should make it easier for customers to access services, communicate with organisations and resolve problems. It should not make organisations less accountable.

A customer should not have to walk into a branch to feel heard.

But neither should they have to make repeated calls, send multiple emails, escalate through different levels or copy additional addresses simply to receive the basic courtesy of a response.

I am not suggesting that customers need to return to branches and offices to receive good service. Many of us embraced digital channels because they offer convenience, flexibility and less unnecessary physical interaction.

But if organisations choose to serve customers digitally, digital service must still feel like service.

Email does not remove the obligation to respond.

An SMS does not replace meaningful communication.

And an escalation process should not become a maze that the customer has to navigate.

The customer should not become the escalation department

At some point, I realised that I was doing something customers should never have to do: managing the organisation's internal escalation process for it.

The organisation has departments, escalation levels, supervisors and internal processes. The customer should not have to understand how any of these work.

They should simply know:

"I have a problem. Someone owns it. Someone will get back to me."

But what happens when the customer cannot see who owns the problem?

This is where I think about the curtain.

Behind the curtain are departments, escalation levels, shared mailboxes, service teams and internal processes.

The customer doesn't see any of that.

They only experience what happens on their side of the curtain: silence, uncertainty, waiting and repeated follow-ups.

Eventually, I found myself copying a shared customer service address not because I wanted to escalate the matter further, but because I had begun to feel that visibility itself was necessary to get a response.

That should make any CX professional pause.

Customers don't experience your organisational structure.

They experience you.

Digital CX cannot simply move the customer behind a screen.

It must bring accountability to the screen with it.