Customers in 1986 lived in a very different world.

The internet wasn’t part of everyday business. Smartphones didn’t exist. Customers didn’t check store inventory from the parking lot, place restaurant orders from an app, read reviews before making a purchase or expect a business to answer questions online at any hour.

Over the next 40 years, those changes didn’t happen all at once.

The web became part of everyday life. Business websites evolved from what were essentially digital billboards into interactive tools customers use to find answers, compare options, make appointments, check inventory, place orders and resolve problems.

Then computers moved from desks into our pockets.

Calling someone is now only one small function of what we still call a phone. Customers use smartphones to read the news, check the weather, search store inventory, order meals, navigate to businesses, make purchases, leave reviews and interact with people and brands through social media.

Saying the business landscape changed is an understatement.

And then COVID changed it again.

Convenience Became an Expectation

During the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses and customers had to find new ways to interact with little or no physical contact.

Online ordering expanded.

Curbside pickup became commonplace.

Restaurants adapted delivery and takeout operations.

Customers who had never relied on apps, mobile ordering or contactless service learned quickly.

Many of those emergency adaptations didn’t disappear when the emergency did.

Once customers experienced the convenience of ordering ahead, pulling into a designated space and having a purchase brought to the car, many expected businesses to continue offering it.

A convenience once experienced can quickly become an expectation.

For businesses, however, every new convenience adds another operational layer.

An app order has to reach the correct location.

Inventory information needs to be accurate.

The right product has to be selected or prepared.

Quality must be maintained.

Pickup needs to be timely.

Employees need to know what is expected of them.

Technology, inventory, operations and customer service suddenly have to work together to deliver what the customer experiences as one simple transaction.

What feels effortless to the customer may be anything but effortless behind the scenes.

Customers Experience the Business as a Whole

And that leads to something we’ve seen repeatedly over 40 years of customer experience research.

Businesses have departments.

Customers don’t experience them that way.

A customer doesn’t necessarily know whether a problem originated with operations, technology, staffing, inventory management, marketing or a third-party provider.

The app said the product was available.

The customer ordered it.

The store didn’t have it.

That’s one disappointing experience to the customer, regardless of which internal system caused it.

The more ways businesses create for customers to interact with them, the more important it becomes for those pieces to work together.

Customers Notice What Businesses Learn to Overlook

Employees work within the same processes every day.

Managers walk through the same locations.

Organizations become accustomed to their own systems.

Customers arrive without that familiarity.

They notice the confusing sign.

The difficult checkout process.

The unanswered phone.

The employee who doesn’t acknowledge them.

The promotion that isn’t available as advertised.

The process everyone inside the organization has learned to work around may be the exact process creating frustration for a customer.

That outside perspective has always been one of the most valuable things customer experience research provides.

Expectations Keep Moving

Technology isn’t the only force that has changed customer expectations.

Businesses and their customers have navigated recessions and periods of growth, the impact and aftermath of the September 11 attacks., a global pandemic, inflation, labor challenges, supply-chain disruptions and an ongoing succession of national and world events.

Economic conditions affect what customers can spend.

Technology affects what they believe should be possible.

Competitors establish new standards for speed and convenience.

Major events can change customer behavior almost overnight.

The definition of good customer service therefore doesn’t remain frozen in time.

What customers need changes.

How businesses deliver it changes.

How customers communicate with businesses changes.

And how organizations understand whether they’re succeeding has to change with them.

Customers Don’t Always Tell Businesses What Went Wrong

• Some customers complain.
• Some complete surveys.
• Some write reviews.
• Many don’t.
• They simply make another choice.

We’ve seen that throughout Confero’s history, even though customers now have far more ways to communicate with businesses.

It is one reason organizations cannot rely on a single source of customer feedback to understand the experience they are delivering.

Listening requires looking for customer signals in different places and understanding them in context.

Consistency Builds Confidence

One excellent experience can impress a customer.

Consistently good experiences build trust.

Customers want reasonable confidence that the experience promised by a brand will resemble the experience they actually receive—across employees, locations, channels and visits.

That doesn’t mean every customer interaction should be identical.

It means the fundamentals of the brand promise should remain dependable.

For organizations operating across multiple locations or markets, maintaining that consistency becomes increasingly challenging—and increasingly important.

Human Interaction Still Matters

Technology has transformed customer experience.

It has made things possible in 2026 that would have sounded extraordinary in 1986.

But technology hasn’t eliminated the importance of helpfulness, responsiveness, competence, clarity and respect.

Sometimes technology delivers those things exceptionally well.

Sometimes a person does.

Customers ultimately care whether the interaction works for them.

The question isn’t whether a business should choose technology or people.

It’s whether the experience those systems and people create meets the customer’s needs.

Customers Keep Changing, So Businesses Must Keep Listening

Perhaps the most important lesson from 40 years of customer experience research is that businesses never finish learning about their customers.

New technology changes behavior.

New competitors change expectations.

Economic conditions change priorities.

Generations bring different habits and preferences.

Businesses themselves change.

Research that answered an important question yesterday may not answer the question an organization needs to ask tomorrow.

That’s why understanding customers requires continued curiosity.

What 40 Years Have Taught Us

Forty years of change have transformed how customers shop, communicate, compare, order, complain and make decisions.

Technology will continue to change. Customer expectations will continue to evolve. Economic conditions and events we cannot predict will continue reshaping the environment in which businesses operate.

How businesses serve their customers will change with them.

Serving customers to the best of their ability remains the common thread.

It was at the heart of good business 40 years ago.

It remains at the heart of good business today.

Customer experience research helps businesses understand what serving customers well means now—and how that expectation continues to change.

Continue Reading

The ways businesses gather customer insights have evolved, but understanding what customers experience has long been central to effective customer experience research.

For a look back at Confero’s research perspective from 2000, read:

A Comparison of Mystery Shopping Studies and Customer Satisfaction Studies

Quirk’s: A Comparison of Mystery Shopping Studies and Customer Satisfaction Studies