Customer Experience Design

Signs your operations are costing you money

Accidental operations have hidden costs that don't show up on financial statements. Here's how to spot them.

The four hidden costs

When your customer experience isn't designed, you pay in ways that don't show up as line items. These costs are real, but they're buried in what looks like normal operations.

1

The cost of heroics

When work isn't designed, execution depends on individuals who know how to make things happen despite the system. These heroes are expensive—and when they leave, they take their knowledge with them.

Signs you're paying this cost:

  • Certain people are "the only ones who know how this works"
  • Vacation coverage is a crisis
  • New hires take months to become productive
  • Turnover in key roles causes operational chaos
2

The cost of rework

Work that starts before it's ready fails downstream. Work that's "done" but not actually done comes back. Without clear definitions of ready and done, you're paying for the same work multiple times.

Signs you're paying this cost:

  • Projects routinely get "reopened" after completion
  • Teams spend time clarifying what they thought was already clear
  • Quality problems are caught late in the process
  • "Just one more thing" is a recurring phrase
3

The cost of waiting

Work sits between steps, between teams, between decisions. Every hour of wait time is an hour your customer isn't getting value—and an hour they might choose a competitor instead.

Signs you're paying this cost:

  • Cycle times are measured in weeks when they should be days
  • Work sits in queues while people are "too busy"
  • Customers ask "what's the status?" regularly
  • Handoffs between teams create delays nobody owns
4

The cost of over-governance

When work isn't designed, governance gets added everywhere—because nobody trusts the system. Approvals pile up. Check-ins multiply. Control becomes the goal instead of outcomes.

Signs you're paying this cost:

  • Multiple approvals required for routine decisions
  • Meetings exist primarily to "stay aligned"
  • People feel like they need permission for everything
  • Control adds time without adding value

The alternative

Customer Experience Design addresses all four hidden costs by making work explicit:

"The issue isn't that you're spending too much. It's that you're spending on the wrong things—and you can't see it because it looks like normal operations."

Ready to see what you're really paying?

Customer Experience Design makes the hidden visible—so you can stop paying for accidental operations.

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