Content: The Unsung Hero of the Customer Experience Opera
It's time for CX leaders to recognize that content powers customer experience
It’s time we talk about customer experience. No, not the "smile-and-nod" kind you give your barista when they remember your name. I'm talking about the full-blown, Broadway-production-level experience companies try to orchestrate from first click to final sigh of satisfaction.
The understudy carrying the whole show? It's your content! Yes, your dusty ol' documentation, your FAQs, your user guides, and your troubleshooting trees that look like a caffeinated spider drew them.
A recent literature review by Muhammad Waqas and friends found that the customer experience (CX) is a sprawling, multidimensional beast. It's cognitive! It's emotional! It's social! It's got mood swings!
But while firms spend money on influencers and create branded experiences that sparkle like sequins on a Vegas showgirl, they continue to treat content like the guy who parks the cars.
The Role of Content (Or, Why Your PDF Might Matter More Than Your Logo)
Let's say you've bought a smart home device that promises to connect your toaster to the cloud. You're excited until you open the box, and the instructions look like they were translated by a toaster. That's not a fantastic product experience—it's a customer experience catastrophe.
Your sleek brand image didn't just take a hit—it got derailed by a help document that cheerfully opened with:
"To initiate, caress the power button until enlightenment occurs."
That's not user guidance, it's a riddle in a meditation app.
That's because content is the experience. It's the thing customers interact with when they need answers. It's their silent partner in crime during a midnight troubleshooting session. It's the difference between "I got this!" and "I'm returning this."
From Stimulus to Sob Story
The researchers behind the review unpacked over two decades of CX literature and came to a rather humbling realization: customers aren't passive recipients of brand fairy dust. They co-create meaning.
And what helps them do that?
Content.
Great content supports customer meaning-making. It lets people make sense of your product in their own messy, beautiful way. It helps them feel empowered and understood, not like they're being punished for wanting to use your product without a PhD in interface design.
So What Should CX Leaders Do?
First, stop treating content like a neglected appendix—tacked on at the end, outdated, and quietly sabotaging your carefully crafted customer journey. Invest in it, elevate it, and give it a seat at the strategy table—preferably one without a sticky note that says "intern."
Make content findable, usable, and enjoyable. Not "compliance-checked" enjoyable. Enjoyable.
Connect your technical writers, marketers, and CX folks so they can create a consistent, empathetic experience.
Let your documentation reflect your brand values—not just in tone, but in structure, accessibility, and clarity.
Track how your content affects satisfaction, loyalty, and that mysterious "didn't call support" metric no one wants to discuss.
Getting Documentation Right: Your Secret Weapon
If we're serious about delivering exceptional customer experiences, we must realize that content is not background scenery. It's the dialogue, the choreography, the plot twist. It's when your customer decides whether they're in a story worth sticking with, or one they can't wait to leave behind.
So go ahead. Put your documentation center stage. Give your product information a standing ovation. And maybe, just maybe, your customers will give you one, too.
Cue the curtain. 🤠