Viewed individually, removing a gift wrapping service, reducing opening hours or encouraging customers to self-serve can make perfect commercial sense. The challenge is that customers don't experience those decisions individually. They experience the whole.
John Lewis' recent decision to consult on removing gift wrapping and foreign exchange services is a useful reminder that customer experience rarely collapses because of a single major mistake. More often, it evolves through the accumulation of dozens of sensible decisions.
I've started thinking about this as service erosion.
Service erosion is the gradual loss of customer value through the accumulation of individually rational decisions.
Inside the business, every decision improves something. Finance improves profitability, Operations improve efficiency, Technology automates routine tasks, and Human Resources optimises labour.
Each initiative succeeds on its own terms, yet customers experience the combined effect. Eventually, they stop saying, "I miss the gift wrapping service", and they merely conclude, "It doesn't feel the same anymore".
The latest UK Customer Satisfaction Index perhaps offers another clue. Banks and building societies have overtaken retail as the UK's highest-rated sector for customer satisfaction. Twenty years ago, retail was the benchmark for personal service. Today, many banking interactions are just easier. That doesn't mean retail has become worse overnight; it suggests that many organisations have quietly allowed small moments of differentiation to disappear.
Fortunately, the opposite is also true. One of the most rewarding projects I've supported has been helping Shaws Department Stores develop its bra fitting service. Rather than introducing something entirely new, the business invested in colleague capability, consistency and promotion around a service customers already valued. The service hadn't been invented; it had been taken seriously.
That is the opposite of service erosion. Every organisation carries an invisible Experience Balance Sheet. Every decision either strengthens experience assets such as knowledgeable colleagues, expert advice and thoughtful service, or adds experience liabilities such as unnecessary effort, disappearing services and confusing processes.
Perhaps the most valuable question a leadership team can ask isn't "What service can we afford to remove?", it's "Which side of our Experience Balance Sheet did today's decisions strengthen?"
Great customer experiences don't usually disappear in one dramatic moment. They quietly erode. The organisations that thrive in the future will be those that invest in the experiences their customers genuinely value.
This RetailCX article explores the practical implications of service erosion. In the full Substack article, I examine why organisations unintentionally weaken customer experience through individually sensible decisions, introduce the RetailCX Experience Balance Sheet, and share the thinking behind this emerging RetailCX Blueprint.
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