Last year my work with clients revealed a trap, one I have fallen into many times, and no matter how experienced or competent, we are all susceptible.

The more we know about your industry, business, or problem, the less clearly you see your customers' reality.

We only see things from the inside out.

Our deep expertise in processes, systems, and internal constraints, the very knowledge that makes us effective, can become the lens that distorts our view of their experience.

The close proximity to the work creates distance from the customer’s perspective.

We don’t lack information, we are often drowning in internal context that obscures customer reality. We lose our empathy for a moment, the ability to take the perspective of the customer.

So we design experiences that make perfect sense from an operational perspective but create friction for customers because we miss the steps they take, that we can’t see.

This is also true for the measurement systems we build to track efficiency. They don’t capture the moments customers care about.

So how do we sidestep the trap?

It's solved through empathy, deliberately seeking external perspective through systematic customer insights and being willing to challenge internal assumptions with evidence.

What are you absolutely certain about with your customer experience that's actually just your internal perspective?\

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