The Devil’s in the Details
It’s rarely the big strategy that derails customer experience. It’s the small cracks. The overlooked steps. The missing pieces in a process that seemed airtight in a design document but fell apart in the real world.
Last week gave me three crystal-clear reminders of exactly this.
Microsoft Outlook decided to change its code so that when you craft a new meeting, your signature is included in the body of the invite. With that signature could be a default image that also auto-inserts into every meeting invite. The result? Errors when sending calendar invites unless you manually remove the image or create a new “signature without image” default. A small change on their end, a massive headache for their customers. Nobody thought through the ripple effect.
NYU Health sent me a slick text message offering an earlier MRI appointment. Press 1 to accept, 2 to decline. I pressed 1. Nothing. No confirmation. No explanation. After calling, I learned the slot was already taken. The process never accounted for real-time availability or follow-up communication. A failure in the loop.
Walmart still doesn’t offer Apple Pay at checkout. Customers can use credit cards, debit cards, and Walmart Pay- but not Apple Pay or Google Pay, even at self-checkout. In 2025, when tap-to-pay is nearly universal and customer expectation is set, this feels like friction by design. Instead of making life easier, it adds one more step for customers already balancing schedules, carts, and kids.
None of these misses are catastrophic on their own. But together, they show how easily trust erodes when companies don’t test the full cycle, don’t close the communication loop, or don’t align to what’s now the norm in human experience.
How to do better
The devil may live in the details, but so does delight. Companies that consistently deliver wow moments do three things differently:
Test like a customer, not a coder.
QA is often focused on “does it work” from a technical standpoint. But does it work for the customer? Sit in their chair. Send the invite. Press the button. Try to pay in three different ways. Test at peak and off-peak times. Full-cycle QA means validating the actual experience, not just the code.Close the loop, always.
Customers should never be left guessing. If an appointment is no longer available, the system must respond in real time. If an error happens, the message should be clear and actionable. Every process should have a designed fail-safe that acknowledges the human and guides them to the next step.Check against the standard of now.
Don’t benchmark only against yourself. Ask: What do customers expect in 2025? If they can tap-to-pay everywhere else, they’ll expect it from you. If other healthcare systems confirm scheduling instantly, your lack of confirmation feels outdated. Human experience is measured against the best in class, not just your competitors.Listen like you mean it.
Every complaint, every workaround, every “ugh” moment is free data. But only if you treat it as valuable insight. Build feedback channels that capture this, review them regularly, and act on them visibly. Customers notice when their voices are ignored, but they remember when their feedback is the reason something improves.
Ways to check for HX
Here’s a simple test: before launching a change, ask three questions.
Would I use this myself, and enjoy it?
If it fails, what happens to the customer?
Does it meet the expectation customers already have from the best in class?
If the answer to any of these is shaky, the detail isn’t ready.
Technology and process will never be perfect. But perfection isn’t the goal. The goal is to keep the human in the center, test end-to-end, and never release something into the wild without asking: how will this feel for the person on the other end?
Because in the end, the devil is always in the details. But the organizations that thrive are the ones who sweat those details until what’s left is not frustration, but delight.
