A Critical Need: Cross-Functional Strategy for CX Touch Points
Every team may own a touchpoint, but the customer experiences the entire journey.
The hard truth about customer experience is simple: every function with a customer-facing component is responsible for it.
Engineers cannot build usable products without understanding the people who rely on them. Customer service teams cannot resolve issues or recommend solutions without understanding who their customers are and what they are trying to accomplish. Operational functions shaping the customer journey cannot work in isolation. CX must be intentionally considered during planning, design, development, execution, and daily operations.
In essence, CX is a foundational requirement that functional teams should factor in alongside the overall business strategy. Customer experience should be a proactive consideration used to create seamless experiences across multiple touchpoints and ensure customer needs are met with minimal friction.
In reality, CX is rarely treated that way. Ownership is often poorly defined and assigned to reactive teams, such as marketing, escalation units, and support functions, to address ad hoc issues. CX is typically not a core topic within strategic planning. When it is considered, it is often addressed within functional silos rather than by examining the interconnected dependencies spanning the entire customer journey.
Here is the hard truth: if a CX issue occurs anywhere, every functional group connected to that journey becomes responsible, whether they realize it or not. Internal teams may not see the gaps, but the customer absolutely does.
A Real-World Experience: Touchpoint Breakdowns in the Replacement Phone Claims Process
Customer experience is not measured only at the end of a process. It is shaped at every interaction. If a customer must navigate multiple low-quality touchpoints to achieve a simple outcome, the result is a poor customer experience. The responsibility for that experience does not sit solely with customer service. Digital interfaces, physical stores, marketing assets, policies, and product features all influence how a customer experiences an organization.
Recently, I experienced a breakdown across nearly every touchpoint with a well-known mobile carrier. While on vacation, I lost my phone. Since I had insurance, I assumed the replacement process would be straightforward. Instead, it took four days and exposed deeper cross-functional issues across the customer journey.
Touchpoint 1: Carrier Website Login
The login process required multi-factor authentication using only my phone number. Without my phone, I had no way to access my account. There were no visible alternatives to verify my identity through email, backup codes, or identification documentation. The process depended entirely on the device I was trying to replace.
Touchpoint 2: Online Claims Form
I attempted to submit a claim through the carrier’s website, only to receive repeated errors indicating that my information was incorrect, even though it wasn’t. After multiple attempts, I gave up and decided to try again the next day.
Touchpoint 3: Chatbot and Live Chat
The next day, I reached out to chat support. The chatbot was not equipped to understand or properly route my claim-related issue. Even after escalating to a human representative, the agent was blocked by the same MFA issue. They could not verify my identity without sending a code to the phone I no longer had.
Ironically, I eventually discovered on my own how to submit a claim directly through the manufacturer. The external claims process was the one digital touchpoint that worked seamlessly. The entire process took less than 10 minutes.
Touchpoint 4: Physical Store
Despite having a claim number, I still needed to visit a physical store to suspend my line and then return days later to reinstate service. In the end, the carrier’s most effective channel was the in-person store, not the digital systems designed to streamline the process.
The Broken Pieces Across the CX Journey
Let’s break down the major process failures.
Website — Claims Process: The carrier and manufacturer claims processes were disjointed. The carrier redirected customers to a generic support page rather than the actual claim portal. A Google search was more effective than the carrier’s own website.
Website — Login and MFA: Single-channel authentication creates significant friction when customers lose the device required to verify their identity. Alternate verification methods, such as email, backup codes, or identity documentation, could reduce friction and accelerate resolution.
Chatbot and Live Chat: Chatbots need clear escalation logic and verification pathways that account for situations where the primary channel is compromised. In this case, chat added friction rather than removing it.
Storefront: The most traditional touchpoint, “human support”, was the only consistently functional one. That should be a signal to leadership. If your digital strategy cannot effectively support a customer through a predictable service scenario, the digital experience is not meeting its intended purpose.
Across these touchpoints, the opportunities for improvement are relatively straightforward: improve the claims interface, expand verification options, refine AI escalation paths, and create clearer alignment across functional owners.
The harder question is why these gaps were allowed to exist across the same customer journey.
High-level Strategy to Course Correct
Beyond being inconvenient, a customer’s inability to access their phone for four days creates financial, security, and personal risks. Phones hold authentication methods, payment tools, personal data, and access to essential services.
If I were assessing this claims process from a CX and strategy perspective, here is where I would start:
Map End-to-End Process: Document every functional dependency, system, channel, and decision point across the claims journey. Identify where the process breaks down, both internally and externally, and clarify ownership at each touchpoint.
Assess Customer Sentiment and Experience: Survey customers who have recently filed claims to understand resolution times, friction points, drop-off patterns, and satisfaction trends. Review customer service and escalation data to identify recurring themes across channels.
Connect Customer Feedback to Operational Reality: Overlay customer pain points with the current-state process and operational data. Determine the root causes of recurring failures and identify where policies, systems, processes, or ownership are misaligned.
Redesign the Process with CX as a Requirement: Integrate alternate verification pathways, simplify decision trees, and clarify cross-functional ownership. Establish baseline metrics, pilot the redesigned process, and measure whether the changes actually reduce customer friction. A change strategy should also be in place to reinforce new processes and behaviors across the teams responsible for delivering the experience.
Scale and Continuously Measure: Once validated, scale the redesigned process across relevant customer-facing functions. Continue monitoring customer feedback, operational performance, and experience trends to identify new gaps and reinforce CX expectations across every channel.
Final Thought
This experience reinforces a lesson that many organizations overlook: CX is not a step. CX is the connective tissue across the entire customer journey. Every functional owner contributes to the customer experience. If CX is not considered early in planning and design, even simple processes can create frustration, churn, and reputational risk.
In my case, my insurance provider ultimately resolved my issue. If the friction had been slightly higher, I could have easily switched carriers, shared my frustration publicly, or discouraged someone else from choosing that provider. That is the power of a broken customer journey.
CX is everyone’s job. Organizations that treat it as a cross-functional strategy are better positioned to identify friction, improve customer experiences, and build stronger relationships than those that treat CX as a reactive function.