Some of the best lessons in good customer experience don’t come from case studies. They come from real instances that happen to you personally, like the moment I was standing in a Las Vegas mall, watching a sale collapse in real time.
The product was eye cream, and it was phenomenal. Really impressive, and this is coming from someone who generally buys their beauty products on the fly and only when on sale. But no matter how fantastic your product is, you can lose a sale in the blink of an eye (pun intended), and, more than that, the trust and loyalty of a customer.
A Consumer With A View
I was walking through the Grand Canal Shops at The Venetian with my sister whilst on a girls’ trip, when a salesperson at one of the kiosks managed to do something I rarely let happen: he pulled me in. Granted, he had already wrangled my sister first, which prompted me to follow suit, as I didn’t want to leave her behind.
He was demonstrating an eye cream called Lionesse, a luxury skincare product that promised to reduce lines and bags without the need for Botox. He applied it to one of my sister’s eyes, then pulled me over to be the judge.
I looked, and I could not believe what I was seeing.
The difference between her two eyes was dramatic. The treated eye looked lifted, less puffy, genuinely more awake. I’m not someone who buys things easily – especially not $500 eye creams at mall kiosks in Las Vegas. But I was genuinely considering it.
He had me. With the product. With the results. With the live demonstration that removed every possible doubt about whether it worked.
Then, something happened… and he lost me.
Not with the price.
Not with the pitch.
With the customer experience.
Where It Went Wrong
See, we were on a trip with three other girls. My sister had managed to steal away from the sales pitch, and I was still looking at my reflection, seriously determining if I should go ahead and invest in the $250 eye cream, and possibly a few other items because – when I say it was crazy good? It was SPECTACULAR – I had never seen this effect from a face product before.
My girlfriends showed up to pull me to our spa appointment. I told the salesman I needed a few minutes to think about it, as I figured I could go to the spa appointment, and since we were going to be there a few more days, I could always come back to get the cream and possibly the moisturizer and face cleanser.
He said that was fine, and then immediately asked for my ID. I felt that was odd, but, in the spur of the moment, handed it to him.
Then, he asked for a credit card to put on file.
I said I wasn’t sure yet – I needed time to consider a purchase that size. It was so out of my comfort zone to buy something like this, let alone pay that much, and I didn’t want to make a rash decision on a whim. Good product or not, I wanted to be responsible here.
And then my friend came over and said: “We are running late – we need to go.”
The salesman turned to her and told her she was being rude. That she shouldn’t rush me.
I told him not to worry, that I still needed time regardless to consider it fully, and that we were late for our spa appointment, but that I would be back, and started to pull away with my friend. I already felt off about the ID and credit card being asked of me when I had already stated I needed time to think about it.
That’s when things shifted.
He got upset. Like, UPSET.
His energy changed completely, and the warmth that had drawn me in initially evaporated.
And as I walked away, I turned back and said — genuinely, meaning it — “No worries. I’ll come back.”
He slammed his hand on the register and said, “DON’T COME BACK!”
I stopped for a second, aghast that someone could flip so quickly, and to a potential customer to boot – and kept then kept going. There was nothing left to say.
What Actually Happened
Here’s the thing: the product worked. I saw it with my own eyes. I was ready to spend $250+ on something I would never normally buy because the demonstration was that effective. On top of that, I was with 4 other women – and this could have turned into even more sales.
But the product was never the problem. The customer experience was the problem.
The moment he prioritized his commission over my decision-making process, the sale was over.
The customer experience I was having no longer matched the product he was selling.
He was selling something that made you feel better. And in that moment, I felt worse.
That’s the gap. And that gap is everything.
What This Has To Do With Your Business
I’ve thought about that Las Vegas kiosk more times than I can count. Not because it was dramatic – though it was – but because it is the clearest, most distilled example I have ever personally experienced of how a customer experience can undermine an impact.
The product was fantastic. The results were real. The demonstration was compelling. Every element of the product itself was doing its job.
And the person delivering it – the human experience of the sale – dismantled all of it in about thirty seconds.
This is what I mean when I talk about the gap between what you intend and what people experience.
The salesman intended to make a sale. He had a good product. He had the skills to demonstrate it. What he didn’t have was the ability to hold the customer’s experience as the priority when his own anxiety about the commission kicked in.
And that’s not a sales problem. That’s a service design problem.
Because service design is fundamentally about this: what is it like to be on the receiving end of what you’re offering?
Not what you think it’s like.
Not what you intend it to be.
But what it actually is – in real time, in the moment when things don’t go exactly as planned, in the spaces between the pitch and the purchase.
The Part That Still Gets Me
After I got home, I looked up Lionesse. The reviews were mixed – some people loved the product, others reported that what got shipped to their door didn’t match what the in-store demonstration produced (so, I may have dodged something and saved some coin). The product might not have lived up to the demonstration experience anyway.
But here’s what I keep coming back to: I would have gone back. I told him I would come back, and I meant it.
The sale was still alive when I walked away.
He killed it himself.
And that, more than anything else, is what I want you to sit with. Because it happens in businesses every day, not with slammed registers and dramatic exits, but quietly, too.
In the follow-up email that doesn’t come.
In the onboarding process that makes a client feel like a transaction.
In the moment a customer raises a concern and the response prioritizes the business’s comfort over the customer’s experience.
The product can be great. The work can be good. And the customer experience can still kill the sale.
That’s why the experience is the strategy.
Not the product. Not the price. Not the pitch.
The experience.
