The Lies We Tell Ourselves in CX: Lie #1 – Customers Know What They Want
Why listening to your customers might be the most dangerous thing your CX team is doing.
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We like to say we’re customer-driven.
We run surveys.
Conduct interviews.
Chase Net Promoter Scores like they hold the secrets of the universe.
Because we believe customers will tell us what to build or fix.
They won’t.
The Myth: Customers Know What They Want
This isn’t cynicism. It’s cognitive science.
Kahneman and Tversky showed us the uncomfortable truth: we’re unreliable narrators of our own desires. We don’t remember what influenced us. We rationalize decisions we barely understood in the moment.
And when we ask people what they think they want, we’re inviting them to write fiction. Fiction shaped by memory gaps, social desirability bias, and the ever-present pull of rational-sounding answers.
So when CX teams treat feedback as gospel, they’re often designing for a version of the customer that doesn’t exist.
The Opinion Trap
Ask a customer what they want, and they’ll give you what sounds good:
Lower prices
Faster delivery
Better service
But watch what they do:
Bail on a cart over $5 shipping, even if it’s carbon neutral
Churn right after giving you a perfect NPS score
Trade privacy for 10% off, after saying they care about data security
The problem isn’t that customers lie. It’s that our brains are bad at introspection. Especially when predicting future behavior or articulating trade-offs.
Talk is cheap. Behavior is expensive. That’s what you should be tracking.
The Shift: From Listening to Watching
If you want to understand your customers, don’t ask. Observe.
Behavior tells the truth:
Where friction hides
What features matter
What gets skipped, re-used, ignored, or loved
How real-world conditions (time pressure, device type, emotional state) shape action
Feedback is a clue. Behavior is evidence. If they diverge, trust behavior.
Spotify Gets It
Spotify doesn’t ask what playlist you want next.
It watches:
What you replay on a Tuesday
What you skip on a commute
What you need on a rainy Thursday
Its algorithms synthesize billions of micro-decisions. The result? A product that adapts to context, mood, and moment—without ever needing you to explain yourself.
This is behavioral design at scale. It’s quiet. Seamless. Addictive.
Now contrast that with companies chasing NPS scores, begging users for 9s and 10s, sending follow-ups to explain why their rating matters. Meanwhile, churn ticks upward and no one knows why.
They’re building for the story. Spotify builds for the signal.
The Hard Truth
Customers don’t know what they’ll want six months from now.
Most don’t even know what they want today.
Preferences are contextual, fluid, and often in conflict.
Your job isn’t to extract predictions. It’s to notice patterns. To detect when intent shifts. To design for what actually happens, not what’s hypothetically appealing.
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Why our brains contradict our surveys
What behavioral signals truly indicate loyalty
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If you’re a CX leader, product owner, or strategist who wants to cut through the noise and design what actually works, this book will change how you think.
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Five Moves to Build for What Customers Do
If you’re ready to stop building based on what customers say and start designing around what they actually do, these five moves will help rewire your approach. Each one is a strategic pivot toward behavioral truth—a shift from surface-level sentiment to deep, decision-driving insight.
Track commitment, not compliments. NPS is a vanity metric if it doesn’t predict behavior. Real loyalty shows up in repeat usage, renewals, referrals, and actions taken without nudges.
Test before trusting. Launch micro-tests with behavioral KPIs: clicks, conversions, retention. Don’t wait for statistical significance if the behavior shift is flat. Learn fast. Move on.
Use feedback as a signal, not a script. Ask what confused or annoyed them—but then validate it. Do confused users drop off? Do frustrated ones escalate support tickets? If not, the issue might not matter.
Instrument for intent. Dwell time, scroll depth, rage taps, backtracking—these are digital body language. Set up systems that surface anomalies, not just aggregates.
Pressure-test your roadmap. Every feature, every policy, every touchpoint should pass this test: "If we had no feedback—only behavior—would this still be worth doing?"
Your Challenge This Week
Pick one active CX project—anything from onboarding flows to customer support automation.
Strip away the surveys. Ignore what customers said they wanted.
Pull the behavioral data. Look at drop-off points, bounce rates, path analysis, repeat behaviors.
Ask new questions. What is the customer doing that contradicts what they told you? Where are they putting effort? Where are they disappearing?
Find the signal. Identify one behavioral pattern that suggests friction, surprise, or unmet expectations.
Make a move. Redesign a single touchpoint based on this insight. Test it. Track what changes.
Then, write a one-paragraph summary of what you learned and what changed. Share it with your team. Make it a habit.
Bonus: AI-Powered Help
Use this AI prompt to jumpstart your insight:
You are a customer experience strategist analyzing behavioral data. I’m working on improving [describe your product, service, or flow—e.g., onboarding for a B2B SaaS tool, checkout for a DTC brand, support experience for a subscription app].
Here is a snapshot of recent user behavior:
- Drop-off rate at [specific step or page]
- Click-through rate on [feature or CTA]
- Repeat usage frequency over [time period]
- Common abandonment paths or rage clicks
- Session duration or engagement patterns
Your task:
1. Identify any behavioral contradictions—places where behavior conflicts with stated feedback or assumed preferences.
2. Highlight potential friction points, moments of confusion, or unmet expectations.
3. Suggest 2–3 hypotheses I should test to improve real engagement, not just reported satisfaction.
4. Recommend a small design or process change I can implement immediately to test impact.
Respond like a CX strategist, not a marketer. Focus on what people do—not what they say.About This Series
This is the first post in The Lies We Tell Ourselves in CX—a series that challenges the comfortable assumptions holding your experience strategy back.
Each one tackles a widely accepted “truth” and dismantles it—so you can rebuild something that actually works.
Want the rest of the series?
Subscribe to Decoding Customer Experience.
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👋 Please Reach Out
I created this newsletter to help customer-obsessed pros like you deliver exceptional experiences and tackle challenges head-on. But honestly? The best part is connecting with awesome, like-minded people—just like you! 😊
Here’s how you can get involved:
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— Mark
www.marklevy.co
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