We’re all familiar with the term brick-and-mortar, and its new-age avatar: click-and-mortar. The Internet has been around for decades. Search queries run in billions per day. And, most of carry a device in our pocket that is more powerful in computing power & functionality than the one used to send man to the moon!

And yet, for all the interconnectedness that Technology offers, in many ways we have merely scratched the surface.

The truth is, there is a significant gap between how a brand is experienced online versus how it behaves offline. It’s not enough to have a simple & elegant website, if your mobile app is clunky or non-existent. It’s not enough to have a state-of-the-art digital experience, if your offline channels are not in sync. It’s not enough to reward new customers, but not retain and delight the ones who have been loyal to you through the years.

And, it’s not just the “brand” – service levels vary widely too, further impacting how we perceive the brand. As a customer, your moment-of-truth in a specific branch outlet may be vastly different from other outlets, and may be completely out of sync with what you experienced on their website or mobile app or their twitter account.

If you spend hours on the website of your favorite electronics store, and then walk into its nearest outlet, is it unreasonable to expect that the store “recognizes” you and tries to cater to what you need, instead of you defining your need all over again?

Which experience is more accurate? Which one should you rely on? The answers are not easy, but the questions are certainly worth pondering.

If a business has to succeed, it must take into account all the ways in which it interacts with its customers, and strive for a consistent “customer experience” across these spaces. After all, User Experience is not how the Technology behaves, it’s how the customer experiences it. In the immortal words of Steve Jobs, “You‘ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around.”