Learn From the Rise and Fall of Uber's Customer Experience

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For a private company, we sure know a lot about Uber. We know its meteoric rise to become the most valuable "unicorn" in the world. We know its well-publicized issues with corporate culture. We know Uber has a tremendous void in leadership at the moment, with no CEO, COO, CFO, or CMO. And we know the company lost $2.8 billion last year and added another $708 million of losses in the first quarter of this year.

It is no secret that Uber is a troubled company. Of course, the story of this company is far from complete. It still is sitting on piles of cash, has a lot of talent, and retains many customers. But gone are the days when the word "Uber" conjured up overwhelmingly positive sentiment about the service and every other startup positioned itself as "the Uber of..." a different vertical.

Even without knowing the end to this tale, the explosive growth and subsequent trials of Uber provide a way for us to recognize the power and complexity of customer experience (CX). At a time when many leaders think CX means better marketing content, offering more emotive customer care, or diminishing friction within processes, Uber demonstrates that CX is about all that and much more.

Gartner defines customer experience management as “the practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed customer expectations and, thus, increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy." That's our side of the equation as business and marketing leaders--how do we manage our organizations to craft strong, closer, resilient, mutually beneficial relationships with customers.

Gartner further defines customer experience as "the customer’s perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier’s employees, systems, channels or products." That is the customer's side of the equation--i.e., the important side. It is what our prospects and customers think, feel, and say about the brand as a result of their every interaction.

With these definitions in mind, we can see how Uber rose from a scrappy, small startup to a mammoth company that swamped an established traditional industry in a matter of a few years. And we can also see how the company's well-known PR issues are now rocking the company, causing people to delete the app, and putting Uber's enormous valuation at risk.

To learn how customer experience lifted and then harmed Uber and what this tells us about marketing, brand management, and reputation, please read the entire blog post on my Gartner blog.