The Human Experience: How to Build Customer Satisfaction Through Efficiency and Humanity

The essential guide to creating a successful organization by making things easier, better and more straightforward for your customers.

Leadership Book of the Year 2023, as awarded by the Institute of Leadership

Across all sectors, organizations’ fixation with functionality has meant that the ’human’ elements of the customer’s experience have become neglected. Strict processes and automated procedures have created organizations full of people who aren’t allowed to act in a ’human’ way.

As a result, and despite these new technologies, customers are no more satisfied than they were a decade ago (according to the Institute of Customer Service) and, according to Edelman, they now trust big organizations even less than they did in the past.

In The Human Experience, John Sills draws upon extensive research and illustrative case studies to explain that the emotional experience is just as important as the functional one, and, if done right, will create a more efficient business. He also demonstrates that the customer experience is not just the responsibility of front-line employees, but shared across the company, from the CEO operating as the spokesperson of the business to the programmers developing a seamless and welcoming user interface.

Whether you’re a well-established incumbent or an early-stage start-up, on either end of your product or service is a human. Packed full of practical advice and engaging case studies, The Human Experience is the ultimate guide to creating a culture and an experience with humanity at its heart, helping to develop a customer base that will stay with an organization, and a company that will grow in an increasingly efficient way.

John Sills is a Managing Partner at The Foundation, a management consultancy that helps organizations achieve customer-led success. John has advised organizations such as Volkswagen, Sky, eBay, British Gas and UNICEF on their customer experiences. Before becoming a consultant, he was Head of Customer Innovation & Perception at HSBC.

Alongside his work at The Foundation, John is an associate of Young Enterprise, a charity that helps young adults become the next generation of business leaders and entrepreneurs.