After 20+ years in Customer Success, I’ve seen my fair share of buzzwords. From “synergy” to “frictionless journeys” to whatever we were trying to do with NFTs (don’t ask). But when I saw PwC’s take on the “Experience Supply Chain”—I paused my coffee mid-sip, looked up from my dashboard of Net Promoter Scores, and thought: Wait, they might be onto something.
We’ve always said that everyone owns the customer experience. But let’s be real—when the customer is mad, they’re not calling the product team, or marketing, or Gary in procurement. They’re calling Customer Success. We’re the ones that turn “I hate everything about your product and your company” into “Wow, thanks for being so helpful, maybe I won’t churn… today.”
So, what is this mystical experience supply chain PwC speaks of?
It’s the Real MVP of Modern CX
Think of the experience supply chain as the ultimate team sport: CX is no longer just a department; it’s an ecosystem. And you, my friend, are the ecosystem manager, zookeeper, and part-time therapist.
It’s not about owning every touchpoint (thank goodness, because my back hurts from carrying all those escalations). It’s about orchestrating an entire universe of players—internal teams, partners, influencers, technology vendors, and yes, even the customer—to deliver one seamless experience.
Let’s Break It Down (With Some Fun)
According to PwC, there are several players in this supply chain. Let me translate that into Customer Success speak:
- Experience Designers (aka your customers) – Yes, they’re designing their experience whether you like it or not. They’re reading Reddit reviews, watching TikToks, and DM’ing your competitor.
- Introduction Specialists – Influencers, affiliates, or that one enthusiastic friend who convinced their whole company to try your software without knowing what it does. God bless them.
- Engagement Enhancers – Think social media managers, community moderators, and your CS team hosting “Ask Me Anything” webinars no one signed up for (but somehow 500 people attended).
- Capability Contributors – Those SaaS integrations you were forced to implement because someone on the sales team said, “Don’t worry, we can totally support that.”
- Experience Connectors – Middleware, APIs, your best solutions engineer… anyone who makes tech talk to other tech and prevents a disaster.
- Support Facilitators – The heroes in support who take calls at 2am, calm panicking customers, and then log into Slack to say, “We good?”
Why Should You Care?
Because if you’re still trying to do it all yourself, you’re going to burn out faster than a free trial.
The experience supply chain gives you a framework to be strategic:
- Focus on where you add the most value (Hint: It’s usually relationship-building and guiding customer outcomes, not resetting passwords).
- Partner where it makes sense.
- Enable others to carry part of the load.
- And for the love of SaaS, stop trying to do product’s job. (Just me?)
What This Looks Like in the Wild
- Glossier lets customers be the marketers. Their community is the experience.
- Oura leverages influencers and 3rd-party manufacturers to scale without sacrificing experience.
- Stripe powers businesses without ever owning the end-user interaction. Talk about quiet dominance.
How to Get Started
Here’s the 5-step process I’d give any Success leader (or anyone who’s tired of being the catch-all inbox):
- Map the ecosystem – Who’s really touching your customer experience?
- Know your strengths – Are you the face? The fixer? The coach?
- Invest in partners – Find tech and humans that complement your role.
- Enable & empower – Give everyone skin in the game (and proper documentation).
- Measure what matters – Not vanity metrics—real outcomes and influence.
Final Thoughts from the Old Guard
As a CS leader who started back when we used to say “customer support” like it was a dirty word, I’m thrilled to see this evolution. The experience supply chain isn’t just a concept—it’s a call to arms. Or maybe just a call to finally fix that onboarding flow you’ve been ignoring.
We can’t own everything. But we can orchestrate everything. And when we do that well? That’s when customers don’t just stay. They succeed.
