Five CX lessons from unexpected sources - Minesweeper game

At Simplified CX, we live, breathe, and eat CX. Okay, at least during work hours. We look for insightful CX lessons from everywhere and strive to deliver them to you as quickly as possible. Close to an year ago, our curiosity helped us find lessons in CX from an unlikely source: The Prophet, written by Kahlil Gibran.

In the same vein, we recently spotted a few CX lessons from an equally improbable source—Minesweeper, a logic puzzle video game.

If you, like me, are a millennial, you'll for sure have fond memories of playing the game. And by fond, I mean annoying, and by playing, I mean trying to figure out what the game is all about. Crazy, right?

Fortunately, I understood the objective of the game a few years ago, and it recently occurred to me that you can apply some of the strategies for winning it to CX as well.

Trust me; I'm not joking

But before we get into the strategies, what do CX and Minesweeper even have in common?

First, both are filled with hidden challenges. In Minesweeper, you don't know which cell is empty and which one contains a mine. You figure it out as you go. Same with CX; sometimes, the challenges are apparent, and sometimes, completely unexpected.

Second, the challenges are not just hidden, but also connected. In Minesweeper, clicking/tapping a cell that contains a mine triggers a chain reaction and causes all other mines in the grid to explode. Similarly, an issue at any point in the customer journey can have a cascading effect across business functions and affect your customers' experience.

Third, the level of difficulty is proportional to the size of the grid in Minesweeper; the bigger the grid, the more mines and higher the possibility of tapping one. This applies to businesses too; the bigger a business is, the more challenges it encounters on multiple fronts.

Fourth and last, making the right moves in Minesweeper opens a good number of empty cells. With respect to CX, this is comparable to delivering consistently positive experiences to customers and gaining their advocacy.

The learning begins

Now that we've seen the similarities, let's jump into the strategies.

1. Tread carefully and mindfully

This is the first lesson from Minesweeper, and we don't want to sound scary while saying it. Haste is your first antagonist in Minesweeper. You tap an empty cell? Good. You make a few calculated moves and clear other empty cells? Better. But if you get a bit over-confident and hastily tap a cell without thinking? That bad move undoes all your hard work.

Similarly, running a business is a serious endeavor. Whether it's a customer or a colleague or a partner, you're going to interact with people who have different emotions and response styles. If it's a customer, you're getting both their time and money. So the onus is on you to waste neither. To do this, it's essential that you have high emotional intelligence, which includes being aware of both your emotions and those of others. Especially in customer-facing roles, emotional intelligence helps you gauge customers' moods and general attitudes and respond accordingly.

Furthermore, diligence in processes is as important as mindfulness in emotions. We recently learned about an enterprise deal in which a vendor was out of the running even before the evaluation stage. The reason? They submitted their proposal in a format that didn't comply with the guidelines set by the customer. So yes, tread carefully and mindfully.

2. Tackle issues from a different angle

Often in Minesweeper, you're bound to get into a position where there are multiple mines concentrated in a single area. Identifying the innocuous empty cell in such a situation could be a bit tricky. The solution? Move away from the clustered zone and continue clearing the grid from a different, much easier place. You'll eventually reach the tricky zone and be able to identify the empty cell.

In business, it's fairly common to misdiagnose the cause of an issue. This leads us to apply the wrong solutions to problems and take longer than ideal to find the right fixes. Moreover, investing a great deal of time and effort into a tricky issue can sometimes widen the gap between the problem and the solution. It's best to take a step back in such instances and solve other comparatively minor issues. This break can bring a moment of clarity and help you find the exact issue and solution.

3. Don't sweat the small stuff

Minesweeper isn't always filled with tricky clusters. Sometimes, you might find many cells with the number 1 on them. This means that the cell is in contact with just one mine, and the remaining eight cells around it are empty. In that scenario, you can just click/tap away and clear more space. That way, the game is not always a difficult one. When it's simple, you can just move fast and clear more area.

When it comes to your offering, there's for sure going to be a lot of processes and procedures that both your customers and employees have to perform. Minimizing effort wherever possible is an effective way to ensure both a stellar CX and EX. Automate the mundane and repetitive tasks so that there's more time for the complex ones.

4. Recognize patterns

This strategy connects to the previous one. There are certain patterns in Minesweeper that can help you identify mines easily. For instance, if there's a 2 between two 1s, it means that the cell in the middle (the cell with 2) is touching two mines (the cells with 1 on both sides). And if you see a 2-3-2 pattern, it means that the adjoining three cells have mines, and you can stay away from them.

Pattern recognition plays a similar crucial role in CX as well. For example, customers might exhibit certain behaviors if they've decided to discontinue their relationship with you. Being aware of these behaviors can help you take corrective measures to avoid further churn. Additionally, you can also group customers based on their purchase patterns and market to them accordingly. Pattern recognition is a skill that can give you a competitive edge by helping you be more proactive overall.

5. Know that it ain't over till it's over

Last but not least, this knowledge can help you avoid complacency and stay focused till you reach your goal in Minesweeper, which is avoiding all the mines and clearing up all the empty cells. We mentioned at the beginning of this article that the mines are both hidden AND connected in the game. Just one misstep, and your game is over then and there.

How does this apply to CX? Your customers deserve a positive experience throughout their journey with you. Providing them with a great experience pre-sale and not extending the same post-sale can make them lose their trust in you. Needless to say, loss of trust from a good number of customers can be detrimental to your business and have long-standing effects. Therefore, always remember that positive CX is all about consistency throughout the customer journey. Consistency is not a good-to-have; it's a must-have.

Hope you had fun reading this article! We'll be back again with more interesting lessons like this from unexpected sources.