Big tech has changed customer expectations on a global scale, and most other businesses can’t keep up.
In 2016, Uber resolved my complaint in less than 10 minutes. In 2025, almost a decade later, it took me more than six weeks to resolve a complaint with an Australian travel company.
For over a decade, I’ve been an Apple developer, and I’ve worked closely with big brands like Salesforce, and managing integrations with payment providers like Stripe even from the early days when they were operating out of a garage, and I’ve been watching the journey.
Whenever Apple does its annual Worldwide Developer Conference, I’m up at 3am watching the keynotes – I’ve learnt so much about user experience, but also customer experience by observing big tech.
One of my favourite lessons was about In-App Purchases, and how it’s always important for software developers to offer a ‘test drive’ before inviting someone to purchase.
Basic stuff, but the big tech companies are teaching smaller developers on best practices, because it drives loyalty in the Apple ecosystem.
And it’s all got to do with meeting and delivering on customer expectations.
A lot of this has to do with scale. And there's a critical mass that's needed in business. Big businesses often win because; they're big, lots of customers, good cash flow.
Critical mass refers to the minimum amount of something required to trigger or sustain a particular outcome. The term originates from nuclear physics, where it describes the smallest amount of fissile material needed to maintain a self-sustaining chain reaction. However, it is widely used in business, technology, sociology, and economics to describe tipping points in growth, adoption, and influence.
A decade ago, if a website was offline on a Saturday night, no one really cared. Now, businesses can’t afford periods of ‘Website under maintenance’ and there’s tight change control windows and deployment pipelines.
That’s not even my point. My point is that big tech have set the new benchmark.
And in this world of outstanding technology experiences, customers are expecting more.
Have you ever made a complaint to Uber about a driver taking the long way because they made a wrong turn, and suddenly you’re on a highway and the estimate charge is now double? That happened to me.
When I informed Uber, in 2016 (about a decade ago), in less than 10 minutes a staff member had reviewed my complaint, made an assessment and automatically credited my account.
This was all orchestrated with a single touchpoint using Uber's in-app escalations process - no calls, no emails. In fact they had proactively offered a refund before I even contacted them, and the interaction was simply confirming the next steps and timeframes.
In 2025, almost a decade later, it took me more than six weeks to resolve a reimbursement request with an Australian travel company through numerous channels over many interactions: telephone, webchat, and email. A completely different experience.
Australian businesses on the whole, are only just discovering this type of capability, and typically they aren't putting that much CX design into what they do - instead systems and processes appear to be designed for business outcomes (sales, growth or efficiency), and less so much about real customer needs, wants, and desires (experience).
Unfortunately, the customer expectation is already set, and it’s near impossible for everyday local brands to keep up, unless they operate on the platforms that big tech operate on.
It’s really tricky - what happens when Big Tech make a change? Well, on the whole, customer expectations change too as a result of these new and improved experiences.
How is your business evolving to design new and innovative experiences that your customers want?
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