What Is the Third Rail of Customer Experience?

Experts weigh in on taboo beliefs and behaviors

For those of you who have never heard the phrase “The third rail,” here are a couple of definitions to get you started. The Urban Dictionary defines it as: “A dangerous area of discussion, a point at which the mere mention of a subject results in disaster. Commonly used in politics.”

Wikipedia offers this: “The third rail of a nation’s politics is a metaphor for any issue so controversial that it is ‘charged’ and ‘untouchable’; any politician or public official who dares to broach the subject will invariably suffer politically. The term is most commonly used in North America. The ‘third rail of American politics’ is often said to be cutting Social Security; the ‘third rail’ of Canadian politics is said to be healthcare.”

Let’s return to my question, what is the third rail of customer experience? Or is there one? I posed this to several customer experience experts. Here are their responses.

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Comments

The Truth

I believe from my experience that "THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH and NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH" is the 3rd rail. As they say no one want to see the sausage being made. No one wants to be reminded that the design of the product isn't perfect, that there are tolerances to every part, that the basis of your quality department is the mil standard and that there will be bad or not perfect products leaving the factory and will get to the customer and consumer.

ADA

The"third rail"that goes almost entirely unnoticed by most people. Whether it be in business or as onlooking customers is that of implicit bias against those of us, myself included, who have a disability. It is so divisive that not all but a lot of people in business care about their bottom line then about being decent people, and more about barely meeting ADA guidelines then about tailoring accessibility to the needs of the customer, thereby also growing their bottom line and helping the economy.