How Bad Content Operations Damage Your Customer Experience
- sandravollrath
- Jun 6
- 3 min read
I dug into some articles that describe how content chaos damages your brand, frustrates your customers, and wastes your budget.
You are trying to help your customers, but all that content just makes things confusing....
articles, emails, videos, brochures, social posts, product pages, images.
Here is the research, and 5 tips on how you can get on top of the chaos and improve your customer experience (CX) at the same time.
Before we get into the research, though, let's define content chaos:
Content chaos is what happens when content gets out of control.
That might mean one or more of the following scenarios:
Conflicting messages or visual styles
Old or duplicated content still in circulation
Customer journeys that don’t join up across platforms
Teams creating content in silos with no shared system
The culprits? Too many hands on content, no joined-up plan, and constant pressure to “just get it out there.”
Research Shows: Content Operations Chaos Damages CX
1. Your Brand Reputation Is at Risk
Adobe found that over half of marketing leaders have already dealt with the fallout from “rogue content” : stuff published off-brand, out of date, or just plain wrong. The result? Confused customers, legal issues, and brand damage that takes time to undo.
2. People Get Confused. And Leave.
People come to you for information, education and authority on a certain subject. If people can’t find the right information or worse, if they find the wrong information, they lose trust. Of course, who wouldn't?! At Tech Gadgets, a rushed content producer uploaded an old product image just ahead of a major launch, one that showed features not actually in the final release. The blog went live, reporters picked it up, and within hours, articles were circulating with wild guesses about the company’s roadmap. The post was fixed quickly, but the confusion stuck. That’s the cost of poor content coordination. This type of avoidable mistake makes your business look unreliable and impacts your customer's experience.
3. Customer Experience Is Suffering
Forrester’s 2024 Customer Experience Index shows CX in the US is now at its lowest point ever. Nearly 40% of brands see big declines in their customers' experience scores. One major factor is the messy digital experience. Customers are bouncing between channels, hitting dead ends, and being asked to repeat themselves. A big reason? Poorly managed content. When guidance is unclear and self-service tools don’t work, people give up. Content chaos sits at the heart of this.
4. Unmanaged Content Operations Burn Your Budget
Lots of businesses are paying to create content no one ever sees or uses. One team discovered entire content libraries never made it live. Another cut nearly half their content spend by sorting out their content systems, no drop in quality.
What Your Customers Actually Want
People aren’t asking for much. They just want:
Content that’s consistent across your various channels.
Info that’s clear, correct, and up to date.
A simple, joined-up experience as they journey through your web & social properties.
Stuff that feels relevant to them If they have to wade through a maze of bad content, they’ll move on.
Tips To Improve Your CX By Avoiding Content Chaos
Here are some tips that help you avoid content chaos and improve your CX:
Get a proper content strategy in place, one that’s tied to business and customer needs, my blog about "How to build a simple content operations plan" is a great starting point.
Stop letting everyone create in a vacuum: centralise how content is planned, created and reviewed.
Use tools that help you manage versions, publish across platforms, and actually find what’s been made.
Bring teams together to plan around the full customer journey, not just their bit of it.
Do regular content audits to clean up what’s old, duplicated, or off-message and have an archive process in place.
This is not about being tidy with your content for tidy’s sake. Content chaos creates delight-less customer experiences, damages trust, and eats your budget. Fix it, and the results are immediate: clearer messaging, happier customers, a stronger brand.
Need some help embracing marketing and content operations? I'd love to help!
Email me at sandra@mops22.com
