There isn't a legendary customer experience feature from any company that made financial or operational sense when it was first suggested within the company. It only made sense when it made sense to the company's customer culture and served the company well. And that only happened if the feature made no sense at all.

The irony of communicating to a culture is that something has to be exaggerated to be believable. Any exaggerated protection or promotion of what your company says is important to you will become a legend in your customer culture. Legends are how a culture communicates and stores information.

Therefore, the customer experience has to feature exaggerated aspects that have no obvious connectivity to a financial return for your company - apparently an unnecessary, over-the-top waste of effort and money for the company. Your customers can see that this has no apparent financial gain for you. Why would you do this for them? It doesn't make any sense. Of course not; but not making sense is exactly the point. The only way to comprehend it is that it's a tangible proof point of your commitment to a spectacular and signature customer experience.

The keys are that the exaggerations have to be linked to your larger brand intention, activation categories and communications personality, and that they are obvious: overt, unavoidable and easy to understand.