When the phrase was first coined, it was meant to refer to all of a user’s interactions with a company. However, some people have started to assign it a limited interpretation because it was proposed in an era when computers were the primary means of digital interaction, as opposed to the lifetime relationship between the customer and the business. In its place, the phrase “customer experience” (CX) has come to refer to the sum of a user’s interactions with an organization over time.
Although we rail against vocabulary inflation and giving things new names that already have names, we can’t stop language from changing. There are various levels of experience, and each is crucial for providing your users with a positive experience, whether you prefer the more recent term “customer experience” or the more traditional “user experience.”
Customer Experience vs User Experience (CX vs UX)
What is user experience?
User experience, or UX, refers to how users interact with a specific good or service. UX can refer to the functionality of digital products as well as the usability of tangible objects like a cell phone. For instance, a web developer might carry out UX testing to improve the usability of an app. Marketers can also use user experience concepts to boost website submission forms or entice more customers to make purchases of the items they added to their cart.
What is customer experience?
Customer experience, or CX, refers to how a user perceives a business as a whole. While it focuses on interactions with specific products, it also captures consumer sentiment regarding a company’s social media presence, customer support, and marketing tactics. Companies can boost overall customer satisfaction and brand loyalty by adopting this broad perspective.
Customer experience vs. user experience
Here are some significant distinctions and parallels between user experience and customer experience.
Focus
The focus of each is one of the key distinctions between user experience and customer experience. The focus is on a person’s overall impression, and a positive reputation is sought after to boost satisfaction and brand loyalty. Although technically a part of customer experience, user experience is much more focused and emphasizes the value of positive interactions with particular products.
Consider a business-to-business software provider to gain a better understanding of the various foci of these terms. Customers are attracted to the business by the customer experience specialists’ promotion of products to tech startups. These experts can increase sales for the business by featuring client endorsements and emphasizing affordability in advertising campaigns. UX designers concentrate on making sure that their products are practical and easy to use for startup employees.
Research
To improve their user experience and customer experience, businesses conduct extensive research. The most efficient ways to increase brand loyalty can be used by testing various approaches and revising them. Although both processes depend on research, they frequently employ distinct techniques. Take a UX designer who wants to develop the ideal user experience for an online form, for instance. They may develop various form variations, collect user feedback, and take their recommendations into consideration while revising the document.
In addition to surveys and testing, customer experience research frequently uses larger test groups. This all-encompassing strategy guarantees that the business appeals to customers beyond product usability. For instance, it might assess the effectiveness of its customer communications and find more effective ways to provide support or foster relationships on social media.
Metrics
Since they aim to measure the interaction a user has with a single product, user experience metrics tend to be more precise. Common user experience metrics include those that measure website performance. For instance, the frequency of users leaving a website after viewing just one page is indicated by the term “bounce rate.” This metric can show how usable a website is and encourage developers to implement more user-friendly ideas that encourage more sustained interactions. App store reviews and subjective accounts of customers’ interactions with a single product are examples of other user experience metrics.
Customer experience metrics are typically more comprehensive and give an overview of the business’s performance. An expert in customer experience, for instance, might assess a company’s customer lifetime value. If this metric is below the industry average, they can launch campaigns to encourage brand loyalty and alter advertising campaigns to attract more relevant customers. Churn rates, net promoter scores, and customer effort scores are additional customer experience metrics.
Target audience
Companies can gain from improving their user experience and customer service, but campaigns typically target different audiences. UX experts concentrate on those who use the product, while CX specialists typically cater to those with purchasing power. When customers use the products, these groups overlap, but there are some situations where these groups are distinct. For instance, consider a company that makes childrens bicycles. While CX designers create marketing campaigns for parents who have the money to buy their children bikes, UX designers concentrate on making sure kids can use the bicycles.
Industry niches
Many people link service-oriented industries like retail and hospitality to customer experience. The relationship between user experience and businesses that create digital products like websites and apps is more intimate. While these strategies are popular in some industries, it’s crucial for businesses to use both. Think of a software company that makes a new application user-friendly, for instance. Good customer service can boost its reputation even more because users can ask for crucial troubleshooting assistance.
History
The term “user experience” is the more ancient of the two, having been created in the 1990s. As it included all consumer interactions with a business, the original definition of user experience was more similar to the modern definition of customer experience. As businesses started to place more emphasis on the functionality of individual products, especially digital ones, it evolved into its current definition.
Customer experience was created to fill the void left by user experience, which no longer encompassed all of a user’s interactions with a business. Even though customer experience has only gained prominence in the last 10 years, it is still crucial to upholding a company’s good reputation. It takes into account user experience but also involves interactions like customer service.
FAQ
What is customer/user experience?
Metrics used to gauge user experience include success rate, error rate, abandonment rate, task completion time, and (since we work with digital products) clicks to completion. Contrarily, customer experience (CX) includes all of a person’s interactions with your brand.
How do CX and UX work together?
Customer experience, or CX, casts a much wider net and encompasses all customer interactions with all aspects of a business, including a particular product within a brand or a particular service they offer. In this way, CX sort of envelopes user experience.
Is customer service part of UX?
- An organization-wide CX vision and strategy should be the first step.
- Deliver customer journeys together. …
- Create and share customer feedback loops. …
- Solve big problems together.
