UX and CX

UX and CX are terms used interchangeably both online and around the office. However, the two terms mean different things and understanding these differences is crucial to success.

User experience is all about how people interact with your product/service, for example, their experience navigating your website, app or software. It’s to do with the design of the interface, its usability, information architecture, navigation, comprehension etc.

As Sergio Aicardi of Search Engine Journal says,

“While many companies have successfully separated teams to work on UX and CX aspects, respectively, there may be a lot of benefit from combining forces and looking at how UX is really a part of the larger CX.”

User Experience (UX) deals with people interacting with your product and the experience they receive from that interaction. UX is measured with metrics like: success rate, error rate, abandonment rate, time to complete task, and (since we deal in digital) clicks to completion.

Customer Experience (CX), in contrast, encompasses all the interactions a person has with your brand. It might be measured in: overall experience, likelihood to continue use, and likelihood to recommend to others. In essence, UX is part of a broader CX, but CX contains some aspects outside of a product that UX does not.

UX designers, in employing a user-centred approach, should call on the help of personas and customer journey maps when designing and should be sure to ask themselves:

• Who they are designing for?
• What are the users needs that must be fulfilled?
• Does the (digital) product meet these needs?

To provide an excellent customer experience a customer journey map must seek to answer:

• How a customer feels at each touch point
• A customer's motivations to move from one touch point to another
• The underlying reasons for transitioning between touch points