Understanding customer experience

3 golden rules in CX… and 1 teabag

16/09/2023; 2 min to read;

CX is something very simple and in the same time very complex.

It is not customer service despite of the fact that service is part of experience.

Pay attention and you will discover (non)great customer experience practices almost everywhere.

CX is like your holiday memories. They might be good or excellent. For sure emotional.

The same is with brands. You feel emotional with some of them - in positive or non positive dimension. This is what CX professionals supporting brand like the most. Emotions!

Why? Because emotion means attachment. And attachment means relation. Relation equals sales.

Sometimes customer are neutral regarding experience with a brand. In reality this means - no emotion, no relation…., no sales.

Brands are dyeing to create emotions. And here customer experience professional comes to help.

By designing step by step the customer journey and integrating wow moments and sparks and emotions here and there they create experience.

Of course it is not one-man show. This activity is very transversal. In production industries you need to cover from product design, to materials for production, to distribution, to guarantee and after sale service etc…. And you have tangible aspects of the experience - you touch the product, like the soft angles or surface or colours, ….

In service industry - it is all about perception. It is all about how you feel going through the process of getting the service and then how satisfied you become with the usage.

And yes, customer service is different than customer experience. The service is just a touch point. Experience is the whole thing.

You are getting service at the call centre, or by the store employee. Experience is what you share with your friends. As already said - emotion.

In a nutshell, customer experience is like “connecting the dots” so each and every customer feel special and happy using your product or service all the time.

Not only in the beginning while purchasing but also when the product need update or rework. How fast and easy is to get a service is critical for the experience together with how efficient is that service.

3 things for success to remember:

• CX is emotional - good design built on that in positive way

• Step into customer shoes is essential - in design but majorly in the use phase

• Your clients are best “testers” for your product - listen to them regularly, act upon their feedback

Of course, it is pretty much about people in the end of the day. Even when those people produce robots to serve clients :)

Employees are important part of customer experience as they impact it deeply with their attitude, level of competence, ability to solve issues… etc.

Good customer experience is a result of systematic approach, i.e. well developed system to guarantee we understand customer (listening and monitoring), ability to act upon feedback (close the loop) and everyone is engaged with the subject.

The last is actually crucial and here CX professionals play major role.

I would say, good CX professional contribute to business like teabag impacts the tea - once it's infusion the herbals into the hot water you would never be able to detach those two.

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