Success in almost every modern business relies on finding the right balance between customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) – but why is this so?
Nowadays, many people might think that UX and CX are the same thing. After all, the overall aim of both CX and UX is to ensure that the client is happy and will remain loyal in the future. However, the two serve different purposes, which must be understood clearly before proceeding.
In this article, we will be looking in greater detail at the meaning of these terms and will explore how they must work together to help improve business performance.
Defining User Experience
In the digital age, where customers can interact with a business in a wide variety of ways, UX is a strategy that allows a company to monitor the functionality of those interactions. Along with products and services, UX reviews how users interact with the company’s website or applications, and creates valuable insights based on what it finds.
With the correct UX strategy in place, a business can get accurate reports on the value of those products, services, websites, and apps, and gain a clearer understanding of their usability. It is a valuable asset that offers a unique viewpoint from the perspective of the user and allows business leaders to make actionable changes when and wherever necessary.
Defining Customer Experience
Similar to UX in the sense that it enables businesses to experience interactions from the perspective of a customer, CX covers much more ground. Rather than just products and services, CX monitors everything from customer service and sales, to advertising, pricing, and product delivery. Primarily, customer experience evaluates every interaction a customer has with the business across all channels and platforms.
With these metrics, brands can recognize what strategies influence and please their customers, and improve sales and business performance. If meeting the customers’ expectations is the ultimate goal, CX is the best way to reach it.
UX vs. CX – More Explanation
Though we’ve outlined the differences between the user experience and the customer experience above, it might also be helpful to cover why the two must work in unison if the company has any hopes of succeeding.
One could argue that UX is a component of CX in the sense that it offers another view of the business from the perspective of a customer or user. With this in mind, CX teams and UX teams must collaborate and share information to make sure everything functions harmoniously.
A failure to find this balance can be highly detrimental to the customer experience overall, which is why this interdepartmental collaboration is so important.
For instance, if a company has good UX but bad CX, the customer may find that using the website is a pleasurable, fast, simple, experience. All the excellent work of this positive experience, however, is quickly undone if the user then experiences bad customer service when trying to phone in and ask a question.
Likewise, if the business has low-quality UX and its products cause many problems for the user, this will harm the customer experience. For this reason, it’s in the CX team’s best interest to invest time with the development side of the business to make sure all technical components are capable of meeting customer expectations.
What are the Benefits of CX and UX Collaboration?
Breaking down organizational silos can allow greater collaboration between CX and UX design, but what benefits does this offer? Below are some examples:
Utilize UX logic to simplify CX – By incorporating the logic-driven skills of UX designers into CX planning, CX teams can apply that simplicity and intuition to improve the customer journey drastically. For example, UX planning could help CX teams design a much more efficient process that allows customers to voice their concerns and have their issues resolved faster.
Personalizing UX Experience – CX is a strategy that is implemented to get inside the mind of the customer and find out what makes them happy. By applying this logic to UX, it is possible for UX designers not only to build a logical solution but one that is driven by emotion too. This way, it is much easier for brands to create a positive user experience that differentiates them from other competitors in the market.
What Will the Future Hold for CX/UX Collaboration?
Having discussed all the benefits that businesses stand to gain by getting their UX and CX teams to work together, it’s hard to think of a reason why collaboration wouldn’t be the norm in years to come. Though we don’t expect the two areas to merge into one, we can see this relationship moving forward into the future and businesses benefitting immensely from it.