Difference between User Experience (UX) & Customer Experience (CX)

In the current business scenario of fierce and cut-throat competition between businesses and brands, one’s loss is another’s gain. Consequently, brands leave no stone unturned to provide a satisfactory experience to anyone who avails their services. Yet, there are instances when brands are unable to provide intended experiences to customers; experiences that are rated highly by customers. There are two kinds of experiences that a user goes through when they engage in any business activity with a brand: User experience(UX) and Customer experience(CX). Let’s discuss each of them on the basis of digital products: 

Customer Experience

Customer Experience is an umbrella term that covers all the experiences a user has with a brand There are various components of customer experience such as:
• User experience
• The kind of reputation a brand has
• Effectiveness and promptness of customer service
• Pricing of products or services
• How does a customer connect to the brand through advertising
• Delivery of a product or service

An ideal business strategy must, therefore, be aligned with customer experience as a good customer experience will result in satisfied customers and, thus create a progressive relationship and continuous engagement with the brand. This is one of the ways by which you turn a customer into a loyal customer. It can be measured by a customer’s experience after using a brand and then referring it to more people in his network.

 User experience

As we find above, user experience is an integral part of customer experience. User experience involves all the interaction and engagement of a user with the brand. It has a few metrics like:
• Design of the interface and its usability
• Information architecture
• Navigation
• Comprehension
• Learnability
• Visual hierarchy

It can also be measured by turnaround time to solve a customer’s query, reuse of a platform by customers, success rate etc.

Let’s go through two examples to demonstrate the importance of how CX and UX are related to one another:

Bad UX and good CX

Consider a scenario in which you visit a shopping or e-commerce website to buy a pair of trousers but facing a lot of trouble with the interface. It seems very confusing to you and you cannot find what you are looking for. This can be considered as a bad user experience. But, a mail icon is clearly visible on the page and you immediately mail your grievances. Now, just after 20 seconds of mailing them, you receive a call from an executive who explains you the navigation and stays online with you till the time you buy the trousers. In the end, you also receive the credit of $10 for the inconvenience faced. You will feel satisfied because they have provided you a good customer experience. This is an appropriate instance of bad UX but excellent CX.

There are a few ways in which a good UX can result in a better CX

• Providing customers an interface through which they can easily provide feedback. It will also make communication between you and your customers easy and open.
• It is also significant to acknowledge feedback from your customer. Customers like being heard and acknowledged with a reply.

Good UX and bad CX

Imagine a situation wherein you book a movie ticket online. The entire booking process was swiftly creating a good user experience for you. When you reach the movie hall, you find a long queue in which the people are abrasively dealt with by the theatre staff. Moreover, when you enter the auditorium, there is an unpleasant smell surrounding the auditorium. Further, you find the seats are dirty and the theatre staff ignores the complaints when reported about the state of an auditorium. This creates a bad customer experience which will affect the business adversely in the long run. This is an apt scenario of good UX but poor CX

Apparently, it is imperative that both CX and UX must complement each other.

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A brand must take care of both UX and CX because non-fulfillment of either of them can result in a bad reputation of the brand which becomes viral in a very short time. Keeping the customers satisfied and fulfilling all their needs must be a priority for every brand because after all “Customer is king”.