What Is Customer Experience?

Really, what IS customer experience (or CX for short)? Most explanations refer to a customer interacting with a business and its services, and nothing about its use within the context of an IT organization.

For example, take a look at this formal definition of customer experience management from 2003:

A lot of people think that customer experience is the same as customer service. I will admit that they are similar, but they are really not the same. My boss, Sarah Lahav, wrote a blog about it where she explains that “customer experience is the interaction between the customer and the service…it doesn’t just reflect an outcome but also the emotional feelings a customer has towards the service.”

I think the boss lady is onto something. Customer experience definitely has two aspects: the physical, representing the achievement of a successful outcome in a timely manner, and the emotional, the ‘feeling’. I literally learned this on the job, just after completing a major upgrade of our support software, and I’ve explained it all in detail in this video blog that I invite you to watch:

What Is Customer Experience? from SysAid on Vimeo.

Have you also had similar experiences with your customers?

Stay-tuned for the next episode in my two-part video series: Uncovering and Managing the Customer Experience.