Your UX is okay but, what about your “CX”?
This March, 2016, I wrote an article on Harvard Business Review Turkey about the strong relationship between User Experience (UX) and Customer Experience (CX). Finally, I had the chance to translate it to English.
“Lets think of a scenario. A customer looks up an e-commerce website to buy a pair of shoes. She seamlessly finds the style and color of the item she wants. She adds the item to her cart and makes the payment with one click. So far so good. What if, the package isn’t delivered on time? What if she cannot get enough customer support if she wants to track her package? What if she cannot get a substantial information from the customer representative? No matter how great a website or a product is, if a customer service falls short to meet her needs, that customer may not return to buy something else.
Let’s think of another scenario. This time, a customer wants to buy a smartphone in a retail store. She gathers some information about the product features, pricing and customer support teams. She feels convinced to buy a particular smartphone. So far so good. What if that customer has some issues with the use of the product? What if she cannot get used to the product that she was hoping to make her life easier? So one cannot guarantee that she will ever come back to that store only because she had a fulfilling experience in the retail store.
A customer experience (CX) without taking user experience (UX) into consideration falls short into satisfying the needs of a customer, or vice versa. A product that is designed without taking the customer experience out of the picture won’t be enough to retain the customer. For a substantial experience for the customer, UX and CX should be working together in order to meet customer expectations. It is very crucial to perceive the similarities and differences of both fields to operate together efficiently.
What is different in these two?
#1: The scope
UX covers the variety of applications in the scope of the “product” such as search functions on an e-commerce website and how it should work aligned with the ordering process or how payment function should work to provide a faster checkout. UX designers mostly deal with the interaction of the “user” and the “product” and “how” it should be done. Lead generation, abandonment rate, order completion rate are some variables that UX professionals measure their success in e-commerce. They also iterate products or services usability tests or collecting feedback from their customers.
CX, on the other hand, covers the applications of customer’s overall experience with your service, such as customer-product issues with the pre and post-purchase. It cares about to provide them with a personalized experience in order to attract and retain customers. CX professionals focused on improving the quality of the service and measure its performance by tracking customer satisfaction levels, likelihood to refer a friend and recurring orders.
#2: Tools and methods
UX professionals help improve products by conducting user research and collecting feedback from the users. They analyze user behaviors on a website and flow diagrams. They identify the main issues current experience by using the information collected from one-to-one interviews or surveys. They make an effort to provide user-product relationship as an engaging, simple and usable as possible.
CX professionals try to increase customer satisfaction by communicating them with phone or digital channels. They take their time to analyze customer recommendations and complaints in order to enrich the experience as a whole.
#3: Background and Area of Expertise
UX professionals usually have backgrounds in social or cognitive science (cognitive psychology, sociology, anthropology), design ( visual communication / graphic design, interaction design) or technology (engineering, computer science, human-computer interaction).
CX professionals usually have backgrounds in business, marketing, economics or social sciences. Unlikely to UX, their skills help them have ownership more in human and process management and organizational change management. That is why CX professionals are expected to have strong leadership and social skills usually that help them stand out in an organization.
There are many great examples out there. Amazon, with its customer-centric strategy, is worth mentioning how to integrate UX and CX into business practices. The company offers different scenarios to their customers and covers various potential issues that one can encounter in online shopping experience. They put a lot of effort into improving customer service teams and the teams are working so hard to meet the customer needs in the first place online and offline. Along with the personalized recommendations during shopping, Amazon offers an exclusive subscription service called “Prime” that gives another competitive edge in the market. Not to mention that it had already owned a strong strong brand equity by completely changing the shopping behavior of millions, more than a decade ago.
Uber, as the rising star of the mobile application in the last few years, gained success in delivering a seamless service by integrating UX strategy into its CX actions. It streamlined the payment process by cutting the middleman. It promised safer riding experience with the selected staff members. It offered something valuable that cab drivers could not offer: It showed people that everyone can have a private driver. The company truly embraced the strong relationship between UX and CX in its business and dedicated itself to provide the best experience to their customers.
As the demand for personalized experience rises, the usability of a product would never be enough on its own. Customer satisfaction and quality of the service should always be considered as the integral of the user experience. As much as their distinctive methodologies, UX and CX become much more successful when they work well together since they are the essential ingredients of a successful brand experience.”
