CX vs UX: A detailed Contrast Between Them.
The concept of user experience (UX) has been around since the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it didn’t really start to enter popular use until the late 2000s and early 2010s. User experience designers are in charge of making sure that your website or app makes you, the user, feel as comfortable and happy as possible.
In recent years, this role has expanded to include customer experience (CX) as well — a change that has brought about some confusion between the two roles, which are actually quite different from one another.
As you grow as a company, your customers become increasingly more important to you and your business’s success and viability. In order to keep them coming back time and time again, you need to make sure that your product or service has excellent user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX).
This guide will help you understand what the two are, how they’re different from one another, how they’re linked, and how you can apply both CX and UX in your business model to create optimal customer satisfaction.
What is Customer Experience (CX)?
The customer experience (Cx) is the way in which a customer feels during every step of their interaction with a company. For example, when customers call up and navigate through the menu, they may feel frustrated or confused. This would result in lower scores on things like surveys, reviews, or instant messaging.
When someone visits a physical store, they may find it cluttered and outdated. This too would affect their Cx rating by making them feel uncomfortable and less excited about what they’re buying. But this doesn’t mean that Cx and UX are at odds! In fact, many people have come together to say that one without the other isn’t as effective.
There are three major steps to creating an effective UX strategy.
- First, you must identify your key personas — those are people who match the demographics of your intended audience.
- Next, figure out their goals and how you can help make those happen by providing solutions tailored specifically for them.
- Finally, think about solutions that fulfill those goals by considering budget constraints and any necessary implementation time frames.
Your next step may involve setting up a usability test session with one person at a time so you can see firsthand what types of things confuse or frustrate them while using your product or service before it’s released to the market.
A good user experience will only be enhanced if it’s paired with an excellent customer experience.
- Andrew Keenan -Jones, Chief Executive Officer at Readify says, A great user experience is critical for success but won’t make up for shortcomings elsewhere in the business model. Many companies that lack adequate customer support still maintain a decent UX because customers aren’t interacting directly with those departments. As you build your own strategy, you should focus on building up customer support before developing your design so you don’t end up disappointing your users.
Another point worth mentioning is how marketing and sales can help increase customer engagement. Inviting feedback from satisfied customers makes them more likely to recommend the product to friends. Developing strategies around sharing valuable content also keeps audiences coming back for more information while simultaneously increasing brand loyalty.
What is User Experience (UX)?
User experience (UX) is all about how the company, service, product, or space makes you feel when you use it. That means how easy the interface is to navigate, how well the design matches your personal taste, and more.
User experience professionals should be empathetic and knowledgeable of best practices in this field. It’s their responsibility to take a project from inception to completion while focusing on meeting customer needs as well as achieving business goals. User experience is defined as a person’s interaction with a company’s services, usually consisting of the user’s emotional responses and behaviors.
If people find the experience pleasurable, their emotional state will most likely be good, which will give them a feeling of satisfaction. And it is known that satisfied customers are more likely to repeat purchases from your business in the future. So it’s not enough for you to focus only on satisfying current customers — after all, that may have already been achieved simply by selling them goods or services.
You also need to think about potential consumers who haven’t had any contact with your organization yet in order for you to make sure that they know about what your company has to offer them. In other words, you can’t just focus on those that are already familiar with your brand; instead, you must market to those who might potentially become a customer at some point in the future.
The reason being is that it takes much more time and money than ever before to acquire new clients due to competitive markets out there.
Similarities and Dissimilarities between CX and UX
Both UX and CX focus on improving your customer’s experience with your product or service. There are several similarities between the two which have been covered by some research. However, you should also look into their differences in order to maximize the return on your customer experience investment. They will be happy they did!
The points of Similarities between Cx and UX are:
- Both UX and CX provide a strategy for designing products based on human needs.
- Both UX and CX create products that are less likely to break down due to usability problems (i.e., making sure the buttons don’t stick).
- Both UX and CX create products that produce higher levels of customer satisfaction because they work as expected (i.e., it doesn’t take long to figure out how to use).
- Both UX and CX create systems that are easy to learn (i.e., can figure out how it works without reading instructions)
- Both UX and CX produce systems with consistent user interfaces that make tasks easier for users
- UX design does not always include emotion, but many people believe this is an important part of both UX and CX.
- Both UX and CX put customers first by empowering them to do what they want.
- Many organizations consider themselves experts in either one or the other, while others view them as similar fields with different focuses.
Some points of Dissimilarities between CX and UX are:
- One difference between the two is that UX deals with usability while CX involves relationship management. A well-designed system may have both good UX and good CX, but depending on the industry, one may be more appropriate than another.
One example is websites where it’s crucial to convert visitors into customers. In these cases, having high conversion rates would require excellent UX in addition to successful marketing campaigns; whereas sites, where visitors come only for content, could benefit from improved site navigation and aesthetics at the expense of time spent optimizing conversion rates.
2. Another difference between these two concepts involves who within an organization owns each function. While UX teams usually report to top executives, CX teams usually report directly to the Chief Executive Officer. Within many companies, there are often no formalized processes for either department so it’s important for executives to understand their goals and objectives before determining who should own these responsibilities.
3. The third difference between UX and CX is that designers typically rely on qualitative methods such as interviews or observations when researching user behavior; however, quantitative methods such as surveys are commonly used in studying customer satisfaction with business operations.
While both departments focus on maximizing customer satisfaction, each department has its own unique strengths.
When Should You Do Each?
UX is the process of user-centered design, where you work with your team to build out an idea and iterate on it. As UX designers, we research the users we want to target for our product, learn about their behaviors and needs, and iterate on our design based on that.
CX is customer experience management or customer-centric experience design — which comes into play when you’re designing a product from scratch or something that already exists, but that was not designed from a consumer’s perspective. CX usually focuses on discovering who your customers are and understanding what they need or want from your company in order to have an excellent experience with them.
So when should you use one instead of the other? It depends! If you’re looking to create a new product, then CX would be the way to go as this will help you understand how consumers feel about various products and services. If you’re looking for ways to improve an existing project, then focus more on UX.
Conclusion
With so many industries trying desperately to stand out among their competition, companies spend millions of dollars each year trying to create an awesome brand image through advertising campaigns. But having one isn’t always enough! In fact, 77% of marketers say they’re using video content marketing to grow their brands because video ads produce three times better results than text-based ads according to recent studies conducted by Google.
The key takeaway here? It’s important to understand the difference between these two fields if you want to increase customer loyalty and engagement. Both CX and UX require an understanding of human behavior and psychology, but CX focuses primarily on process whereas UX focuses more on interfaces. The main goal of CX is to optimize a company’s process for efficiency and scalability. Meanwhile, UX deals with the specifics — such as designing software — to meet end-user needs.
The concept of user experience (UX) has been around since the late 1980s and early 1990s, but it didn’t really start to enter popular use until the late 2000s and early 2010s. User experience designers are in charge of making sure that your website or app makes you, the user, feel as comfortable and happy as possible.
In recent years, this role has expanded to include customer experience (CX) as well — a change that has brought about some confusion between the two roles, which are actually quite different from one another.
As you grow as a company, your customers become increasingly more important to you and your business’s success and viability. In order to keep them coming back time and time again, you need to make sure that your product or service has excellent user experience (UX) and customer experience (CX).
This guide will help you understand what the two are, how they’re different from one another, how they’re linked, and how you can apply both CX and UX in your business model to create optimal customer satisfaction.
What is Customer Experience (CX)?
The customer experience (Cx) is the way in which a customer feels during every step of their interaction with a company. For example, when customers call up and navigate through the menu, they may feel frustrated or confused. This would result in lower scores on things like surveys, reviews, or instant messaging.
When someone visits a physical store, they may find it cluttered and outdated. This too would affect their Cx rating by making them feel uncomfortable and less excited about what they’re buying. But this doesn’t mean that Cx and UX are at odds! In fact, many people have come together to say that one without the other isn’t as effective.
There are three major steps to creating an effective UX strategy.
- First, you must identify your key personas — those are people who match the demographics of your intended audience.
- Next, figure out their goals and how you can help make those happen by providing solutions tailored specifically for them.
- Finally, think about solutions that fulfill those goals by considering budget constraints and any necessary implementation time frames.
Your next step may involve setting up a usability test session with one person at a time so you can see firsthand what types of things confuse or frustrate them while using your product or service before it’s released to the market.
A good user experience will only be enhanced if it’s paired with an excellent customer experience.
- Andrew Keenan -Jones, Chief Executive Officer at Readify says, A great user experience is critical for success but won’t make up for shortcomings elsewhere in the business model. Many companies that lack adequate customer support still maintain a decent UX because customers aren’t interacting directly with those departments. As you build your own strategy, you should focus on building up customer support before developing your design so you don’t end up disappointing your users.
Another point worth mentioning is how marketing and sales can help increase customer engagement. Inviting feedback from satisfied customers makes them more likely to recommend the product to friends. Developing strategies around sharing valuable content also keeps audiences coming back for more information while simultaneously increasing brand loyalty.
What is User Experience (UX)?
User experience (UX) is all about how the company, service, product, or space makes you feel when you use it. That means how easy the interface is to navigate, how well the design matches your personal taste, and more.
User experience professionals should be empathetic and knowledgeable of best practices in this field. It’s their responsibility to take a project from inception to completion while focusing on meeting customer needs as well as achieving business goals. User experience is defined as a person’s interaction with a company’s services, usually consisting of the user’s emotional responses and behaviors.
If people find the experience pleasurable, their emotional state will most likely be good, which will give them a feeling of satisfaction. And it is known that satisfied customers are more likely to repeat purchases from your business in the future. So it’s not enough for you to focus only on satisfying current customers — after all, that may have already been achieved simply by selling them goods or services.
You also need to think about potential consumers who haven’t had any contact with your organization yet in order for you to make sure that they know about what your company has to offer them. In other words, you can’t just focus on those that are already familiar with your brand; instead, you must market to those who might potentially become a customer at some point in the future.
The reason being is that it takes much more time and money than ever before to acquire new clients due to competitive markets out there.
Similarities and Dissimilarities between CX and UX
Both UX and CX focus on improving your customer’s experience with your product or service. There are several similarities between the two which have been covered by some research. However, you should also look into their differences in order to maximize the return on your customer experience investment. They will be happy they did!
The points of Similarities between Cx and UX are:
- Both UX and CX provide a strategy for designing products based on human needs.
- Both UX and CX create products that are less likely to break down due to usability problems (i.e., making sure the buttons don’t stick).
- Both UX and CX create products that produce higher levels of customer satisfaction because they work as expected (i.e., it doesn’t take long to figure out how to use).
- Both UX and CX create systems that are easy to learn (i.e., can figure out how it works without reading instructions)
- Both UX and CX produce systems with consistent user interfaces that make tasks easier for users
- UX design does not always include emotion, but many people believe this is an important part of both UX and CX.
- Both UX and CX put customers first by empowering them to do what they want.
- Many organizations consider themselves experts in either one or the other, while others view them as similar fields with different focuses.
Some points of Dissimilarities between CX and UX are:
- One difference between the two is that UX deals with usability while CX involves relationship management. A well-designed system may have both good UX and good CX, but depending on the industry, one may be more appropriate than another.
One example is websites where it’s crucial to convert visitors into customers. In these cases, having high conversion rates would require excellent UX in addition to successful marketing campaigns; whereas sites, where visitors come only for content, could benefit from improved site navigation and aesthetics at the expense of time spent optimizing conversion rates.
2. Another difference between these two concepts involves who within an organization owns each function. While UX teams usually report to top executives, CX teams usually report directly to the Chief Executive Officer. Within many companies, there are often no formalized processes for either department so it’s important for executives to understand their goals and objectives before determining who should own these responsibilities.
3. The third difference between UX and CX is that designers typically rely on qualitative methods such as interviews or observations when researching user behavior; however, quantitative methods such as surveys are commonly used in studying customer satisfaction with business operations.
While both departments focus on maximizing customer satisfaction, each department has its own unique strengths.
When Should You Do Each?
UX is the process of user-centered design, where you work with your team to build out an idea and iterate on it. As UX designers, we research the users we want to target for our product, learn about their behaviors and needs, and iterate on our design based on that.
CX is customer experience management or customer-centric experience design — which comes into play when you’re designing a product from scratch or something that already exists, but that was not designed from a consumer’s perspective. CX usually focuses on discovering who your customers are and understanding what they need or want from your company in order to have an excellent experience with them.
So when should you use one instead of the other? It depends! If you’re looking to create a new product, then CX would be the way to go as this will help you understand how consumers feel about various products and services. If you’re looking for ways to improve an existing project, then focus more on UX.
Conclusion
With so many industries trying desperately to stand out among their competition, companies spend millions of dollars each year trying to create an awesome brand image through advertising campaigns. But having one isn’t always enough! In fact, 77% of marketers say they’re using video content marketing to grow their brands because video ads produce three times better results than text-based ads according to recent studies conducted by Google.
The key takeaway here? It’s important to understand the difference between these two fields if you want to increase customer loyalty and engagement. Both CX and UX require an understanding of human behavior and psychology, but CX focuses primarily on process whereas UX focuses more on interfaces. The main goal of CX is to optimize a company’s process for efficiency and scalability. Meanwhile, UX deals with the specifics — such as designing software — to meet end-user needs.
