Customer Experience vs User Experience (CX vs UX)

If a company has customer experience in place, and most companies do, the question is whether UX is a part of the CX research and understanding of the user’s experience in the entire customer journey.

This short video takes a look at what UX contributes to the CX understanding of customers in the customer journey. If you think of customer experience as a pie, for example, where is UX in the pie? Is it a piece of the pie, or is it perhaps not mixed into or baked into the ingredients of customer experience?

What is CX?

CX (Customer Experience) focuses on brand loyalty and likelihood to recommend.

If user experience is not baked into the ingredients of customer experience, is it because perhaps the assumption is that the CX research or the CX team already knows about UX?

Or because perhaps interaction designers have some UX background or because CX covers UX in a way that UX isn’t required.

I would challenge that assumption, if that’s the assumption that’s being made, because UX (User Experience) focuses on the literal experience of your users. It focuses on users engaged with your interface, engaged with your product, engaged with your company in a way that is live, real, in person, and in the moment.

What is UX?

UX (User Experience) focuses on the immediacy of user interaction with your product.

That sort of research is essential to understanding how your users feel about their experience in the whole picture. So if UX is not a part of CX because it’s either a given or it’s assumed to be there when perhaps it’s not, then it might be good to ask whether the addition of a UX person or even a UX team to contribute to the research of the whole customer journey would not provide insights into user experience that inform the total customer experience and that make your users more satisfied , more confident, and happier all around.