UX vs CX: Understanding the difference between User Experience and Customer Experience

‘User Experience’ and ‘Customer Experience’- you would have often heard of these two terms but do you actually know what differentiates them? Both UX and CX play a crucial role in a business’ success but many people are still unclear about the two concepts and usually consider them the same. Even the professionals mix these things up at times, which leads to confusion among people. For this reason, we would be explaining the difference between UX and CX through this blog post so that you get an overview and have a clear understanding of both these terms.

UX vs CX: An Overview

Although CX and UX are similar concepts, they aren’t the same and shouldn’t be used interchangeably. User Experience or UX can be called a subset of CX that is associated with the usability of your website or mobile app. It involves elements users interact with and how their functionality makes a job easy for the users. Customer Experience or CX, on the other hand, surrounds end-to-end interactions between customers and the brand’s touchpoints and how they perceive those interactions. A positive CX encompasses everything that makes customers happy and satisfied, such as the quality of customer support, page load speed, etc.

Put simply, CX involves a broad range of things and UX is just a small part of it that contributes to the overall CX.

Importance of UX

A good UX allows users to navigate around your website or app effortlessly. The roadmap is designed in such a way that they can find the required information or complete the desired task easily. UX is of paramount importance for any digital product. No matter how beautifully it has been designed and how quality services you provide, if users find it challenging to navigate and cannot easily find what they are looking for, they might never land on your website or app again.

UI/UX designers, therefore, spend an ample amount of time designing interaction points that are intuitive, user-friendly, and easy to use. Also, users have shorter attention spans. Within a few seconds, they form a conclusion whether the application or website is worth their time or not. So, it is imperative to design experiences that are convenient for the users and make their journey smooth.

Importance of CX

Customer Experience, in general, relates to the overall experience of customers with a brand or business. It involves various interaction points customers use to communicate with a brand and focuses on enhancing their journey at each step. A positive customer experience leads to satisfied customers and increases customer loyalty- the primary purpose behind designing CX.

Read: How to build a great Loyalty App for your business?

CX is pivotal for any business as it determines whether the customers would be interested in purchasing from your brand again or not. Today, when customers have a multitude of options to choose from for their purchase, it is the CX that keeps them hooked to your brand. Offering a pleasant and positive customer experience not only helps boost sales and revenue but also keeps you ahead in the competitive race.

In fact, buyers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience, suggests a report. In another report, it was found out that 84% of companies uplifted their revenue and 92% witnessed an increase in customer loyalty after they worked on improving their customer experience.

Understanding UX and CX with an example

Joe wants to buy a pair of denim jeans online. He goes to a website, looks up for the jeans, adds them to the cart, makes the payment, and checks out comfortably. He is happy with this smooth process. He could easily find what he was looking for, the navigation options guided him in the right direction, and thus he could check out quickly. All these things indicate a good UX design.

But what if Joe had trouble with page load speed? What if Joe wanted to speak to a customer service representative for some questions but couldn’t easily locate the support options? What if he was unhappy because the site didn’t provide the social login facility? What if he wanted to place a return but didn’t know how to? These things don’t have anything to do with the website UX but are highly important from the CX perspective.

What do we draw from the above example? Joe was happy with the UX part but disappointed with the CX as the other interaction points made his overall experience with the website unpleasant. We hope this cleared your confusion around UX and CX.

Summing Up

In a nutshell, a good user experience sets the foundation for a good customer experience. UX isn’t always associated with customers specifically. The primary focus is on the product’s usability whereas CX is mainly connected with customers’ emotions. It addresses the multiple interactions that a user makes with your brand through different touchpoints.

So, do not confuse user experience with customer experience. It can happen that a customer doesn’t like your UX but is happy to receive a positive CX, vice-versa is also possible, just like we mentioned in the example of Joe.

We would suggest that you work equally on both these aspects and create a rich positive overall experience for your customers. Ultimately, everything comes down to how efficiently and effectively can users perform a task and what areas can be improved that are causing a turn-off for them. Remember, businesses that value and focus on providing great customer experiences tend to expand much faster than the ones that don’t.