What is CX versus UX?

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22 May 2023

What is CX versus UX?

Although customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) are related, they’re different. This blog will discuss what CX and UX are, how they complement each other, and how you can use them for optimal brand optimisation.

What is customer experience?


CX is the journey customers go through when they purchase your product or service. It includes the entire process from beginning to end and considers the customer’s feedback, feelings and opinions of your brand throughout their experience.

CX is more than just feedback on a product or service, it includes the entire customer journey rather than one specific part. If you want your customers to speak positively about your brand, it's essential that you get every aspect of the journey as close to perfect as possible and use customer journey mapping to make constant improvements.

An example of CX


If customers receive a faulty product and wish to speak to a company representative about it, customer service’s response affects the customer experience. If the process is complicated with multiple touch points, the experience may be lengthy or frustrating.

If the product is excellent, but the buying process is complex, or the delivery is slow, the customer experience will be negatively affected. That means customers may not return or recommend you to others.

What is UX?


UX refers to customer interactions with your service or product useability. It relates to everything that touches the experience with the product or service and the quality of the interactions as a user.

To get UX right, you must meet your customers’ exact needs so that they can go through the UX with minimal effort, stress, or bother. To excel in UX, you need to go beyond giving customers what they think they want by offering more pleasure and fun, for instance.

According to Forbes, if you solve a problem for a user, they will likely pay for it and recommend it to others, thus helping with sales, reputation, and customer loyalty.

An example of UX


Imagine your company wants to design the perfect product to satisfy customer needs. The UX design should incorporate the process end to end, including the purchase itself, the utilisation of the product, and the branding.

How are CX and UX different?


CX is the entire customer journey and considers the overall brand experience. UX, on the other hand, is a component of the journey. In simple terms, CX focuses on the customer and UX on the end user (the individual using the service or product).

If an organisation decides to research and become a customer of ServiceNow, the customer who reviews, tests, and buys the product will likely be different from the end user at the same organisation—the former experiences CX and the end user, UX.

CX includes the entire customer experience and can focus on how customers feel about the organisation’s service, advertising, delivery, sales processes, and prices. UX refers to the product or service's usability and the customer's specific interactions with it.

How to measure the success of CX and UX


The performance of CX can be measured by looking at things such as customer churn or retention rate, using surveys to review net promotor score (NPS), customer satisfaction score (CSAT) and feedback. Such surveys can help identify trends in loyalty and satisfaction.

Gartner believes that organisations should be measuring more than the CSAT and NPS. They suggest using Customer Effort Score (CES) and Value Enhancement Score (VES) to measure customer 'Behaviour and intent' more accurately both during and after a customer has a service interaction.

UX metrics measure the success of the product or service and how individuals rate usability. Metrics can result from surveys that gauge the end user experiences of the product or service.

How CX and UX complement each other


UX can have a significant impact on customer experience. For example, if an end user is dissatisfied with a product or service, they may not have a good view of the overall company or brand. overall company or brand.

Similarly, if the CX is poor or unsatisfactory, the company marketing could be better, or the sales process could be more efficient. In this instance, the potential consumer may not even get to the sales process and interact with the product or service at all.

CX and UX must complement each other and work together so that the customer journey is streamlined and consistent. You can produce the best product in the market, but if the journey to get to the product is complicated or frustrating, no one will use the product.

You must focus on both CX and UX to ensure customers receive what they want and expect throughout the customer journey. At ServiceNow, we’re focused on the customer experience. Our Customer Service Management solution will help you with both CX and UX aspects, including process optimisation and task intelligence.

Find out more about how ServiceNow helps organisations improve customer experience.

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