User Experience vs Customer Experience: Why the Balance is Required?

by Paresh Sagar Delivering Market Leading Digital Solutions

UX vs CX

A company’s web presence whether it is in the form of a mobile application or website is judged through important factors like User experience (UX) and Customer experience (CX). However, UX and CX are different and unique, they must work hand in hand to have success.

Customer experience is related to general experience with the company. Usually, it is related to users’ experience in Customer service, sales process, brand reputation, product delivery, and advertising.

Whereas, User experience deals with the users’ interaction with a website or an app. It can be measured in abandonment rate, open rate, and error rate and clicks to completion. If your app is hard to navigate or your product complex to understand, it has a poor user experience. UX includes the design of interface- its information architecture, comprehension, learnability, visual hierarchy, and usability.

UX designer is responsible for creating an alluring and engaging app or website user experience.

What if UX is Average but CX is Great?

As stated earlier if anyone of the parameter is out of the balance, the overall experience looks below average. To exemplify, let’s take one example where a company has made an app for hotels & flight bookings.

A user gets the app from the App store- installs it, sign in into it. But when it comes to finding the best hotel for his next trip he doesn’t get the expected result. The app has not provided good filters for pricing. So every-time the user finds a particular hotel in his preferred location, he gets myriads of results. He has to scroll down until he gets the right hotel in his budget.

This clearly explains a bad user experience.

Even more, when he books the hotel through payment gateways he finds the money has been deducted but he doesn't get the confirmation from the hotel. Which leads him to call the customer executive of that company.

Now he calls the support staff of the company. The representative on the call clearly explains why the transaction malfunctioned and instantly processes the payment back to the user’s account. This explains the good customer experience because through making only one call he got his money back without filling maddening and time-consuming forms.

Let’s take another scenario.

When UX is great but CX is unwelcoming

I remember an incident that happened to my friend.

He bought these Clothes from the reputed clothing company’s app. He loved the way the app allowed him to browse through different categories and add the item without hassle. Even he got a discount from the store. He loved ordering from the app. But when the actual delivery happened, he received a low-quality jeans pant.

When he went to a physical store to replace it, the response he got from the executives was so rude. He was told to mail about the received order. As in This was not enough, he had to call multiple executive and explain the story all over again to every once. After passing through the cumbersome procedure he got his money back.

Guess what he might have decided?

You guessed it right! He uninstalled the app and Insisted everyone not to buy from that brand.

So this was the other scenario where the company failed to provide seamless customer experience.

How to enhance Overall CX with experimenting UX?

UX is a subset of CX. That is to say, the overall user experience affects the customer experience as well.

Check out some techniques to improve CX.

Catchy Customer Feedback

Some websites bury their call to action button where most customers cannot easily find. Your customers have to scroll all the way down to find contact numbers or feedback form. Instead, you can place it at such place on your website where it gets their attention.

If you look from the UX standpoint, the feedback form will reveal insights for product suggestions and improvement. Most importantly, giving a reply to your customers’ problems reinforces trust among them.

Involve Customers Support Executives in Design process

UX designers should take the opinion of customer service or supply chain teams in building UX design. They know how their customers interact with them, What really interests them and what doesn’t. That way you will be able to fulfill the product promise.

Provide Multi-device Experience

Around 90% of users complete a single task on multiple devices. Hence, by applying this to CX by linking customer service or other relevant products/services at the correct placement. You save a lot time for your customers.

Conclusion:

User experience is a bedrock of good customer experience. UX and CX professionals have their share of skill set but by working side by side will yield smooth overall customer experience. It will facilitate your company to become a brand. Don’t think too much about app development cost with better UX. An engaging and seamless UX & CX will ultimately provide you higher RoI.

It’s a balance in both the aspects that is needed for successful business.

Do your business takes a complete customer-centric approach across all touchpoints. Or do you give more importance to one type of interaction over the other?