CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Your brand is defined by how a customer experiences it at every point of their journey. It might have been enough to have a solid presence on social media or to blog, now it’s how a product performs and feels; how a brand talks to their audience; how the audience feels when they interact with you. Your brand is what your audience says it is, and that encompasses everything from social media to design, UX and UI.

Customer experience touch points are any ways by which a customer can interact with a brand, such as when purchasing or using a product or through seeing commercials featuring it. CX design focuses on creating an optimal experience for customers at all such touch points.

"Customer experience is more important than ever. In the digital world, reviews last a lifetime so you need to have positive interactions with your customers, every single step of the way."

CX designers often use a customer journey map to gain a comprehensive idea of a customer’s experience with the brand. The customer journey map tells the story of different customers’ touchpoints with a brand—as seen from the customers’ points of view. For each customer segment, the customer journey map shows a timeline detailing the customer’s interaction with the brand at various touchpoints, often also describing emotions, motivations, and context. A customer journey map can help identify gaps in the customer experience. As such, it is a good tool for placing customers’ experiences and needs at the center of an organization.

CX design and user experience (UX) design are sometimes used interchangeably, because both are concerned with the overall experience of using a product or service. UX design, however, tends to be more specifically focused on individual products or services, even though it is also concerned with the process of purchasing, using, and even maintaining a product. CX design tends to adopt a broader view than UX, and has a slightly more commercial focus. Consequently, CX design concentrates harder on areas such as advertisement campaigns, customer service, and consistency, while the concerns of UX design span various product lines. Regarding the design of interactive products, a solid appreciation for how the cultivated image of an organization such as Apple translates to the usability—and popularity—of its products will prove helpful in keeping a brand design firmly focused on the targeted users.

Customer experience is the sum of interactions  customers have with a business, both pre- and post-sale, the customer experience strategy defines the actionable plans in place to deliver a positive, meaningful experience across those interactions. A successful customer experience strategy should take into account a number of important factors, including, but not limited to:

Competitive insight
Consumer research
Marketplace data
Mission & vision

In defining your customer experience strategy, you want to ensure that you're including all departments, not just the folks in customer-facing roles. By incorporating feedback and insight across the company, you'll find it's easier to align the organization around the intended goal: improving the customer experience and relationship.

Reachability: What channels is your business active on? How are these channels being used?
Service convenience: Can customers self-serve? What types of channels are being used to provide service?
Purchase convenience: Is there friction in the purchase process?
Personalization: How well does your business meet/cater to individual customer needs?
Simplicity & ease of use: Are service/informational channels optimized for mobile? Is the customer journey bogged down or straightforward?
Channel flexibility: Is context about the customer being used and applied across all channels? Is there a history of behavior, transactions, and conversations across touch points available for each customer?