Forbes describes the customer experience as:
the "cumulative impact of multiple touchpoints" over the course of a customer's interaction with an organization.This is close enough to what we, as customers, want to experience. However in most cases we interact with the product of the organisation, not with the organisation itself.
There are a few other definitions of customer experience.
For example, according to Forrester Research, the six disciplines for great customer experience are strategy, customer understanding, design, measurement, governance and culture.
When I read this, the only question I have is why do I as a customer need to care about the organisation's strategy, when I am purchasing their product online?
To give you an example. Imagine, you care about the organisation strategy, you see that they understand you as a customer, they measure your response and appreciate the feedback, and the culture seems to be exactly as you feel it. But in order to engage and purchase the product online, you encounter barriers, errors, horrific user interface, slowly loading website, etc.
Customer experience is great, Digital experience is terrible.
On the flip side: You are considering an online product, you have engaged with it and successfully use it. There were no barriers for engagement. Yay, You are the customer! Do you care about culture, strategy and feedback at that point? Let me guess, that you don't.
Great product, it works fine, until one day you faced an little issue. You submit a help request. Customer support is nowhere to be seen. No way to connect with the organisation. Support information is misleading, no one is getting back to you.
Digital experience was great. The Customer experience was horrific.
This little example made me think of what customers really care about. The issue I mentioned above is a real life example and still not resolved until now. I am still using the product and when I evaluated why I am still loyal to this product and company, I could see only 3 factors:
- It is very easy to engage and use this product (digital experience at its best)
- It has the digital features which I can't find anywhere else (great digital experience again)
- To engage with another provider will be a mega-pain I don't want to go through (negative digital experience I don't want to have)
As I study more about DX, CX and all forms and shapes of it (DCX) , I can agree that there are a lot of interdependencies and both subjects are very closely linked.
The one thing that comes up more prominently (specially during these days when our interaction is mostly digital), that your product (or service) digital experience (not company) will eventually become the breaking point in winning the competition.
Would you like to learn more about DX - Read more here
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Endo-Exo provides event marketing and operations consultancy, including creating event digital experiences. Contact Elina Jutelyte for more info elina.jutelyte@endo-exo.net