The Difference between User Experience (UX) and Customer Experience (CX)

I’ve been asked ‘what’s the difference between Customer Experience (CX) and User Experience (UX)’ more than I can count.

But we don’t have to be frustrated by this question. I’m just happy when people ask.

That’s because there’s a bigger risk when we think that CX and UX are the same thing.

They are related, but they’re also very different. And both are highly relevant to helping companies compete in the experience economy.

Unfortunately ‘digital’ as a specialisation has not been kind when it comes to buzz words. When we talk about things that sound the same – like User Interface and User Interaction and User Experience – it’s easy to see why our specialisation is confusing to many people. Likewise, it’s no wonder customer experience and user experience are often intertwined.

In this post I share my perspective on how CX and UX fit together. These principles are not set in stone….rather they’re intended as a guide to help clarify these concepts and avoid confusion.

How to Define Customer Experience and User Experience

Customer Experience is an umbrella concept encompassing all channels and all products and how people feel and place value on experiences (broad or narrow) with a brand. It involves a broad concept of experience, where CX “encompasses the sum of all interactions between an organisation and a customer over the entire relationship”.¹

User Experience refers to a “person’s emotions and attitudes about using a particular product, system or service”.² The term became more widely used in the 90s but has origins that stem from the machine-age.

While User Experience can relate to physical products, it is most commonly aligned with computers and, even more recently, the development of interfaces that have emerged via websites, smartphones and mobile apps. As a result, User Experience is (in the majority) focused on digital experiences and is concerned with the question ‘how can the end user achieve their goals’. It’s worth taking a look at Peter Morville’s seven perspectives of user experience that can help explore and validate product design.

The practice of User Experience supports a brand to design digital journeys that solve the “right problem for the end consumer in an efficient and enjoyable manner.”³

Okay, But What Are The Practical Distinctions?

If we stick with the definitions only, we risk missing the distinctions between CX and UX. So here I’ve considered CX and UX across a variety of dimensions.

Now these are generalisations, so please don’t be upset with me if these are not 100% accurate. Generalisations are useful, but they do not always capture the full reality. I recommend a soft focus when we consider these to help us spot the larger differences between CX and UX:

Area	Customer Experience	User Experience
Channels	All	Digital
Interaction Points	Over the counter, in person, phone, digital, other	Primarily digital (focus on anywhere there is a screen)
Intention	Brand, all customer journeys, concept exploration and validation	Digital journey, feature and task orientation
Type	Broad Brush, with narrowing focus (to realise experience(s) across any channel)	Fine Grain (online, experience as a reflection of journey/task)
Example Activities	Service design, CX journey mapping, concept exploration and validation, service expectations, brand expectation	User research, user testing, digital journeys, information architecture, wireframes, screen flows, visual design, prototyping, interaction design

A Working Example….

While CX and UX can be pursued as seperate activities, better value is achieved when they’re used together.

Let’s consider an example.

Several years ago I worked with a team to design a new mobile app. We used CX to conduct high level data gathering about what might be important to people when using this future service, which interactions these customers performed frequently, how a new service could help them with these behaviours, whether they would use the new service when at home, the office or on the go. (For interest, Designing CX has some excellent resources for CX journey mapping.)

We also explored with customers whether they would place value in a mobile app and what features they would expect to see within an app. We used this information to develop some broad concepts of what the mobile app might do, and then explored through focus groups how these concepts could fit into peoples’ lives. I would consider all of this work to be Customer Experience.

When we shortlisted features for the app, we developed paper wireframes for the app’s main screens as well as some typical tasks we might expect users to do (like ‘register for an account’). We used these paper wireframes to run one-on-one user research sessions with customers, the input from which we used to refine our designs. From paper wireframes, we created an interactive prototype. Again we tested this with users, using the prototype to ask users to try a series of tasks. We asked users to score how ‘usable’ they found the prototype. We also used these results and insights to refine the prototype further. Eventually we did a final round of testing before launch of the app. I would consider all of these activities User Experience.

Both CX and UX worked together in this project. Without CX we would not have known whether a mobile app would be useful to customers and how it would naturally fit into and complement their lives. Without User Experience, we may have built an app that was not fit-for-purpose and didn’t help customers to perform tasks as simply as possible.

This example shows how both CX and UX are discreet activities but add value to one another when used in combination.

I found Digitalgov‘s article on the differences between CX and UX particularly useful. However, I would adapt their model to show CX and UX overlapping (as is shown under the ‘Bingo!’ heading). While both can operate together, both also have their own specific disciplines and practices, and thus can operate separately. I suggest showing UX as a smaller discipline, to reflect it’s narrower focus when compared to CX.

Exceptions That Challenge CX and UX Conventions

These guidelines are not fixed in stone. While the insights above are useful, it’s important to point out some exceptions and emerging issues.

Recently I’ve been thinking about three examples that provoke new thinking.

#1 ChatBots:
According to Business Insider, the global chatbot market is expected to reach $1.23 billion by 2025.⁴ ChatBot’s go well beyond simple screen design, relying on content and conversation to respond to customers. While ChatBots occur within a digital experience, the ways in which ChatBots engage with users departs from many of the conventions of user experience.

#2 Voice (eg. Google Home)
The emergence of voice-enabled computing and artificial intelligence, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, also challenge the concept of user experience. Customers understand these services because they are an extension of services we have come to know that are primarily digital. For example, ordering an Amazon product on Alexa is an extension of ordering an Amazon product on their eCommerce website. However, over time these services will create completely new interactions and services. These products blend digital and physical interactions and require a larger concept of experience. While the specific task we seek these products to perform on our behalf might be considered User Experience, the study of how we use voice-enabled devices in the home and how these change our perception of convenience, are really questions for Customer Experience.

#3 Digital, Data and Push services
Services that blend digital experiences, with rich data and proactive notifications, will also stretch our perceptions of UX and CX. User experience is often concerned with solving a customer pain point or increasing customer delight. Yet, many of these new services focus on small increases of convenience. For example, when Google Now prompts you to try a different restaurant from the one you’ve eaten at last week, this may uncover a problem the user didn’t know they had (eg. the need for more variety / something novel). Whereas people used to either ask friends for recommendations of restaurants or turn toward review aggregation sites to discover new restaurants, this interaction pattern blends these two worlds with Google’s understanding of the user’s previous behaviour (eg. in this interaction, Google is the trusted friend and review source). Though the interaction may be digital, the ways in which it challenges existing behaviour redefines the concept of ‘looking for a restaurant’ which challenges broader concepts of customer experience.

These three examples aren’t cause to throw out the models above, but they do point out some of the emerging trends to consider.

That’s a wrap! I would love to hear how you view CX and UX. You can share your thoughts using the comments area below :).

References: