What makes your Brand Experience better? UX or CX?
As designers, we are so obsessed concentrating on personas and satiating users’ needs and demands that we seldom contemplate on -the uber need to concentrate on the BRAND we’re designing the product and experience for. The users frequently and conveniently overwhelm the entire process of designing experience. The consequence: we as designers often forget the differential line between users and customers.
While most designers influence the UX primarily, we also need to understand the larger context of CX towards building a strong and credible Brand Experience(BX).
So, what makes User Experience (UX) and Customer Experience (UX) two mutually dependent but independent wings of BX?
The relation: UX and CX
This Venn Diagrams simply explain how important UX is for CX. One stale fruit spoils every other fruit in the basket; it’s the same case here. Every element of customer experience contributes towards creating a better brand experience.
User Experience
User Experience (UX) relates to having a deep understanding of users, what they need, what they value, their abilities, and also their limitations.
UX also takes into account the profit of both the service providers as well as the users. UX mainly aims at constant improvisation of the quality of the user’s interaction with the digital interface and perceptions of your product and any related services.
Customer Experience
CX has a wider context;
CX is an umbrella term that envelopes all channels and products within the same brand, and how the user feels about them in whole. CX serves a typical goal to align the business strategies with the actual product being served to the customer and the overall experience encircling the brand.
Customer Experience is the product of an interaction between an organization and a customer over the duration of their relationship in terms of the digitally crafted experience solely for the organization.
UX is an inevitable part of the CX.
Customer vs User
A customer is a person performing the purchase transactions. He may or may use the product.
A user may or may not perform the transactions but definitely interacts with your service or a particular product if shopped.
Customers are a subset of your user population. This means that taking care of the UX equals taking care of both customers and non-customers users.
We are so focused on defining terms for the users and making their experience better that we neglect the importance of customers in the entire action cycle.
Below are how good or bad CX and UX contribute to BX.
1) Bad UX & Good CX = Good BX
Example: You bought a smartwatch or a wearable to keep a track of all your activities.
However, when you actually start using the device, you find the interface confusing and you can’t locate the feature you bought the device for and the user manual provides inadequate explanations (Bad UX)
Luckily, they have a helpline platform. You call or text them and a friendly customer service personnel quickly answers and explains you, step-by-step, how to access the feature you wanted. Everything seems clear to now. In addition, they give you a $15 credit for your trouble for the next purchase. (Good CX)
This is an efficient example of a Bad UX but a Good CX. The customer would have turned into a troubled user but thanks to the CX, UX was saved too!
2) Good UX & Bad CX = Bad BX
Example: You wish to book online airline tickets.
It’s easier apparently to download an airline’s app to browse and buy tickets even though you’ve never used an airline app before, the self-explanatory interface, clear navigation, and fast loading time allow you to find and book the perfect flight in under 10 minutes (Good UX)
Once you get to the airport, it’s a totally different story. The check-in booth is understaffed and the line is unnecessarily long. The attendants do not accept e-tickets and demand print versions only. Surplus, your baggage was mishandled and the flight wasn’t great too! (Bad CX) [reference source]
This gives a big turn-off to travel with the same airline later in adding our air miles, ultimately hampering the brand image.
BRAND EXPERIENCE (BX)
UX + CX = BX
The cumulative process of design from scratch to using it as a customer and its experience will be collectively called the Brand Experience.
Brand Experience (BX) is the widest scope of all. It looks at what the collective mass say about all of the experiences of your bike- price, maintenance, looks, etc.
The Need of CX for a Better BX
- Customers respond to good CX by being more willing to purchase, being less willing to do business with your competitors, and more willing to recommend you, which is critical in an era that focuses on brands.
- As digital platforms have developed more powerful, less expensive, and more widely available for business options, customers expect the business platforms not only to perform obvious computational and business tasks but also to feel lithe in operating their platforms
- Brands could hire top-notch CX developers to rethink the traditional reliance on methods that are more machine-oriented and to look at ways to support properties like ambiguity, creativity, and informal communication to expand and deepen their brand experience for the business on the digital platforms
- Business models while operating only online, it becomes quintessential to address customer’s pleasure with the online interaction
- Business researchers exploring the concepts of implementing CX in business languages and creating purposeful brand experiences for the customers surely help to surge the revenues
3 Easy UX Changes To Improve the CX
What better when the job is being done just tweaking some points here and there in your UX itself! That’s a lot of savings, right?
1. Valuable easy customer feedback
2. Respond to the feedback of customers
3. An easy confluence between multiple channels
To Wrap Up
And to answer the question, once again, loud and clear: Working on CX definitely helps to improve your BX than just merely working to improve your UX.
UX while majorly focuses on the users, CX focusing onto the users and the non-user customers makes it a valued experience design process.
The UX-CX-BX buzz word battle in short:
The CX covers the customer’s interactions with every facet of the brand, which naturally includes the digital product, whereas the UX is limited only to interactions with product entities. Widening the horizon never hurts bad!
UX is just one part of the greater CX landscape. Your BX is directly proportional to the integration/fusion of UX and CX. The tryst with a brand is designing a unique CX.
After all, no one serves crêpes better than Paris!
I hope this was useful!
Happy UXing! Cheers!
