Customer Experience > ∑ User Experience

Customer Experience is much more than summation of all User Experiences across touchpoints

Background

To quote simplistic definitions, User experience (Ux) is concerned with research, design and development of a product; that could be digital interface or a physical form to be filled out or even an Apple watch. Customer experience (Cx) would be the experience customer has interacting with your brand entity across touch points. While Ux Consultant focuses on task completion, the Cx consultant worries about aligning strategic decisions with what customer feelings need to be evoked.

In some places, you may consider Ux as a subset of Cx (or even vice versa). Both Cx and Ux are represented, designed and communicated using Personas and Customer (or User) Journey Maps for primary or secondary audiences. There was a time (before 2010) when the terms were used interchangeably but not anymore.

The Problem

So in geek-speak, can we say for sure that for an individual person :-

 Cx = ∑Ux ? touchpoints (channels, products etc.)

In human language, this equation implies customer experience is simply the sum total of all user experiences of an individual with your company. I disagree! This esoteric and incorrect equation can cause problems in the real world. Suppose you are asked to  improve Cx for a client and you look only at his experience using primary customer channels individually, then there would be an issue. There are 3 important things missing from the analysis

• The cross channel experiences where customer should ideally be able to jump from one user journey into the middle of another user journey. An equivalent in product design would be the ecosystem around it, i.e. a great product with bad ecosystem would be deterrent to good customer experience.

The customer journeys are no longer linear as they used to be and can jump around within user journeys.

• The second bit it customer itself, i.e., "primary design persona". Various touchpoints may use different design personas so summing all their experiences do not make optimum sense anyway. As an example, suppose bank branch is designed for older people not comfortable with technology while bank app is designed for the mobile youth. If you force the older guy to use the app (migration strategy), he may ask his daughter's help i.e. change his user to "primary design persona" or still go to the branch. If branch is not the channel in "focus", his service levels will deteriorate and he will crib. The point being, when you jump cross channel in customer journey : you may not be the primary/secondary design persona for that interaction i.e., bad Cx.

The moment you move from land to the sea, your biggest user changes from an Elephant to a Whale!

• Lastly, Noise - since experience is defined and designed at a homogenous aggregate level (e.g. persona) and not at an Individual level :there is bound to be noise. In a truly adaptive AI learning based system, this noise can be minimized as system adapts to the individual user. Till that time technology becomes mature, the standard procedure will remain to identify customer and slot his experience into the predefined standardized bucket.

Solution: The Adaptive Customer Journey

I do not see this very far where an IBM "Watson-esqe" intelligence (e.g.an evolving genetic algorithm function) senses the customer and adapts the customer journey. This would be possible by using software and hardware created as components and interacting via standards (e.g. SOA) so that each may be pulled and applied as per need. Computing power would come from the futuristic quantum computers and the limitation would be the end user device!

There is more of such exciting stuff including a supporting architecture and probably I will file for IP rights. Am putting this out here for feedback and to understand if something similar exists. Brickbats welcome, bouquets excuse!