Importance of Customer Experience

Brands must provide a customer experience that meets or exceeds customer expectations. Brands that provide a poor customer experience will not survive. Providing excellent customer experience results in satisfied and loyal customers who will purchase again. These customers may also become?brand ambassadors?or advocates, recommending a brand's products and services to friends, associates, and colleagues. Many brands use customer experience as a competitive advantage, taking market share by providing a superior customer experience compared to competitors.

Customer Experience vs Customer Service

Customer experience and customer service are similar, related terms, but they are not interchangeable. Customer service is a facet of customer experience, but customer experience refers to a broader spectrum of the?customer journey.

Customer experience describes the emotions, judgments, and reactions a customer has throughout every step of the process -- from researching the product to making the purchase and even beyond, such as reviewing the product and service and potentially recommending it to others. Customer service, on the other hand, is limited to the interactions that a customer has with a business's employees -- often customer support representatives -- before and after a purchase. These interactions can occur through communication channels such as live chat, social media, phone calls, chatbots, and email. Customer service can focus on helping customers choose the right product and troubleshoot problems.

How customer experience works

Customer experience encompasses all of the touchpoints that customers have with a brand. Examples of touchpoints include opening a product's packaging, reading the instruction manual, speaking to?customer service, having the product repaired, and exchanging the product for a different model.

Customers experience feelings and emotions at each touchpoint, which causes them to form judgments. Feelings can range from joy to apathy to disappointment. Judgments can range from positive, such as viewing the company as helpful when a customer is efficiently assisted, to negative, such as seeing the company as incompetent when dealing with slow and frustrating customer service. The emotions and judgments can vary wildly from one touchpoint to the next.

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