What is the Customer Experience?

The Customer Experience is the customer's internal and personal relationship with any direct or indirect contact with a company" ? Meyer and Schwager, Harvard Business Review.

Known also as CX, the Customer Experience has to be considered as the user experience through all the contact path with the company. A real journey for the customer, full of "touchpoints", interactions between the customer and the company, that have to tempt him going on with his path.

THE JOURNEY OF THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

The touchpoints belonging to the customer's journey start from the discovery of the product, the service or the brand, through the web, a suggestion coming from a friend or a store sign. In this step, the customer is already living an experience and compares it with his own needs and desires, that can be better understood during this first "touch". His journey can go on with the countless touchpoints related to the product/service evaluation phase, and the other ones related to purchase, use, support and return to interaction or abandonment.

Which is the experience offered to the customer in every touchpoint? How does he experience those moments? How does he judge them? Is the experience able to establish a relationship between customer and brand? These are the questions that every company should consider to offer a better Customer Experience, getting a satisfied customer, aware of the fact that he reached his own goals, and ? at the end ? able to give a value to that interaction.

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PYRAMID

Pleasant, useful and easy, these should be the feelings of each customer about the experience when he gets in touch with a company. The CX Pyramid can sum up this minimum but essential opinions and put them in order of interaction.

1.Success

For first, the CX has to meet the customer's needs (needs and desires). "Success" represents the functional dimension of the experience: "I reached my goal, I succeeded doing what I wanted to do".

2.Effort

The interaction with the company or the brand has to be easy. "Effort" represents how difficult is the action: "I had not a hard time reaching my goal, I succeeded easily". Consumers that consider easy the interaction with the brand are ? for 40% - less willing to abandon the brand.

3.Emotion

Finally, the journey ? during all its touchpoints ? has to be pleasant. "Emotion" is the sensitive dimension, the customer's degree of involvement: "It was nice, I feel good after this experience".

A positive Customer Experience has to meet all these requirements at the same time, during each step of the customer's journey. A mistake may jeopardize a good result, causing problems at the success of the company: that's why it's crucial designing and efficiently handling the journey of the Customer Erxperience, being aware of the needs of the customer, observing and listening to him.