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Customer experience

Customer experience is the sum of all experiences a customer has with a supplier of goods and/or services, over the duration of their relationship with that supplier. (source: Wikipedia)

Digital experience systems: Expanding design systems to serve the full customer experience

The scope of design systems is getting larger and larger.

“​In this era of ever-evolving technology and innovation, organizations can no longer rely solely on a static dot-com to connect with customers. Increasingly, customer expectations are driving the need for an unprecedented mix of dynamic touch points, such as websites, customer portals, native mobile, wearables, chatbots, and voice interactions. Modern marketers need to manage these experiences intentionally and consistently to provide valuable brand interactions across the full customer experience. Further complicating the trend of multichannel experiences is a need within organizations to continually assess the impact and return on each customer touch point.”

Kristen Cromer ~ Adobe XD ideas

The Magic That Makes Customer Experiences Stick

Magic? It’s just thoughtful design.

“​Today’s customer journey is not just a matter of a few touch points as the consumer systematically narrows choices. Instead, most consumers take an iterative and expansive journey. They consider multiple perspectives, often through the use of social media. They interact with other people and other products and services. The journey between visiting a company’s website, say, and making an actual purchase is an emotional, cognitive, and motivational process. It’s the mix of those forces that creates feelings, memories, and stories about an organization, whether positive, negative, or ambivalent. It’s this variability that creates opportunities for companies to deliver memorable experiences. (…)”

Stefan Thomke a.k.a. /stefan-thomke-innovation ~ MIT Sloan Management Review courtesy of @2BFrank

A structural model for unity of experience: Connecting user experience, customer experience, and brand experience

“Understanding customer experience from a holistic perspective requires examination of user experience in the context of marketing and branding. This study attempts to underpin the effects of UX on brand equity by developing and verifying a conceptual framework that connects user experience (UX), customer experience (CX), and brand experience (BX). A structural equation modeling test using data from smartphone users verified the effects of UX on brand equity mediated by CX. In the UX dimension, usability had a strong effect on brand equity, and affect and user value had an effect on customer experience. As a mediator, customer experience had an impact on brand equity with a high path weight. By implementing UX strategies that cohere with management strategies, companies can establish a high level of consumer perception of customer experience and brand value. The results and analyses of this research can help businesses establish a strategy for examining which element of UX is related to CX and BX.”

Hye-jin Lee, Katie Kahyun Lee, and Junho Choi ~ Journal of Usability Studies

Scaling Agile is not the path to business agility

Many compelling insights into the turbulent world of enterprise work, focus and culture.

“(…) a new class of digital leadership is emerging to deliver the next era of transformation. The progressive C-level digital leader can navigate both IT architectures and end-to-end digital ecosystems. She co-creates compelling customer-centred visions, drives evolving strategies and plans, unlocks investments, delivers change at scale, and continuously improves operating effectiveness. Above all else, she keeps her focus squarely on the customer.”

Inês Almeida a.k.a. /inesalmeida | @Portuguesinha ~ APD Group courtesy of @rvdhr

What is Customer Journey Analytics?

Some people think something is real only when you can apply metrics to it.

“Customer journey analytics is the weaving together of every touchpoint that a customer interacts with, across multiple channels and over time. It connects millions of events into journeys from your customers’ point of view and is a data-driven approach to discovering, analyzing and influencing your customers’ journeys.”

Steve Offsey a.k.a. /steveoffsey | @MarketBuildr ~ Pointillist courtesy of @rvdhr

The CX Tower of Babel: What CX descriptions tell us about corporate CX initiatives

These towers seem to appear in every fast growing community, like UX, AI and content makreting.

“Despite the wave of CX initiatives launched by companies in recent years, my investigation indicates that the CX roles supporting these initiatives do not seem well matched to the activities required to design successful customer experiences. There are several ways to address this. First, companies building out a CX function must put more rigor into understanding the implications of designing CXs. A VOC program without qualitative research is incomplete. Analysis and synthesis are not learned on the job. Design is not simply generating a new idea as a response to a research insight. Second, companies must recruit candidates that fulfill those requirements or implement significant training programs to improve their CX profiles. Third, CX needs more formal education programs modeled after UX curriculums and emphasizing the basics of research, analysis, and design.”

Michael Thompson a.k.a. /michaelemmett3 ~ ACM Interactions Magazine XXV.3 courtesy of @riander

Are you ready for the next evolution of UX: the human experience?

Adding to our acrosoup: HX.

“The human experience trumps everything, and a product or service that’s designed with a contextual view of someone’s life will dominate the marketplace. For makers this means creating desired experiences through their products and services that users crave. But user experience always fits somewhere within the great context of one’s life. This is key. The human-centered design ethos is gaining momentum as context plays a greater role in the design of everyday things. So perhaps it’s time to expand the idea of what a product is to reflect that shift.”

Paul Campillo a.k.a. /paulcampillo | @paulcampillo ~ Typeform

How to map your customer’s journey

The persona of service design, nicely laid out.

“To identify the opportunities for growth along the customer lifecycle, it is first important to understand the customer’s experience engaging with the company and its product or service. A customer journey map is an illustration of exactly these experiences. The map can tell the full story covering the entire customer lifecycle from initial contact to activation, engagement, and beyond or focus on only a part of the story that lays out interactions or touchpoints critical to a subset of the customer’s experience.”

Kimmy Paluch a.k.a. /kimmy | @kimmypaluch ~ Branding Strategy Innsider

Customer Experience: Moving from moments-of-delight to moments-of-transformation

Some really deep thinking regarding human experiences, situated in the 21st century.

“Recently I read research reports on Customer Experience (CX) that I should have found unsettling but thanks to the journey of discovery I’ve been on during the last few months, which included slaying a rather pesky design hydra, I have embraced this as the start of exciting transformational things to come. “

Werner Puchert a.k.a. /wernerpuchert | @weenerdawg ~ Extraordinary Blog

Design-led firms win the business advantage (.pdf)

Preaching to the choir.

“Today’s digitally empowered customers expect seamless experiences that allow them to interact with brands how they want, when they want, and where they want. These expectations are constantly evolving as consumers are exposed to new experiences and technologies, and customer experience competition for customers’ attention is intensifying amid the continued proliferation of devices, displays, and interfaces. In this changing landscape of customer goals and choices, design becomes a key business advantage. A well-crafted experience — one based on deep customer understanding, effective visuals, and relevant interactions — can make the difference between a loyal, repeat customer and one who gives up and walks away unsatisfied. As one notable designer put it, “Design isn’t just about beauty; it’s about market relevance and meaningful results.”

A Forrester Consulting thought leadership paper commissioned by Adobe

Task Performance Indicator: A management metric for customer experience

Making CX measured. The power of numbers.

“It’s hard to quantify the customer experience. “Simpler and faster for users” is a tough sell when the value of our work doesn’t make sense to management. We have to prove we’re delivering real value—increased the success rate, or reduced time-on-task, for example—to get their attention. Management understands metrics that link with other organizational metrics, such as lost revenue, support calls, or repeat visits. So, we need to describe our environment with metrics of our own.”

Gerry McGovern a.k.a. /gerry-mcgovern | @gerrymcgovern ~ A List Apart

Human-centered CX: Uniting stakeholders across the enterprise

CX as an organizational dimension of performance.

“Customer experience is said to be a top business priority for most companies around the world. Many experts agree that investing in CX establishes a competitive advantage against companies that choose to solely prioritise the bottom line. While customer experience is a noble and important catalyst for business transformation, becoming truly customer-centric requires an introspective approach. This takes stepping back to define what customer experience really means from the customer’s perspective – what they truly value and also what’s primed, broken or missing to deliver next generation CX.”

Brian Solis /briansolis | @briansolis

When and how to create Customer Journey Maps

As said before. Customer journey maps, the personas of the 2010’s.

“Journey maps combine two powerful instruments – storytelling and visualization – in order to help teams understand and address customer needs. While maps take a wide variety of forms depending on context and business goals, certain elements are generally included, and there are underlying guidelines to follow that help them be the most successful.”

Kate Williamson a.k.a. @kateawilliamson ~ Nielsen Norman Group

Go holistic: Assess the maturity of your organization via the customer experience

Go holistic, go ecosystem and go outside-in. What a mind shift you get!

“The leap from UX to CX can be a huge mind shift for many organizations. This article spells out strategies and processes that provide a framework to assess the maturity of the CX within your own organization. (…) If your company’s CX maturity level is high, putting the customer first may be relatively simple. But if your company’s CX maturity level is low, becoming a CX-focused organization may be slow and cumbersome process. Either way, it is vital to ensure the customer is front and center in the organization’s strategic thinking. Employee training and well thought-out personas can facilitate this endeavor.”

Ger Joyce, Mindy Maxwell, Jay Brewer, Saurabh Dutta ~ User Experience Magazine 16.3

UX in Government: Why we need to stop calling it ‘Citizen Experience’

As long as the ‘C’ in the hashtag #CX refers to customer, citizen or community, there’s no improvement of clearity.

“Why not Community Experience? I know it puts less emphasis on an individual user than the word “Citizen” — but let’s admit it — citizen actually refers to someone who belongs in or to a context. See? The word citizen carries with it the idea of community any ways! And the communities our ‘customers’ (users, citizens) belong to, or feel excluded from, directly impacts how they experience our services in any case.”

Jamie Lee ~ Medium

Customer experience versus user experience: Why the difference matters

The delta creates the concepts.

“User experience is not the same as customer experience. While most designers directly influence the UX, they also need to understand the larger context of the CX. The customer experience represents every step of the journey from when users are running price comparisons, to when users try the product, to when users may resort to customer service if their needs aren’t met.”

Jerry Cao a.k.a. /thinkjerrycao | @jerrycao_uxpin ~ The Next Web courtesy of @nicooooooon

What’s the difference between an experience and a customer experience?

Broadening the scope of (marketing) definitions.

“So if you think your UX and CX are enough to surprise and delight your audience, you’re not quite right. It’s how you weave those features into the bigger story you’re trying to tell as a brand that really matters. That’s what experience is, and that’s what you should be striving for with your marketing this year.”

Ted Karczewski a.k.a. /tedhartkarczewski | @TeddyHK ~ ContentStandard