WHAT IS CX?
We intuitively know when an experience is very good or particularly bad and can think of examples from our own lives. However increasingly we hear the term CX thrown around when discussing such moments and often without further detail or explanation.
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As more and more successful companies extol the virtues of focusing on and investing in CX it has made its way into the mainstream consciousness.
But when people talk about practicing CX, what do they actually mean? What exactly is CX?
Defining CX
A customer's holistic perception of their experience with a brand.​
Customer experience (CX) refers to the aggregate of all impressions and interactions a customer has during their journey as a customer.
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It involves all decisions a company makes that directly or indirectly affect their customers and results in the feelings they have towards the brand.
Who practices CX?
Everyone is responsible for customer experience.
Each function has a critical role to play, and all systems must share accurate real-time data to support those roles. While customer-facing functions (marketing, sales, and customer service) get most of the attention, back-office roles and systems are also vital.
In order to become customer centric as an organization it is imperative the culture of thinking about the customer is lived and preached at all levels, from the novice sales agent to the grey-haired board member.
Precisely because everyone’s involvement is important, CX practitioners agree that the most important factor for the success of a CX program is C-level buy-in and support. It ensures the necessary attention is dedicated to CX across the organization.
Often the question comes up “Who owns CX?” within the organization, in an attempt to box it into one of the existing departments. Many of the most successful CEOs on the contrary pride themselves for taking charge of CX themselves, leading it within the organization and making it the number one priority – ie Jeff Bezos “Customer Obsession”.
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The overall trend in the industry is towards establishing cross-functional teams dedicated to CX and ideally helmed by a CXO (Chief Experience Officer). This puts it on par with other departments, such as finance, marketing or operations, giving it the necessary empowerment to drive change.
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What is practicing CX?
Employing a set of strategic practices that harmonize to meet (or exceed) customers’ expectations. This includes proactively listening to and measuring the customer experience through various activities (e.g., voice of customer programs) to assess pivotal moments and areas where customer challenges are faced.
Typically, these activities are carried out by a dedicated customer experience function that serves as a center of excellence. Ultimately, a strong CX function drives transformation. The cx function is responsible for establishing three pillars:
a. Monitoring and assessment of the experience in qualitative and quantitative ways
b. Continuous improvement by ensuring pain points are fixed, customers responded to and insights reported
c. Enhancing the experience by uncovering customer needs, identifying opportunities and trends and driving innovation
Exercises
Let's look at some typical exercises CX practitioners use to measure, gain insights on and make sense of the customer experience.
Voice of the Customer
The strategic capturing of customer sentiment about a business, product, or service. A VOC program gives insight into customer preferences, problems, and complaints. These programs identify and respond to customer feedback to improve satisfaction and loyalty.
Customer Interviews
Inviting customers to give more in-depth feedback during a 1:1 interview. Typically, this is done in person on the phone, and encourages a more open engagement and communication flow.
Mystery Shopping
A method for gauging the real-life customer experience using individuals recruited to portray actual customer interactions and experiences with a brand. Traditionally it uses quantitative techniques to access services, and more recently the emotional engagement is also considered as a key part of the experience.
Customer Surveys
Surveys can be sent to customers in a variety of forms, from a longer, in-depth survey to a quick CSAT score request. Surveys can be sent via email or SMS following engagement with your brand to collect feedback. Alternatively, ask customers to provide feedback immediately after an interaction
Customer Shadowing
Customer shadowing is used in place of mystery shopping, where real customers are shadowed during the provision of a service to assess their overall experience.
Journey Mapping
Customer journey mapping is a visual storyline of every engagement a customer has with a brand, from the moment of discovery to the fulfillment of a service and beyond. The creation of this journey map puts us directly in the mind of the customer, so we can see and understand their steps in the processes, their needs, and more importantly their perceptions.
CX, UX & UI
Customer experience (CX) is the combination of user experiences that people have with the brand. Brands have different channels and experiences within these channels that constitute user experience (UX), meaning there could be multiple UXs. Meanwhile, the interface with which customers interact is the user interface (UI).
Terminology
Now we've covered the basics of Customer Experience, but there is still an awful lot of jargon that might seem foreign to you. So here is a quick cheat sheet to the most important terms you will need to navigate to world of CX.
Behavioural Bias
Behavioural biases are irrational beliefs or behaviours that can unconsciously influence our decision-making process.
They are generally considered to be split into two subtypes – emotional biases and cognitive biases.
Churn Rate
The churn rate, also known as the rate of attrition or customer churn, is the rate at which customers stop doing business with an entity. For a company to expand, its growth rate (measured by the number of new customers in a certain period) must exceed its churn rate.
Customer-centricity
Customer-centricity is a business strategy that is based on putting your customer first and at the core of your business in order to provide a positive experience and build long-term relationships.
It is a practice that thinks of the customer with every decision and involves all parts of the business, from front- to back-of-house and bottom to top management.
CSAT
CSAT is short for customer satisfaction score. It’s a commonly used metric that acts as a key performance indicator for customer service and product quality in all kinds of businesses. While customer satisfaction as an idea is a general one, CSAT is a more defined metric that’s expressed as a percentage. 100% would be fantastic – 0% would be terrible.
CSAT is measured through customer feedback. This is gathered via one or more variations of this question:
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“How would you rate your overall satisfaction with the [goods/service] you received?”
Respondents use the following 1 to 5 scale:
1. Very unsatisfied
2. Unsatisfied
3. Neutral
4. Satisfied
5. Very satisfied
Definition borrowed from our friends at Qualtrics
CX
Customer Experience is everything perceived, felt, and remembered by a customer or user, empathetically related to both their social reality and personal (or professional) needs before, during, and after their purchase or interaction.
CX is comprised of perceptions of quality, social status, relationship, brand identification, and relative price.
Is that another definition of CX? Didn't we cover that above?
Well done for noticing. This is a more technical definition of the same idea.
Customer Feedback Loop
The customer feedback loop is the process of continually gathering insight from customers, acting on it to improve business processes and offerings and then measuring the impact.
It creates a continues cycle of improvement.
Emotional Bias
Emotional biases involve taking action based on our feelings rather than concrete facts, or letting our emotions affect our judgment.
Personas
Personas are a fictitious characters with specific qualities and characteristics that represent the types of customers who will use a product or service.
They are commonly used to facilitate the definition of ideal customers and target them.
CRM
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information.
CRM systems compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company's website, phone, email, live chat, marketing materials and social media. They allow businesses to learn more about their target audiences and how to best cater for their needs, thus retaining customers and driving sales growth.
The concepts, procedures, and rules that a corporation follows when communicating with its consumers are referred to as customer relationship management (CRM).
CES
Customer Effort Score (CES) is a single-item metric that measures how much effort a customer has to exert to get an issue resolved, a request fulfilled, a product purchased/ returned or a question answered.
It is also measured on a 5 point scale similar to CSAT.
Customer Journey Map
A visual aid charting the path the customer takes, from the moment the need arises to beyond the moment it’s fulfilled.
A map identifies stages, actions, and feelings experienced throughout the journey. It provides an overall understanding of customer pain points, efforts, inquiries, concerns, and other valuable insights on the customer experience.
Customer Survey
A questionnaire that companies use to poll customers and get organized feedback. When these surveys are developed internally, they risk being invalidated by preconceived, unconscious biases that originate from the company’s particular point of view. To avoid skewing survey data, it is almost always better to outsource the development and administration of surveys to a third party.
Machine Learning
Machine learning is a sub-field of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides systems the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. There is supervised and unsupervised machine learning. 

Supervised: Machine learning that utilizes training data which contains both example domain elements and their correct outputs. Usually this must be labeled by hand.
Unsupervised: Machine learning that utilizes training data which contains only example domain elements without the expected outputs. Examples include clustering data.
Cognitive Bias
Cognitive biases are errors in our thinking that arise while processing or interpreting the information that is available to us.
Archetypes
The customer archetype is a tool designed to give in-depth knowledge of consumer behavior, and the future interaction they could have with the a brand or product. This process makes it easier to meet customer expectations.
Archetypes serve to predict behavior, desires, and concerns. This information gives a competitive advantage, allowing companies to satisfy customers with tailored products and services.
NPS
NPS measures the loyalty of customers to a company. NPS scores are measured with a single-question survey and reported with a number from the range -100 to +100, a higher score is desirable.
It measures customer perception based on one simple question:
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How likely are you to recommend X to a friend or colleague?
Respondents give a rating between 0 (not at all likely) and 10 (extremely likely) and, depending on their response, customers fall into one of 3 categories to establish an NPS score:
Promoters respond with a score of 9 or 10 and are typically loyal and enthusiastic customers.
Passives respond with a score of 7 or 8. They are satisfied with your service but not happy enough to be considered promoters.
Detractors respond with a score of 0 to 6. These are unhappy customers who are unlikely to buy from you again, and may even discourage others from buying from you.
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It’s simple to calculate your final NPS score – just subtract the percentage of Detractors from the percentage of Promoters.
For example, if 10% of respondents are Detractors, 20% are Passives and 70% are Promoters, your NPS score would be 70-10 = 60.
Thank you Qualtrics for the lovely definition
Customer Life-time Value
CLV is a prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer. Methods for calculating this value vary in terms of accuracy and sophistication, but they all aim to quantify the value a loyal customer has to the business.
EX
Employee experience (EX) is a close cousin to CX that focuses on tracing how employees think and feel during every single touchpoint of their journey with a company.
It applies many of the same techniques as CX and involves every thing an employee does, learns, sees and feels. It ranges from interactions with superiors, colleagues, reports, suppliers and customers to executing jobs, using software and communicating.
Digital Transformation
Digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how you operate and deliver value to customers.