The customer experience (CX), user experience (UX), and user interface (UI). These three words are often used today among copywriters, markets, designers, and executives. However, more often than not, they are being used interchangeably. This is a huge mistake as each of these words mean completely different things.
As business and technology evolves, the list of terminology and jargon will only ever increase. It is imperative that we make a clear distinction in what each term means as more and more new terms begin to sound similar to older ones.
Customer experience (CX)
This is a term used to define all interactions that a customer has with a brand. It is how customers perceive their interaction with a company. Delivering a great customer experience means exceeding all expectations in all interactions between customer and company. By all, we mean every touchpoint, every relationship, every engagement, etc.
Customer experience is important because it determines whether your organisation succeeds or fails. In order to deliver excellent CX, a business must layout solid plans along the entire customer journey.
User experience (UX)
UX puts more focus on optimising a product or service for enjoyable use. Unlike CX, which focuses on the customer’s entire experience, UX places emphasis on the satisfaction gained with the product or service.
An industry definition of UX is as follows: “User experience focuses on enhancing the user’s satisfaction with a product or service by improving the accessibility, usability and overall pleasure of using that product or service.” Basically, UX is all about making it easier and more convenient for the customer to accomplish what they are trying to do.
User interface (UI)
Many tend to confuse UI and UX the most, but it is understandable why. UI and UX goes hand-in-hand. The User interface refers to the optimisation of a product’s interface look and function. Unlike UX, which can relate to both physical and digital products, user interface lives strictly in digital.
Another way to look at it is that UI is the process of visually guiding a user through a product’s interface. With the user interface, you’re dealing with how people see things. In other words, good UI but bad UX means that a product is nice to look at, but hard to use. Conversely, bad UI and good UX means that the product looks horrible, but it is easy and convenient to use.
Conclusion
The user experience and user interface falls under the giant umbrella that is customer experience. However, all three are just as important to the customer. Excellent customer experience can only come about by succeeding at all three.
