CX and UX: the magical duo that impacts overall experience of the customers

What is the difference and how to distinguish it

09/03/2024; 2 min to read;

User experience is often mistaken with customer experience. Simply said UX is part of CX. They both are important and fundamentally linked however represent different experience perspective.

How to distinguish CX and UX? Follow some basic rules.

Rule 1: Customer experience is something broader

CX represents experience with a brand in its holistic perspective. It covers perception of the brand, values and mission of the brand, marketing, offering, customer service, product/service delivery and distribution.

As I already  said in another post “Customer experience vs. Customer service: 3 key differences… every CX professional should know” customer experience is all the ways a customer interacts with a company and how they perceive those interaction.

This is reflecting also Forrester who has come up with the same simplest and very effective definition of customer experience.

Rule 2: UX is more focused or narrow

On the other hand, user experience is very often considered to be related to digital like mobile application and web site only… However UX is not limited to how you interact with apps on digital interfaces.

In the context of physical products, UX design focuses on creating a positive experience for users through every interaction they have with the product, from its appearance and packaging to its functionality and usability.

The main goal of the UX experience designer is to ensure that the product is easy and enjoyable for the user to use, above all.

Rule 3: Whose responsibility

UX is responsibility of designers and product managers while CX is responsibility of the whole company.

Companies delivering exceptional CX like Apple and Amazon have this customer centricity approach in their DNA. While you may have a product with very good usability (aka UX) but getting poor after sales experience by the company. You name an example.

User / product experience can make or break the customer journey and play a pivotal role in customer retention.

Both CX and UX are targeting to solve user problems. Just the perspective is different.

See some examples for better understanding

Example 1

Imagine you just bought new printing machine.

The way paper tray opens or closes respectively is UX. If it is easy to replace the toner - this is good UX.  However, once you need after sales support like technical service to clean up the paper feeders and need to arrange this service through a call to contact centre - then you have customer experience.

Example 2

Another example for service industries. Imagine you just become a customer of a bank using credit card. The plastic of the card is transparent and looks quite cool - this is UX. However if you need to go to the branch in order to increase credit limit as you need to sign some papers - it is customer experience.

Key takeaway: While you may “USE” one product and have experience with it, you may also have experience as a “CUSTOMER” relying on Contact centre support or monthly subscription process for example.

Key idea of this post

Though customer experience and user experience are two different concepts, I cannot stress enough the importance of them working together to contribute to a business’s success.  

CX and UX are two different entities that cannot succeed without the other and must work in unison to create a delightful  and memorable experience for a customer. So how do we ensure that we’re taking a helicopter view of the experience and not disparagement the UX at the cost of the CX or vice versa? The solution is: customer journey maps!

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