What is Customer Experience?
‍Forget the definitions, don’t google it nor open any book. What is Customer Experience? Let’s take it in simple terms.

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‍Customer is anyone who gets benefits when interacting with your organization. Sometimes they are the ones who pay [like when you give yourself a new smartphone], sometimes they don’t pay but use it [like kids in schools], sometimes they collaborate [like when you upload and also watch videos on YouTube].

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‍Experience is pretty much everything you live — situations and events that you were/are directly involved in any way.

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So, Customer Experience is essentially everything that your customer experiences when interacting with your organization. Kind of obvious, right?!

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What should we include then?

• Digital channels [web, mobile, social media, etc.]? Yes
• ‍Customer Service [during- and post- purchase assistance, open channels for communication, etc.]? Yes
• The products and services themselves? Yes
• People in your organization who interact with your customers? Yes
• Retail stores? Yes.

… and more.

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However, it is quite common to find organizations in which there is a group/department apparently responsible for the Customer Experience, which is actually limited to one aspect of the experience, like the Digital Strategy, or Marketing, or Product/Service Development.

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Integrating all these aspects and developing a consistent Customer Experience in your organization is surely not a simple task, but its complexity does not make it unapproachable. It is possible, extremely valuable and likely a continuous effort.

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‍This pursuit will sparkle further questions, like:

• how the ‘below the line of customers’ visibility’ operations [e.g. Finance, HR] can enhance our Customers’ Experience?
• how leaders and non-leaders can contribute to it?
• how to merge Customer Experience and Corporate Social Responsability?

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The journey may seem long, unclear and scary. Useless worries and fears about uncertainties will not help.

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Focus on the task at hand and find something you can do today. If possible, get more people involved.