How Do You Define Customer Experience?

I recently spoke at Columbia Business School’s “Designing Customer Experiences” program, exploring questions such as, “How do you define and design for customer experience? What are the challenges?” These questions may seem simple, but leaders know the answers are complex.

My definition of customer experience (CX): At a macro level, CX involves thinking expansively and holistically about your customer, considering their evolving expectations, needs and lifestyle as they interact with your brand across various touchpoints. I avoid the word “channel” — it’s too narrow. A touchpoint can be anything: a live chat, the shipping box, your product, store music, etc.

How to Design for CX

First, understand your customer and their expectations:

• Behaviors: They spend four hours to five hours a day on their phones, checking them around 155 times a day.
• Convenience: They want to communicate with your brand across all channels, shop wherever they prefer, and move seamlessly between online and in-store.
• Consistency: They expect your brand DNA to be recognizable, whether they’re shopping in a store in Japan or seeing your latest Instagram post.
• Customization: They want you to use their data to provide personalized recommendations and offers.
• Humanization: Amid automated texts, emails and calls, they crave a human experience and relationship with your brand.
• Alignment with values: They want clarity on what your brand stands for.
• Reliability: If they buy a raincoat from you, they expect it to be waterproof.

After immersing yourself in your customer’s world, you can begin crafting a CX strategy and designing touchpoints:

• Brand Experience: Every choice, from brand partnerships and color palettes to product categories and event activations, should reinforce your brand DNA and deepen your customer’s connection with you.
• Cross-Channel Shopping Experience: Across dot-com, wholesale and retail locations globally, create a unified, seamless experience that feels cohesive, like chapters in a story.
• Owned Channel Experience: From store layout and staff tone to products and shopping bags, every element should reinforce your brand.

Challenges in Delivering an Amazing CX

• Organizational Design: Break down silos, overcommunicate and align incentives.
• Empowering Teams: Enable your teams to make quick decisions that enhance CX.
• Prioritizing the Right Metrics: Focus on long-term metrics like customer lifetime value (CLTV), not just customer acquisition cost or other S-term metrics.
• Data Integration: Data only benefits CX if technology is integrated and teams communicate effectively. Invest in the right partners to build a connected ecosystem.
• Fostering Innovation and Creativity: From “surprise and delight” CX initiatives to leveraging artificial intelligence in unique ways, focus on improving the customer experience.