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Since when did usability equal customer experience?
Author: Bill Cusick
July 5, 2005
If you do a Google search for "customer experience," the listings that pop up are, to a great degree, firms that either provide off-the-shelf CRM software products, or web design firms that specialize in website usability.
My reaction to this is to ask the question: at what point did customer experience get distilled all the way down to software and Internet issues? At Vox, we define the customer experience as the entire cumulative effect of all customer exposures and interactions with a company over the life of the relationship.
In fact, the only way to truly impact customer retention, loyalty, cross sales, etc. is to identify and improve all of those communications your company has with a customer. That means rewriting customer letters, analyzing how a customer is received through a call center process, what front-line employees are empowered to do, and much more.
The website usability is, of course, an important component in the overall relationship, as is providing software solutions that help with content and information management. But if you’re not careful, you can make some dangerous assumptions about "magic bullets" that will shoot you in the foot.
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You make an excellent point. In my opinion the problem comes, at least in part, from the way phrases such as ‘Customer Experience’ become buzzwords and ultimately lose their meaning entirely.
Comment by david — July 7, 2005 @ 1:11 pm