What’s your definition of Customer Experience?

Depending on your definition delivering to Customer Experience will be completely different.

Let’s look at two possible definitions:

A. “Customer experience is the organizational practice of co-creating valuable outcomes with the customer driving valuable outcomes to the business.” —Wim Rampen and Jannecke Drangert-Hveding and Helge Tenno

B. “the customer’s perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier’s employees, systems, channels or products.” — Gartner

Definition [A.] suggests that Customer Experience is only achieved by organizational changes (e.g. ways-of-working, capabilities, sense making, measurements and incentives etc.). Meaning we can only become better at partnering and serving our customers if we truly design the fabric of our organization to do so .. our goal is to create the connection between and the delivery of meaningful valuable outcomes to both.

The second definition [B.] suggests that Customer Experience is what the customer feels post any or all experiences with us. This is a lighter touch brand focused definition that sees the goal of our interactions as to influence peoples feelings. This definition limits and silos the impact and influence of Customer Experience on the organization.

The difference is that [A.] wants to partner and serve the customer. It designs and holds the entire organization accountable for a clear-line-of-sight between the organizations internal efforts and its ability to produce meaningful valuable outcomes to the customer and the business. While [B.] sees its responsibility towards the customer as veneer, limits the accountability of the customer to a silo and stops short of being accountable for the feelings it aims to create to lead to anything valuable.