Many want to draw strict boundaries around customer experience and customer success, but I find it much more satisfying to live inside the spectrum rather than at the edges. Treat the customer well. If you’re doing it right, you’re delivering a great experience that helps them successfully use your product or service
What is Customer Experience?
Customer experience (CX) considers the customer from the very beginning, even before the customer knows they’ve entered a particular “journey.”
- It focuses on creating an abundance of positive experiences to enhance the customer’s relationship with the brand or product.
- A positive customer experience might not necessarily result in a sale in a particular moment, but by creating and delivering a great experience, the company positions the customer to be more likely to purchase in the future.
Deliver great outcomes for your customers
Don’t get caught up in trying to determine which discipline is more important or which group does exactly which tasks
What is Customer Success?
Customer success (CS) works to understand how the customer engages with the product post-sale and identifies ways to optimize that engagement
- There are many different paths in customer success
- Onboarding
- Escalations
- Renewals
- For products with a fixed but renewable relationship
Differences between customer success and customer experience
Location in the customer journey
- Customer experience starts before the customer is aware they are in the buying journey, while customer success focuses on the post-sale time frame
- Team goals
- Experience strives to build an overall positive relationship and experience with the customer, while success strives to help the customer get the most out of a specific product or service
