CX Glossary: A guide to Customer Experience terms
Our new CX glossary has everything you need to tackle customer experience.
Customer experience is a relatively new and constantly evolving idea. Over the past 10 years, it has grown into its own unique industry discipline. In many organizations, the task of coordinating and overseeing customer experiences has been given its own C-suite role. So, what is customer experience exactly?
The best place to start is with a firm understanding of the core concept of customer experience, or at least what it’s most widely considered to be. The exact definition varies between organizations and personal preferences. But although they differ on what the definition should include, there are a few widely accepted points that appear consistently. In our own words, we believe this is a short but complete definition:
“Customer experience is everything the customer perceives and remembers, in relation to an organization from which they purchase products and/or services.”
The terms used to describe CX are of course subject to change over time. The discipline lives, breathes, and grows along with its practitioners and, more importantly, the market. In our Customer Experience Glossary, we compiled definitions of the terms and ideas we believe are the most important to understanding the core concepts of CX, as well as terms related to the necessary market research.
As a testament to the ever-changing fields of market research and customer experience, we included our own contribution to the industry in this glossary; the Worth Index, or Worthix. Read on to see how Artificial Intelligence is changing the game for customer experience.
There’s 50+ more terms in the CX GLOSSARY — Download here
A sneak peak at our CX Glossary
There are over 50 terms in our CX glossary, but here is a small sample of what you could learn when you download it.
Customer Effort Score (CES)
Customer Effort Score (CES) is a single-item metric that measures how much effort a customer has to exert to get an issue resolved, a request fulfilled, a product purchased/returned or a question answered.
Customer Experience (CX)
Customer Experience is everything perceived, felt, and remembered by a customer, empathetically related to both their social reality and personal (or professional) needs before, during, and after a purchase. CX is comprised of perceptions of quality, social status, relationship, brand identification, and relative price.
Customer Journey
The path the customer takes, from the moment the need arises to beyond the moment it’s fulfilled. Your customer journey is designed so the company can manage the customer experience at all available opportunities of interaction.
Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
A simplistic survey metric used to assess whether a customer is satisfied or not. Defined as “the number of customers, or percentage of total customers, whose reported experience with a firm, its products, or its services (ratings) exceeds specified satisfaction goals.”
Net Promoter Score® (NPS)
A survey metric to measure customer word-of-mouth potential. Created by Fred Reicheld and Bain & Company, NPS asks customers how likely they are to recommend a company to a friend and then lumps them into one of three categories: promoters, passives, and detractors.
The Net Promoter System and Net Promoter Score are registered trademarks of Bain & Co. Inc., Fred Reichheld and Satmetrix Systems, Inc.
Voice of Customer
Any customer feedback captured through various channels that can be used to determine customer expectations, preferences, and aversions.
Ready to step up your CX game?
Your ability to provide truly great CX depends on two things; a company-wide grasp of CX and understanding what exactly makes CX great for your customers. By the time you’re through reading this CX Glossary, you’ll be well on your way to both.
