Customer Experience VS. User Experience from a mobile app perspective

Imagine the frustration of downloading a mobile app to discover that the software either doesn’t deliver what it promised, or that the customer service department offers no refund and little explanation for the disappointment.

This represents a failure in both the User Experience (UX) and Customer Experience (CX), two terms finding increased use across mobile app development. Despite being incorporated across the wider design world for nearly 70 years, there’s still much talk about both UX and CX, and how they are neither mutually inclusive or exclusive from each other. Graphically, you’ll see this represented as a small circle within a larger circle, illustrating that while UX is a broader aspect of the total CX, the CX often contains elements beyond what is included in the direct interaction with an app.

To highlight the importance of both, research from eConsultancy suggests that almost 75 per cent of companies not currently testing for UX will be doing so in the coming year, while Forrester indicates that a 10 per cent point improvement across a company’s customer experience can result in a revenue increase of $1 billion. Let’s break down both terms and see how they can affect the customer and a business in relation to mobile apps.