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In a business, product experience and customer experience are two terms that are often used interchangeably. However, they actually refer to two different things. Product experience is the way a customer feels when using a product or service. Customer experience, on the other hand, is the way a customer feels when interacting with a company, from the moment they first learn about the company until after they have made a purchase. So, which one is more important? The answer may surprise you.
Note: Want to stand out from your competitors? WatchThemLive assists you by offering features for creating a better product and customer experience.
What Is Customer Experience?
Customer experience (CX), is the totality of a customer’s perceptions and feelings about a brand or company. It includes everything from the first contact with a company, through the purchase process, to post-purchase follow-up. A positive customer experience leads to customer loyalty and repeats business, while a negative one can result in customers taking their business elsewhere.
To make it short: CX is the overall impression customers have of the company according to the interactions they have.
To improve the customer experience you can make use of behavioral analytics tools to have access to your customers’ interactions on your website. Our suggested tool is definitely WatchThemLive’s session replay, which can help you strengthen your CX by the information it offers. Watch this video to see how it works.
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What is product experience?
Product experience (PX) is a part of the entire user experience and is mainly concerned with the customer journey, which occurs within the product itself. Product experience refers to customer experiences while using the product including their emotions, thoughts and motives.
In other words, PX is the perception customers have of your product based on their experience and engagement with the product.
What is the Difference Between Customer Experience and Product Experience?
As we explained earlier, product experience is the way customers perceive products, in contrast, customer experience is the way customers perceive the company through the interactions with the company’s staff, website, marketing, etc. still, both terms should be working conspiring to succeed.
The success of the business is also related to customer service. For example, if a product has a great user interface and is easy to use, but the customer service appears weak, the overall experience will be negative. On the contrary, a company may not be that strong and provide average products, but with excellent customer service, people are more satisfied, and as a result, they are more likely to come back.
To reiterate the main points, product experience refers to the customer’s overall experience with the product from the beginning to the end, while customer experience is about the customer’s interactions with the brand and their satisfaction from the moment they become familiar with a company until the post-purchase stage.
Optimizing Product Experience Leads to Positive Customer Experience
The easiest way of delivering an outstanding customer experience is by offering an excellent product experience. It can benefit you by enabling the interaction between a customer and a service representative, and it results in customer satisfaction. Why? Because product experience can create channels for anticipating customers’ needs and personalizing the interactions and products. Gradually, customer satisfaction will result in having loyal customers and more revenue. Different factors can lead customers toward your products, including referrals, sales pitches, and word-of-mouth, but the most significant one is probably giving them first-handed experience with your products.
Why Does Customer Experience Matter?
Think of the joy of the time when you are satisfied with a new product or service you have recently bought; that is customer experience. Regardless of the positive or negative CX, the effect will always linger. The positive experience makes customers stay, and this, in the long run, is more effective than most marketing campaigns. Creating a customer experience that delights, engages, and makes customers come back is important for a company’s growth.
Related article: 24 Important Customer Experience Statistics No One Will Tell You
Why Does Product Experience Matter?
Intuitive and personalized customer product experience raises users’ expectations, while the increasing number of substitutional organizations has made it easier for customers to switch to other vendors. A good design and appropriate usability are not enough anymore, they need to be improved and adapted to the users’ needs. The crucial point here is to understand the way users drive value or where they encounter friction. We can measure the product experience through different objectives:
- Onboarding new users
- Driving product adoption
- Converting and retaining customers
- Fostering expansion and growth
- Planning and innovation
Which One Is More Important, Customer Experience or Product Experience?
It was believed that by 2020, customer experience would be more important than both the price and the product. However, it didn’t mean that companies should pay less attention to the quality of the products, instead, they should pay equal attention to both product quality and a perfect customer experience. Having a flashback to a few years ago, companies used to create a competitive advantage with lower prices and higher qualities, which is not enough for today’s improvement.
The way of improving your store is now in hands of your customers. Consider your customers and their needs and remember, there is no clear way for choosing a winner; the two are supposed to work together and are not separated.
Conclusion
As we have discussed earlier, customer experience and product experience, with all similarities, are different terms that work hand in hand and there is no good way to give more credit to one. They are used for the same purpose, which is customer satisfaction. But how can you ensure that your customers are receiving good customer service?
sign up for FREE on WatchThemLive and see how!
