Customer Experience Vs. Usability

I spend a considerable amount of time researching the topic of Customer Experience. After just a little bit of time, it becomes clear that the area is confusing and a bit amoebic in nature.

So, I thought it might pay to spend some time distinguishing between two terms that seem to get intermingled:

Customer Experience vs. Usability

Customer Experience = Value + Customer Service + Usability + Emotional Engagement

By this equation, I mean that the Customer Experience is the aggregation of the value a customer perceives, the interaction with the brand and how the brand makes them feel emotionally. Different brands leverage this equation in very different ways...which is exactly how it should work. Each individual company needs to look at the overall equation and determine how to apply their strategic formula - recognizing that the formula can vary across customers.

Conversely, Usability refers to how easy it is for a customer to interact with the brand. Recently, this word has been most applied to the usability of a web application or internet interface. However, it should be used to describe the accessibility and usability of the customer interface, regardless if it is web, call center, store, mail or telephone based. Customers have needs and they want to engage the brand. Usability describes how easily the customer can engage the brand to meet their needs.

I'd like to distinguish that usability IS an important part of the customer experience, but only a finite and limited part. Usability does not equal Customer Experience. No amount of usability reengineering can solve your customer experience problems. Usability is only one step in a long customer experience process that, when viewed holistically, includes the customer attraction (before), interaction (during), and cultivation (after) processes. I'd suggest taking a look at Clearbrick's free quick reference guide to get the big picture of the total customer experience process and what it entails.

In short, usability may be used to describe an attribute of a single customer touch point whereas customer experience is an aggregation of actions, perceptions, and emotions that are invoked when a customer passes through all phases of the customer experience.