Product Management 101: Customer Experience (CX) and Product Experience (PX)

Both customer experience (CX) and product experience (PX) are critical to your growth, retention, and customer advocacy initiatives. Below, we’ll discuss the basics of each concept and the differences between the two.

Qu'est-ce que l'expérience client (CX) ?

Comme son nom l'indique, l'expérience client (CX) désigne la façon dont les clients perçoivent un produit, ce qu'ils en pensent et la perception durable qu'ils ont de la marque. L'expérience client a lieu tout au long du parcours client : elle commence en général avant l'acquisition et se poursuit une fois le produit acheté.

What is product experience (PX), and how does it differ from CX?

In the software industry, product experience (PX) refers to the portion of the customer journey that takes place within the application. It’s a narrower band of the overall customer experience. While customer experience continues after a customer leaves your product (and even after they churn), product experience is specific to their engagements with your product. As SaaS becomes the primary software delivery model, more of the customer’s engagement with a vendor takes place within the product. It’s where users get onboarded, where they learn about new features, and where they ultimately realize value.

Dans les entreprises plus traditionnelles, la stratégie de transformation numérique se concentre sur l'établissement d'une relation entre une application Web ou mobile et les objectifs plus larges. Ici, l'accent sur l'expérience produit permet aux entreprises de toutes tailles de se réinventer. Elles tirent pleinement parti des produits numériques dans le cadre de leurs initiatives pour se moderniser et se centrer davantage sur les données et sur le client.

How does product experience differ from user experience (UX)?

While user experience (UX) is concerned with the specific interactions a user has with a product, PX looks more broadly at the entire customer journey in the product. In many SaaS products, the complete customer journey from trial to purchase to renewal takes place within the product. Product teams, therefore, need to think not only about usability but also about how the product can facilitate each stage of the journey and ensure that customers realize ongoing value.

Pourquoi l'expérience client est-elle importante ?

Imaginez la satisfaction d'un employé qui parvient à accomplir une tâche fastidieuse en un temps record grâce à un logiciel particulier, ou le sentiment ressenti par un passager qui reçoit un message lui indiquant que l'embarquement de son vol est en cours alors que son billet a été annulé. Voilà en quoi peut consister l'expérience client.

Qu'elles soient positives ou négatives, les expériences vécues par les clients restent ancrées dans leur mémoire. Ainsi, les entreprises qui proposent des expériences positives gagneront des clients fidèles qui en feront la promotion, ce qui est plus bénéfique que n'importe quelle campagne marketing. Au contraire, les entreprises qui offrent à leurs clients des expériences médiocres se verront attribuer une réputation qui laisse à désirer et, dans ces cas-là, toute publicité n'est pas bonne à prendre.

Creating a customer experience that delights, engages, and keeps customers coming back is critical to growth. The opposite is also true. Last year, a study from PWC found that 59% of consumers will stop interacting with a brand they love after just one bad experience! The stakes are simply too high to risk giving customers an experience that’s anything short of excellent, at every touchpoint.

Why does PX matter?

Les utilisateurs vivent des expériences produit intuitives et personnalisées, ce qui a pour effet de faire grimper leurs attentes en matière de logiciels d'entreprise. Par ailleurs, les modèles de licences par abonnement permettent plus facilement que jamais aux clients mécontents de changer de fournisseur. Il ne suffit plus de proposer un produit pratique et bien conçu pour répondre aux attentes des clients d'aujourd'hui. Les logiciels doivent être pédagogiques, engageants et adaptables aux besoins de leurs utilisateurs.

But most companies don’t understand how users derive value or where they encounter friction inside an application. According to Pendo’s 2019 Feature Adoption Report, this means that as much as 80% of SaaS features go virtually unused, costing an estimated $30 billion in wasted R&D — a clear sign of a sub-optimal product experience.

Pour redresser la tendance, les chefs de produit peuvent encadrer et mesurer l'expérience produit en suivant cinq objectifs de cycle de vie utilisateur et en agissant de la manière suivante :

Onboarding new users: Focus on customer readiness and engagement. Automate walkthroughs and in-app guides, targeting personalized messages based on usage and feedback.

Driving product adoption: Design segmented customer journeys. Understand and measure user behavior with retroactive product analytics and user analytics. Employ tooltips to highlight features where and when they’re needed.

Converting and retaining customers: Increase user health and satisfaction. Capture ongoing sentiment and just-in-time feedback with surveys and analyze funnels by cohort and interaction.

Fostering expansion and growth: Focus on utilization and advocacy behaviors. Launch focused expansion campaigns directly in-app and identify, nurture, and reward champions.

Planning and innovation: Determine what to build next based on customer demand. Extend the product experience based on feedback and requests, segmented by user and behavioral data.

Comment mesurer l'expérience client ?

One of the most common and effective ways to measure customer satisfaction is Net Promoter Score (NPS). This measures how likely a customer is to recommend a product to others, and by doing so determining who are the detractors and who are the promoters. A healthy NPS score is a solid indication that the customer experience has done the job of winning a company promoters, and in turn, new customers.

There are other measurements that give companies a read on how customers experience their products, including CSAT (Customer Satisfaction) and CES (Customer Effort Score), but in software products, one of the strongest indicators that customers are having a positive experience is churn rate. If a customer has had a negative experience, they are unlikely to renew their subscription. That is called churn.

Comment améliorer mon expérience client ?

As mentioned above, CX starts well before someone becomes a customer. It may begin with word of mouth, an online review, marketing materials, or a free trial. However, the first post-purchase step in the customer experience is often onboarding. Because onboarding is such a milestone step in the journey, it’s essential that companies make it intuitive, make it brief, and make sure it teaches the user the most important tenets of the product — all to expedite time to value.

Mesurer la satisfaction client en continu (de préférence à l'aide du NPS) permet d'évaluer la performance d'un produit dans le temps et peut également être l'occasion de recueillir des commentaires de qualité, également appelés « verbatim ». Ces commentaires issus de questions ouvertes peuvent fournir un contexte utile pour les données quantifiables.

Recommended reading

The Digital Transformation Playbook by David Rogers

This book is a few years old, but its insights are more relevant than ever as the COVID-19 crisis pushes more and more companies to undergo rapid digital transformation.

“Incorporating the Voice of the Customer Into Your Company Culture” by Devon Golla

Those customers who have a positive experience with your brand and your product can become your biggest advocates. Incorporate the VoC into your team culture and product strategy with these eight strategies.

Digital or Death by Dominic Mazzone

Want an entertaining read on the sometimes-dry subject of digital transformation? Then this is the book for you, packed with real-life examples and humorous commentary.

“Why Product Should Care About Customer Churn” by Gordon Cone

Customer churn isn’t solely the purview of the CS team. And while it isn’t the happiest topic to discuss, but it’s definitely something all product teams should care about and track.