Customer experience design: Benefits, examples, and tips

“There are three responses to a piece of design  —  yes, no, and WOW! Wow is the one to aim for,” Milton Glaser once said. Interestingly enough, regarding the connection between your brand and your audience, the “yes” response is the convenient user experience design that helps you meet a purchasing need, while the “WOW” response is the deep-routed emotional connection you build throughout every step of your customer’s journey — and this response can only be achieved through customer experience design. 

To help you nurture this deep connection that brings long-term benefits, this article will break down the aspects, stages, and implementation tips, and share the stories of brands who have already made this methodology work for their growth.

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What is customer experience design?

First of all, what is CX design? Customer experience design is a methodology of creating every brand’s touchpoint with your customers thoughtfully and with genuine care. This is achieved through unifying the experiences that your customer undergoes, on every stage from your brand’s discovery to continued support.

Companies shaping the customer journey within CX design view it as a continuous dialogue with every user. This conversation spans any web or mobile platform: the more enjoyable and conveniently shaped the interaction with them is, the better it fits into this methodology.

Key aspects of customer experience design

What are customer experience principles? There are diverse components in designing customer experiences. They mostly follow the stages of the CX implementation lifecycle, but we will focus on them later. So far, let’s define what CX design consists of.

• Deep user discovery and research. This involves studying your target audience before designing anything. To achieve this, companies use surveys, interviews, and diverse testing to learn what’s important to them and what competitors offer that you don’t have.
• Using prototypes. Create prototypes of your ideas prior to making the actual product. This enables you to receive input early on when it is easy to make changes.

• User-Centered Design (UCD) principles. According to this framework, your users’s needs should always come first when designing your products. It defies any theoretical value and prioritizes real people’s preferences, even if they contradict your expectations.
• The usability component. Its main goal is simple: your product should feel effortless and easy to use. Testing on real users first lets you catch any problems before full release and make sure anyone can easily learn how to use it.
• Empathetic development. To achieve customer design goals, think about what drives your users, find the things that drive them away, and the intentions and pains they have.
• Inclusivity component. You should design every interaction to make sure people with different abilities don’t face any constraints. It doesn’t just help people with disabilities — instead, it gives a great experience for everyone and expands your customer base.
• The right information structure. This is connected but not limited to the previous aspect- put information in a logical order so every user, with or without limitations, can understand it. This involves easily scrollable and comprehensive menus, catalogues, and page structures so that people can find what they're looking for without getting lost.
• Visual appeal. Not much to add here — your product should be attractive. Use consistent fonts, colors, and imagery that matches your brand and helps users connect to you.
• Considering natural interaction. This tells you to design according to the way your users interact with any product — plan forms, page structures, buttons, and menus thoughtfully. Get each action they will make to feel smooth and with clear purposes.
• Cooperation with your users. Don’t just make a B2C or B2B customer persona, but always welcome feedback and iterate on it along the way. Use your data to learn how people use your product, what issues they face, and how it can be enhanced.
• Cooperation with other departments. Good design results from syncing designers, marketers, developers, and others. It helps everyone stay on the right  track.
• Flexible adaptation. User expectations change constantly, and so does technology.. Keep yourself informed with new trends and be ready to change your strategy whenever the situation calls for it.

Yes, there are many components to keep in mind, and it might be complex. Still, CX design is important nowadays, and for clear reasons.

Why is customer experience design important?

The first answer to this question is simple: when you design customer experience carefully, you avoid customer churn and abandonment. Negative experiences repulse your customers quickly. The results are fast to see, too — PwC’s survey found that 59% of customers will shop elsewhere following a few negative experiences, and 17% will leave just after one poor encounter. 

The other reason is that relevant customer experiences create emotional bonds that enhance your brand value and power sustained loyalty. As shown by research by Gerald Zaltman, a Harvard professor, 95% of buying decisions are driven by emotional reactions rather than rationality. When customers are seen and valued through CX design, they form stronger relationships with your company that yield word-of-mouth marketing, higher lifetime value, and help you keep your position in such uncertain times as ours. 

Another bright side of knowing your customers is the ease with which you can personalize their experiences. McKinsey research indicates that 71% of users want just this — every interaction to feel personal and just for them. Apart from meeting your customers’ expectations, you get an easier route to get a competitive advantage — with AI, fast website builders, and drag-and-drop generic interfaces, your product will feel different, and thus, chosen among others.

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What is the difference between CX and UX?

If you are used to user experience design and its principles, you might be confused about these frameworks that share many principles. However, UX design typically deals with individual moments of interaction with your brand, like how someone fills a form on your website or how they upload photos to your app. 

Meanwhile, customer experience design deals with the entire experience your customer goes through with you: from the commercial they scroll through on social media to contacting support after they had an issue with their tenth order.

Comparing every aspect

If the broad explanation didn’t quite convey the CX design vs UX design distinction to you, let’s turn to specific differences in scope and purposes. 

• Scope of work.

A typical scope for UX is fragmented — for instance, browsing through your product categories or a website checkout process. Oppositely, CX design steps back to see the whole picture, and sees how every step impacts the other, and whether the information or branding is consistent. Moreover, CX design spans to your physical locations, connecting them to the digital ones.

• Challenges. 

UX design solves usability problems within individual interfaces by applying user research and established design patterns. CX design solves integration problems: for instance, it makes smoother transitions between touchpoints, and makes sure you don’t have a minimalistic landing page while the rest of the website is cluttered. 

• Team involved.

The typical stakeholders for UX design are designers (obviously), product managers, and developers tasked with specific features or digital products. CX design requires a wider collaboration across departments, such as marketing, sales, customer service, and operations, to make experiences united, consistent, and relevant through every step of interaction.

• Timeline.

UX design tends to concentrate on near-term usability in a task completion or single session, while CX design examines the relationship as it evolves over months or years, tracking how customer needs and perceptions evolve throughout their lifecycle.

• Metrics tracking.

UX design measures success through task user satisfaction ratings, completion rates, and interface-specific measures like latency, error rates, and click-through rates. CX design tracks relationships for customer lifetime value, net promoter scores, and retention rates across all your channels.

Designing customer experience across such a wide variety of channels and touchpoints isn’t an easy task. However, the advantages you get justify it.

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Benefits of customer experience design 

The benefits of user design pay off quickly, but focusing on the customer driven design accumulates some advantages that lead to improvements in the long run. 

More conversions and revenue 

By removing friction from the customer experience, you get people to purchase more — and logically, spend more. For instance, Salesforce’s survey of 17,000 customers shows that 86% of them will pay a premium for better experiences. Similarly, Forrester found that well-thought-out user interfaces can boost website conversion rates by up to 200%, while user experience spending can lead to customer retention by 15% or more. 

For instance, if during the research phase you discover the benefits of search filters for specific fabric types, your CX design might bring more sales from people with tactile sensitivity or allergy to synthetic fabrics.

Better customer satisfaction

Effortless, enjoyable interactions naturally lead to satisfied customers. According to Gartner, companies that invest in enhancing experiences for their customers typically see a 33% improvement in satisfaction scores. 

It’s easy to explain: users prefer easy-to-use interfaces, simple store payments through self-checkout, uncluttered messages, genuine (and not aggressively salesy) email campaigns, and quick problem-solving. Here, we deliberately emphasise all these situations: consumer experience design is about making it all sync.

Stronger brand loyalty

Positive and consistent interactions during the whole journey make customers become real brand advocates faster than any discounts do. People naturally stay loyal to companies that make their lives easier, their experiences nicer, and their interactions with brands brighter and more memorable, which ends in great ROIs: loyal customers tend to leave 67% more on your counter than the ones who just met you, according to BIA Advisory. 

Greater Customer Lifetime Value

When a customer experience designer does their job exceptionally well, it encourages customers to buy more frequently and spend more in the long term. For instance, Bain & Company discovered that making customer experience improvements to increase retention just by 5% is enough to boost profit by 25%. By designing excellent experiences throughout the entire customer journey, you maximize the total value every customer brings into your business. 

Greater brand trust and reputation

Recurring experiences that align with the expectations of customers create credibility and trust. Just ask yourself a question: Will you trust a brand that lists an item by one price but checks out by a different one? The same goes with the conflicts between your branding and messaging, your fonts on the homepage and advertising, and many other touchpoints. 

When your company fulfills its promises by a curated brand customer experience, it enhances your reputation and impacts the way that people view your values and dedication to service.

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Customer experience design process

As we mentioned, the steps to designing the customer experience mirror the main principles of customer-centric design. Here, let’s make them more specific.

• Learn your customers inside out.

Create simple customer profiles that show what drives them and what problems they meet, and what they truly want. Then, use a mix of forms of communication: interviews with users of similar products, surveys, and feedback on the features you already offer. For instance, if you are designing a fitness app, find out if your users will prefer daily or weekly reminder notifications. To avoid bias, don’t ask direct questions to confirm your theory.

• Precisely map each interaction.

Write down all of the ways that customers meet your brand, from support calls all the way to social media ads. Think about how the customers might be feeling at each experience — are they excited, confused, or irritated? A fast food delivery company could define interactions from seeing an ad on Instagram, to ordering through an app, to getting their food, and note where sme features could slow them down when they are in a rush on a busy Monday.

• Track important KPIs.

Choose metrics that show if your experience is working. Ask customers for satisfaction after key interactions, or assess how likely they'd be to recommend you. A language learning app might keep a record of how many users complete their first lesson or return after a week to see if the onboarding is working. Some metrics might connect to different customer persona examples, like customer churn for long-time users, or engagement rate for newcomers.

• Keep making the experience better. 

Use your information to find problems and test solutions. If customers are abandoning their shopping carts, try simplifying checkout or making shipping information more visible. Implement changes in small steps, see what works, then test the next improvement. This ongoing process keeps you in sync with your customers.

• Get everyone onto the same page.

Make sure every department understands its role in customer experience. Sales, support, marketing, and product teams must share customer feedback and agree on common goals. A hotel chain might have housekeeping, front desk, and maintenance personnel all trained on hospitality standards to provide consistent experiences.

• Stay current.

Periodically update and renew your strategy as technology as all expectations might change over time. A good retail customer experience design is about adding new payment options when customers suddenly leave at the checkout step, or changing their return policy based on the evidence that some customers stop coming back after negative reviews on sending items back.

The good news is that CX design works great with widespread methodologies and frameworks that you most probably use already.

Integration with Agile and design thinking

User-centered products naturally appear from using the Agile framework and design thinking customer experience approach. Let’s review the mechanisms of these connections.

Design thinking already presents the empathy aspect and sets the basics for your customer research and helps you uncover the hidden drivers of their behaviour. People-oriented to the core, this ensures your CX strategy addresses genuine needs, and not assumptions based on “what will look good on the screen”. For instance, with customer experience branding, design thinking will help you see that your users want to see you as a Caregiver archetype and not the Hero brand you try to present, and guide you to change your branding accordingly.

Agile then helps you to implement and iterate on these results. Instead of imagining the journey at once, you break your process into short sprints that cover different touchpoints, quickly gather feedback, and adapt. For example, during one sprint, you uncover that the buttons are in the wrong places on your landing, and during the other, that the product photo zooming isn’t enough to see all the details, and you have time to respond to each issue during the whole cycle.

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Practical tips for effective CX design

Knowing the theory is good, but putting it into practice requires skill. This is why we decided to give you some matter-of-fact advice on implementing customer experience methodologies.

• Begin small with digital solutions. Choose one customer pain point and test one digital solution for 30 days. For example, apply chatbots for common questions, auto-sequences for emails when onboarding, or optimize checkout for mobile. Then, measure before and after, then scale what works best.
• Educate teams on the concept of empathy. For instance, role-play difficult customer scenarios and give frontline workers the ability to bend rules when it leads to better experiences, like refunding without manager approval up to a certain amount. Also, document examples of great customer conversations to set clear expectations.
• Use data to add personal connections. A discount after two visits or recommendations based on past purchases are small triggers that shape a great experience. Templates can be automated and personalized (like birthday greetings) also helps you design brand customer experience to remember.
• Open up your processes to customers. Give customers a direct view of what's happening with their orders, requests, or accounts. You can use progress bars, status notifications, or some exciting behind-the-scenes content. Also, set clear company values on your website and always prove them with actions.
• Choose a green initiative to support. Select a single sustainable practice that customers will appreciate, e.g., biodegradable packaging, local sourcing, or carbon-neutral shipping. Implement this change and announce it, showing the impact using metrics like "we've saved X trees this month".

Even with direct step-by-step guides, in-house teams often lack the expertise or experience to create a working customer experience design strategy, and even less so to have it come to life. This is why companies often need professional UX audit services to analyze their current product and see the issues and opportunities for enhancements, and then implement them based on varied industry expertise and successful past projects. Here, COAX can help you.

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COAX expertise in CX design

As we stated, through our audit, you gain valuable deliverables, like an end-to-end customer experience design analysis, constraints we find in your user flows, together with the list of improvements to make. Then, within our digital product design services, we craft a practical roadmap, define the optimal stack, develop customer personas to validate hypotheses, and only create designs after the thorough analysis of results. Each of our sprint tests separate touchpoints, diversifying and fragmenting each flow to make each step perfect, with proven data.

Let us share an example of customer experience modelling that we did for our experiential booking marketplace client. By rebuilding the landlord interface, we cut down broken processes in the landlord onboarding process, enhancing each specific step after a systematic feedback analysis. The UI/UX refresh helped us achieve self-service capabilities and allowed users to manage availability and dynamic pricing, reducing support tickets by 48% and encouraging landlords to personally manage listings without being stuck in dependence on internal teams.

For our vintage marketplace customer, we developed diverse and data-supported filtering mechanisms and offline discovery tools. Our updated search system enables users to find specialty dealers within a 30-mile radius, and clickable county filters allow customers to find local antique fairs. This allowed us to sync in online and physical shopping experiences and new products and sellers' discovery, opening up a whole new market of potential buyers.

From customer experience design consulting to successful implementation and years-long partnership to keep improving your designs continuosly, COAX is always there for you.

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Examples of customer experience design

Nothing helps you to learn a concept than the success stories of companies that have already put it into practice. Let’s discover some of the well-known brands that used CX design and won with it.

Best Buy: omnichannel rebuild and personalization

A popular consumer electronics retailer, Best Buy can show you one of the customer experience design examples to learn from. They discovered they can create a brand new omnichannel experience with investment in AI-fueled personalization and store updates. Here’s what they did:

• 3 out of 5 Best Buy shoppers engage digitally. So the company covered both channels: enhanced online search and discovery capabilities, improved the physical store design to help shoppers make convenient journeys, and introduced the Click-and-Mortar shoppers™ system that connects in-store and online experience into one flow.
• The retailer provided a "My Best Buy" mobile app with personalized home pages and product recommendations for their 100 million loyalty members.
• Best Buy introduced AI-powered virtual response systems to route customer service, reducing friction and shortening resolution time. The company also added price matching, order status, and membership management for self-service support.
• They also introduced text analytics across all customer service contact points with real-time performance monitoring dashboards and daily anomaly reports.

Results. Registered same-store sales growth of 0.5% after two quarters of decline, doubled rates of self-service adoption, and experienced better net promoter scores through better store execution and more comprehensive digital experiences.

Lessons learned. In order to be successful in omnichannel, investment in digital capabilities and store experiences needs to be equal to each other. Also, AI-based personalization works much better when naturally applied to loyalty member experiences.

H&M: inspirational social commerce and easy buyer journey

The H&M retail fashion brand had a brilliant thought: what if they develop great Instagram shopping capabilities, improve the fitting experience, and checkout? Here’s what makes them a brilliant enhancer of customer experience example:

• The retailer used a social media API integration for their HMxME campaign with user-generated content initiatives that bring Instagram content onto their website. 
• They also installed mirrors in fitting rooms that recognize specific products, suggest alternative sizes, and provide styling recommendations.
• Then, they crafted convenient checkout methods like timed Click & Collect that provide discounts for users who buy the ordered products from stores within a certain period.
• H&M also built a "Find in Store" feature with QR code scan-to-buy for immediate online shopping technology.

Results. The company’s customer experience design program improved customer journey from social discovery to purchase, removed checkout friction with numerous payment and fulfillment options, and created unique online-to-offline experiences that increased brand engagement.

Lessons learned. Inspiration is a working instrument, but without easy buying, it translates to missed conversions. So, social commerce integration must enable instant action. Also, intelligent mirrors and store tech enhance rather than replace human connection when implemented in the right way.

Amazon Connect: faster interactions and issue resolution

Amazon Connect, AWS’s cloud-based contact center decided to make interactions with their clients both quicker and easier to resolve. They implemented this:

• They introduced automated generative AI-driven customer segmentation algorithms that analyze historical and interaction in real-time to analyze behaviors and facilitate engagement recommendations to representatives.
• The company developed AI-based guardrails that could customize to support topic blocking, content filtering, and context grounding checks.
• Then, they launched AI-powered self-service capabilities with natural language processing to categorize contacts, and Metabase integration for further data visualization and drill-down analysis for managers.

Results. Amazon Connect achieved faster issue resolution time, improved customer satisfaction through customized CX strategy and design, and reduced operational costs while enabling 24/7 self-service with smart agent handoffs as needed.

Lessons learned. Customer service with generative AI applied requires robust guardrails and customization functionality to maintain brand voice and security. Anticipatory customer interaction based on behavioral data also increases satisfaction over reactive support.

CarMax: connecting customer touchpoints

An autoretailer CarMax built a step-by-step retail customer journey map to develop an omnichannel strategy that could perfectly balance in-store and online buying experiences to get the most suitable used car, faster and with less friction. Here’s how:

• CarMax built digital agents to aid customers in online transactions and established an end-to-end data synchronization between web and in-store environments to build consistent experiences.
• The company introduced high-efficiency image recognition processing enhanced with ML algorithms that improved car photography.
• They also used AI to analyze customer reviews and details, presenting personalized content to each customer based on their unique interests.
• CarMax also aggregates data into bite-sized summaries, simplifying car purchases for customers. 
• Finally, they implemented real-time inventory management and automated appraisal systems that generate AI-driven condition reports.

Results. Internet sales generated $2 billion in online sales (32% of net sales), increased web chat activity by 10%, and engaged customers more effectively both in-store and online through seamless experience fusion. Digital capabilities are now responsible for 80% of the company’s sales.

Lessons learned. To succeed in omnichannel retail, you need to get rid of friction at every touchpoint and maintain trust-generating elements of in-person interaction. Automaated assistants help improve conversion by making things easier and not replacing human knowledge.

Nike: Tailored experiences and strong connections

One of world’s most known sports apparel brands, Nike set out to construct a compelling brand experience. Their main channels to introduce and test them were the Nike App ecosystem and House of Innovation flagship stores. Here’s what they did:

• Nike brought physical and digital touchpoints into one ecosystem, delivering personalization via Nike By You and exclusive member rewards through NikePlus.
• The brand deployed interactive retail tech such as 65" touch screens for Replica Kiosk installations, product recognition using RFID for their Nike Bootroom, and multi-touch Media Walls with real-time social media integration.
• They also established a seamless mobile app integration with WiFi in-store infrastructure and 3D camera technology for enhanced try-on experiences.

Results. Created rich flagship store experiences that grow brand loyalty, successful customization improved loyalty, mobile app engagement grew massive through membership rewards, and developed environments that set Nike apart from transaction-only rivals.

Lessons learned. Nike shows us well how customer experience strategy and design work together, enhancing branding and retention to turn it into innovative brand. Physical retail becomes experiential when enriched by technology that adds brand narrative. Scaling personalization requires seamless coordination among digital channels and physical touchpoints.

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FAQ

What are the 5 C's of customer experience?

The 5 C's of customer experience include such principles as Comprehension, Compassion, Connection, Coaching, and Collaboration. They form a framework for businesses to understand the needs of their customers, genuinely emphasize with their problems, establish connections that last, mentor them on company values, and resolve any issues together. 

What is a CX designer?

A CX designer designs and optimizes all the touchpoints a customer will ever have with an enterprise, from awareness to after-sales support. They conduct research, create customer journey maps, design service blueprints, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to eliminate pain points and enrich positive interactions. Their work is focused on providing consistent, intuitive, and emotionally engaging experiences in every channel.

How to engage your audience through customer experience design?

Begin with a sincere effort to understand your customers by conducting a deep research through interviews and urveys, and apply behavioral data analysis to uncover motivation, needs, and pains. Craft touchpoints that are distinctly valuable at each touch point along the customer journey. Have consistent messaging and smooth transitions from one channel to the next. Build bridges on the basis of foreseeing customer needs, pre-emptively solving problems, and providing experiences that exceed the customer's expectations.

What are the typical pitfalls of CX design?

The most common mistakes are planning against internal assumptions rather than actual customer research and feedback. Most organizations also create siloed experiences where multiple departments or channels do not communicate well with each other, leading to broken customer interactions. Another mistake is focusing on digital touchpoints and forgetting about human interactions or not measuring and optimizing the customer experience on a continuous basis.

Can a small business benefit from the services of a customer experience design agency?

Small businesses can derive significant value by tapping into CX design agencies, especially since they do not necessarily have in-house resources and expertise to create customer experiences on a systemic scale. Agencies are more likely to identify short-term wins, map the customer journey effectively, and embed cost-effective solutions that drive retention as well as word-of-mouth. The investment is likely to become self-funded via improved customer lifetime value and reduced acquisition costs.

Service design vs customer experience: what's the difference?

Service design is the operational part of providing services, including internal process, employee interaction, and system workflows that enable customer experiences. The customer experience is the customer's overall functional and emotional journey, including their perceptions, feelings, and outcomes from interacting with the service. While service design focuses on designing the infrastructure and procedures, customer experience focuses on the human impact and emotional significance of the services that are designed.