That depends on what your definition of 'is' is,
- Bill Clinton

For the record, the definition of IS doesn’t have a lot to do with what then President Bill Clinton was trying to avoid talking about.  Similarly, I hear the phrase “customer experience” discussed, debated and referenced a lot.  But what IS it?  Sometimes customer experience is a set of principles.  Sometimes it is a metric.  What’s your definition?

Last fall my firm Aveus did a large study on this topic.  We asked leaders who said “yes, there IS a definition of customer experience that is well understood throughout our organization” to tell us in a sentence, what is it?  Hundreds of free form answers later I saw some themes but not a lot of consistency.   I wondered, if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you know if you get there?

Here’s how I define customer experience.  It starts with a customer who is triggered to solve a need or problem.  Their experience is what happens and how they feel as they:

• realize a need,
• learn about you,
• try you out,
• buy,
• use your product or service to solve their problem, and
• evolve to another need over time.

 What’s your definition of customer experience?