By Shep Hyken
CX is the abbreviation for customer experience. Somehow, someone decided X is a better abbreviation for experience than E is. Regardless, I’ve started seeing the X being used in other ways. For example, there is UX, or user experience, which is the experience the customer has with your products and services. Here are some others that you may have heard of:
• EX is to employees as CX is to customers. The employee experience is an important experience to manage. What’s happening on the inside is felt by customers on the outside.
• WX stands for web experience. What experience do your customers have with your website? The WX is a very important part of the UX.
• DX stands for digital experience. This is what customers experience when they interact with your company online. This could be on a website, on the Internet or with a bot. We must manage the DX if we want our customers to have a good CX.
These got my imagination going, and I decided to share a few others that I’ve come up with:
• NX is for the nap experience. This is the comfortable place employees might enjoy a short nap during a stressful day.
• YX is for the yawn experience. On a scale of one to 10, how likely are customers and employees to yawn during a meeting or presentation?
• PX stands for the procrastination experience, in which we rate our frustration when people don’t get things done on time.
• RX is currently recognized as the abbreviation for a prescription. It originates from the Latin word “recipe,” meaning “to take,” as in a prescription. But, I’m assigning RX to the restroom experience. When I was looking for office space, I always checked out the restroom to see how well it was maintained. I assumed if they took good care of the restrooms, they would take care of the building.
You get the idea. The X’s—or experiences—in our lives can be labeled. Here’s an assignment for you. What are the different experiences your customers and employees have? Label them. Create an acronym. Have fun with them. And they don’t have to be just two words. Like CXE, which stands for customer experience excuse, the reason someone failed to deliver a good CX.
Once you come up with these abbreviations, don’t use them with your customers unless there is an obvious reason to do so. Using company jargon, acronyms and abbreviations the customer might not understand can be frustrating for them. However, if there is a fun one that, once you explain, will make your customers smile, go ahead and share. You’ll get a smile and your customers will know that you are thinking of them and always looking for ways to improve their eXperience.
