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Matthew Collison for Skill Pathway

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Customer Experience Comes First, Followed by User Experience

A brand that cares about its customers is a pillar to a product's success.

User Experience is important, don't get us wrong - but without good Customer Experience - it's not worth anything⠀

Don't believe us? Ask a family member or a friend why they stuck with a particular subscription service for the last few years, in spite of there being competitors, what do you think they would say? (with exception of it being "the only one"!)⠀

A) "The primary action button was a call-to-action so I bought in and now I'm a customer with a good LTV" or⠀
B) "They really care about my needs and issues", "Whenever I've had a problem, they've resolved it immediately" or "They make things really simple for me so I don't have to put too much work to get it running"⠀

Of course there are many other responses, but you know everything under B) and the vast majority of other responses you'd receive are as a result of good CX.

(We also know that first response seems a little ridiculous, but we hope it makes our point a bit clearer)

Pour all of your focus into getting this right initially, then focus on those A/B tests, feedback forms and research groups. If you don't create a warming environment for your customers, they'll never get a chance to use that awesome form layout you designed and proposed 20 revisions to!⠀

And once again, don't get us wrong, UX is massively important! Just give a moment to your making your customers feel loved... It's the foundation we build our own community on. Care and support.⠀

So how do I implement CX in my product?

This is a bit of a gray area, so bare with us.

For us, empathy for the end consumer is the #1 skill you need to deploy to create good UX.

  • Empathy for when they read a social media post and comment and don't get a response
  • Empathy for when they visit your website and suffer incredibly slow loading speeds
  • Empathy for when a customer access a free trial
  • Empathy for when a customer is worried about forgetting about that trial date and having their card charged
  • Empathy for when they find your pricing plans really confusing ("can't they have just made this simpler")?

These are just a handful of possible "CX smells" for your business, and there are of course thousands more that are contextual to every individual business out there.

If you or a team member has a strong sense of empathy, and can deploy this in context of the application / brand / service you are providing, CX improvements immediately become more accessible.

How well known is Customer Experience? We want to know...

Is CX something you've given serious consideration to for your product, brand or service? Is it something you've even heard of before? We're really curious to see.

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To check us out and register for any of our free courses, visit the Skill Pathway website.

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