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.

顧客体験（CX）とは何ですか？

顧客体験（CX）とは、プロダクトが顧客にどのような体験をさせ、どのような印象を残すか。その結果、顧客がブランドに対して抱く印象や感情です。顧客体験は、カスタマージャーニーに沿って発生します。多くの場合、購入前に始まり、購入後も継続します。

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.

従来型の企業では、ウェブアプリケーションやモバイルアプリケーションと、より大きなビジネス目標との関係に注目することが、一般的にデジタルトランスフォーメーション（DX）戦略の一環として行われています。ここでは、プロダクト体験を重視することで、あらゆる規模の企業が有意義な変革を推進し、近代化とデータ主導、顧客中心主義への取り組みの一環として、デジタルプロダクトをフルに活用する方法をご紹介します。

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.

Why does CX matter?

仕事に使用しているソフトウェアが、退屈な作業をすばやく片付けるのに役立つときの喜びを想像してみてください。それが顧客体験です。しかし、飛行機の予約を取り消されたのにアプリ上ではその飛行機への搭乗手続き中だと通知してくる場合はどうでしょうか。

顧客体験は、ポジティブの場合でもネガティブの場合でも、顧客の記憶に残ります。優れた顧客体験は、どのマーケティングキャンペーンよりも強力な企業アンバサダーになります。ひどい顧客体験は、会社の悪評につながる可能性があります。「どんな宣伝も良い宣伝」とは言えないのです。

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?

直感的でパーソナライズされた消費者向けプロダクト体験により、ビジネスソフトウェアに対するユーザーの期待が高まり、サブスクリプションライセンスモデルにより、不満のある顧客がベンダーを簡単に切り替えることができるようになりました。使いやすさと優れたデザインは、今日の顧客の期待に応えるにはもはや十分ではありません。ソフトウェアプロダクトは、ユーザーのニーズを教育し、関与し、それに適応する必要があります。

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.

プロダクトマネージャーは、プロダクト体験を、同時に発生するアクションを含む5つのユーザーライフサイクルの目的に沿って設定し、測定することで、軌道修正することができます。

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.

顧客体験の測定方法を教えてください。

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.

どうすれば顧客体験を向上させることができますか？

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.

NPSを使用して行われる継続測定は、プロダクトが時間の経過とともにどのように機能しているかを示します。また定性的なフィードバック、つまり「コメント」を収集する機会にもなります。この自由記入式のフィードバックは、定量化可能なデータに役立つ「コンテキスト」を提供します。

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.