What is CX?

Customer Experience (CX) is your customers’ holistic perception of your brand, including all their interactions with your products and services. It’s their total experience from start to finish, which is often more than a one time “transaction.” This can encompass everything from the accessibility of the information on your website, the usefulness of the content, and the tone of your communications to the ease in making transactions through your systems and the value of conversations with your helpdesk. 

Understanding your customer will help your organization achieve its mission objectives and gain trust. It requires empathy and curiosity, stripping assumptions to discover who your customers are, what drives them, and what they need from you.

REI is committed to advocating for our customers and making sure their voices and needs are met while creating products. 

Why is CX Important?

Having a customer-first mindset and investing in a strategy focused on a consistent and positive customer experience early on will ultimately save time and money. When the products, services, and solutions you offer are designed with the customer in mind, you avoid spending an enormous amount of money and valuable time fixing problems resulting from a lack of or poor understanding of what your customers need. This is a common occurrence in software development, which can be mitigated with a proactive customer experience strategy.

REI’s CX Framework

There are many definitions, theories, and terms related to customer experience; in this playbook, we created a CX framework to help you understand our definitions and our view of the hierarchy between these terms.

Our playbook will help you build a customer-focused approach by providing an ideal process from the start and highlighting tangible actions and best practices. While every project has different constraints, requirements, and stakeholders, the REI CX framework can serve as a guide to help you get started.