Customer Experience Glossary of Terms New to Customer Experience (CX)? You’ll find there may be CX terms we throw around that you’re unfamiliar with. Even as a seasoned professional, a few could throw you off. We hope this glossary helps!
Attrition Rate The percentage of your customers you lose annually, within a renewal term or in another defined time period. For example, if you acquire 100 customers during the year, and typically lose 30 of these customers by the end of the year, then your attrition rate of existing customers is 30%. (This is calculated even if they’re replaced with new customers.) This term works with “retention rate”. If your attrition rate is 30%, your retention rate of existing customers is 70%.
Brand You may think your brand is your company’s logo, you may try to protect with brand guidelines on how it should appear on stationary, presentations, websites and signatures. However, your “brand” is more than a logo or tagline – it’s the way customers feel about their interactions with your company’s people, processes and products. And, quite frankly, your employees are the heart of your brand. In other words, your brand isn’t what you say it is – it’s what your customers know it is. They “experience it” every day, good or bad. Your brand guidelines won’t protect that – great CX does. Moral? If you want to know what your brand is about... ask your customers.
Channels A brief term to describe the type of system your customer is using during their interaction with your company. Channel types include phone, face-to-face, website, email, snail-mail, collateral, documentation, etc.
Chief Customer Officer (CCO), Chief Experience Officer (CXO) The CCO or CXO is a C-Suite executive responsible for the design and coordination of all customer-experience activities and interactions across the business. They develop the strategies to maximize brand value, grow retention, increase profitability, and promote a customer-centric culture among employees.
Chief Others CEO – Chief Executive Officer (aka Top Dog). CFO – Chief Financial Officer. COO – Chief Operations Officer. CMO – Chief Marketing Officer. CDO – Chief Data Officer. CIO – Chief Information Technology Officer.
Customer-First Culture Simply put, culture is "the way people in your organization do things." It's the culmination of the beliefs, processes, mission, attitudes and everything else that make your company unique. Culture is the backbone of both the customer experience and employee experience. Having a “customer-first culture” means that you put customers first as you think about the way you act out your beliefs, processes, mission, and attitudes. You think about how your actions impacts customers and each other. To achieve this, there is usually a formal culture vision as well as rewards for employees “doing the right thing” on behalf of customers. Foundational to your CX effort is a great employee experience! ©2020 Carol Buehrens
Page 1
Customer Experience Terminology
