Customer experience

Customer experience, sometimes abbreviated to CX, is the totality of cognitive, affective, sensory, and behavioral consumer responses during all stages of the consumption process including pre-purchase, consumption, and post-purchase stages. Nihat Tavşan and Can Erdem bring an extensive elucidation to the customer experience, encompassing the dimensions of consciousness, subjectivity, and interactional nature and define customer experience as the sum of subjective ideas regarding a product or service that occur at a conscious or subconscious level due to direct or indirect interaction of a customer with brand-related stimuli. Pine and Gilmore described the experience economy as the next level after commodities, goods, and services with memorable events as the final business product. Four realms of experience include esthetic, escapist, entertainment, and educational components. Tavşan and Erdem divided the customer experience into four categories based on the levels of cognitive and physical involvement of customers. These four categories are euphoric experiences, captive experiences, mellowing experiences, and conductive experiences. Different dimensions of customer experience include senses, emotions, feelings, perceptions, cognitive evaluations, involvement, memories, as well as spiritual components, and behavioral intentions. The pre-consumption anticipation experience can be described as the amount of pleasure or displeasure received from savoring future events, while the remembered experience is related to a recollection of memories about previous events and experiences of a product or service. Forbes describes the customer experience as the "cumulative impact of multiple touchpoints" over the course of a customer's interaction with an organization. Some companies are known to segment the customer experience into interactions through the web and social media, while others define human interaction such as over-the-phone customer service or face-to-face retail service as the customer experience.