Customer experience is the overall perception a customer has of a company, shaped by every interaction throughout their journey with the brand. This perception is formed across all touchpoints, encompassing everything from marketing and sales to the product itself and customer service. It represents the cumulative feeling a customer has about the business, not just a single transaction.
A strong customer experience is a powerful driver for business growth and a key competitive advantage. Companies that prioritize CX often see significant boosts in sales and revenue. In today's market, how a business delivers for its customers is as crucial as the products it sells.
Beyond financial gains, a positive CX builds lasting customer loyalty and strengthens brand reputation. Every interaction shapes perception, influencing a customer's decision to return and recommend the brand. This fosters trust and creates a resilient customer base.
Enhancing the customer experience requires a holistic approach that goes beyond single interactions. Companies should focus on creating a seamless and valuable journey for every customer. Key strategies involve understanding customer needs deeply and leveraging technology to deliver personalized, proactive support.
While often used interchangeably, customer experience and user experience represent different scopes of a customer's interaction with a brand.
Measuring customer experience success requires a mix of qualitative and quantitative data to get a full picture. Companies use specific metrics to gauge loyalty, satisfaction, and the ease of customer interactions. This data helps identify pain points and areas for improvement.
The landscape of customer experience is rapidly evolving, driven by technology and rising customer expectations.
How is customer experience different from customer service?
Customer service is a single touchpoint, while CX is the sum of all interactions a customer has with your brand. CX is a proactive, company-wide strategy, whereas customer service is often a reactive function focused on resolving specific issues.
Who is responsible for customer experience in an organization?
While a dedicated team may lead the initiative, CX is a shared responsibility. Every department, from marketing and sales to product and support, plays a role in shaping the customer's overall perception and journey with the company.
What is the business impact of investing in CX?
A strong CX drives significant ROI by increasing customer retention, lifetime value, and referrals. It creates a powerful competitive advantage, leading to higher revenue growth and a more resilient brand reputation in the market.
An Application Programming Interface (API) is a set of rules that lets different software applications talk to each other and share information.
DevOps is a culture and set of practices that merges software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten development cycles.
AppExchange is Salesforce's cloud marketplace, offering a vast ecosystem of apps and expert services to extend Salesforce functionality.
Audience targeting is the process of segmenting consumers into specific groups to deliver more personalized and relevant marketing messages.
Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) measures the mean annual growth of an investment over a specified period of time longer than one year.
Multi-touch attribution is a marketing analytics method that credits multiple touchpoints on the customer journey for a conversion.
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the predictable, recurring income a business expects to receive each month from all active subscriptions.
Unit economics are the direct revenues and costs of a business calculated on a per-unit basis, revealing its fundamental profitability.
A cloud-based CRM is a customer relationship management tool hosted online, letting teams access and manage customer data from anywhere.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total cost a business spends to gain a new customer. It includes all sales and marketing expenses.
After-sales service is the support provided to customers after they've purchased a product. It includes things like warranties, training, or repairs.
Inbound lead generation is the process of attracting potential customers to your business with valuable content and tailored experiences.
OAuth is an open standard for access delegation. It lets you grant apps access to your data on other services without sharing your password.
A Salesforce Administrator is a certified professional who manages and customizes the Salesforce platform to meet a company's specific business needs.
Tokenization is the process of breaking down text into smaller units called tokens, such as words or characters, for AI to process.
Precision targeting is a marketing strategy that uses data to identify and reach a highly specific audience most likely to convert.
An Operational CRM is a system that automates and improves customer-facing business processes like sales, marketing, and customer service.
A Unique Value Proposition (UVP) is a concise statement that clearly communicates the unique benefit a customer gets from your product or service.
Marketing attribution is the process of identifying which touchpoints contribute to a conversion and assigning value to each of them.
Learn about B2B buyer intent data, including sources and types of buyer intent data, & key benefits of leveraging buyer intent data.
Lead enrichment software adds crucial data to your leads, like contact info and firmographics, to help you better understand and engage them.
Price optimization is the process of finding the ideal price for a product or service to maximize profitability or other business objectives.
Account match rate is the percentage of target accounts successfully identified and matched against a specific database or data provider.
Payment processors are companies that handle card transactions, connecting merchants with the banks needed to complete a sale.
Sales automation uses software to streamline and automate repetitive, manual sales tasks, freeing up reps to focus on selling.
Learn about buyer behavior, including understanding the buyer's journey, influencing factors in buyer behavior, & buyer behavior and marketing strategy.
Persona-based marketing uses fictional customer profiles, or personas, to create targeted messaging for specific audience segments.
Sales Engineers blend deep technical knowledge with sales acumen, demonstrating a product's value and solving customer problems to drive revenue.
Guided selling simplifies complex sales by giving reps step-by-step instructions and data-driven recommendations to close deals faster.
A warm email is a message sent to a prospect with whom you have a pre-existing connection, like a mutual contact or a prior interaction.
Sales velocity is a key metric measuring the speed at which your company makes money. It shows how fast deals move through your sales pipeline.
A/B testing is a method of comparing two versions of something, like a webpage or email, to determine which one performs better with your audience.
MEDDICC is a sales qualification framework for complex B2B deals. It helps reps identify and validate key aspects of an opportunity to close more effectively.
A lead list is a curated database of potential customers (leads) with contact information and other key data for sales and marketing outreach.
Sales pipeline velocity is a metric that measures how quickly deals move through your sales funnel to generate revenue for your business.
An HTTP request is a message sent by a client, like a web browser, to a server to ask for a resource, such as a web page or an image.
Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) is the ideal order quantity a company should purchase to minimize its total inventory-related costs.
Git is a distributed version control system that tracks changes in code, allowing developers to collaborate and manage project history effectively.
Sales rep training is the process of equipping your sales team with the skills, knowledge, and tools to effectively sell and hit their targets.
Account mapping is comparing your customer list with a partner's to find common prospects and unlock new sales opportunities.
Data-driven marketing uses customer data to inform marketing decisions, optimize campaigns, and deliver personalized experiences to consumers.
A needs assessment is the process of identifying the gap between a company's current state and its desired future state.
Lead enrichment tools are platforms that automatically add missing data to your leads, like contact info, firmographics, and buying signals.
Marketing automation uses software to automate repetitive marketing tasks, such as email marketing, social media posting, and ad campaigns.
A Sales Development Representative (SDR) is a sales specialist who finds and qualifies new leads, building a pipeline for the sales team.
Sales and marketing alignment means both teams work in sync, sharing goals and data to boost lead quality, conversions, and company revenue.
Content curation involves gathering, organizing, and sharing the most relevant online content on a specific topic for a particular audience.
Network monitoring is the continuous process of tracking a computer network's performance and health to detect and resolve issues proactively.
SQL (Structured Query Language) is the standard language for managing and querying data within relational databases.
High availability (HA) describes a system's capacity to function continuously with minimal downtime, ensuring consistent operational performance.
Targeted marketing focuses on specific consumer groups whose needs align with your product, allowing for more personalized and effective messaging.
Average Customer Life is the average time someone remains a customer. It's a key metric for predicting revenue and measuring customer loyalty.
Email marketing is a digital strategy where businesses send targeted emails to prospects and customers to build relationships and drive sales.
A sales dashboard is a visual tool that centralizes and displays key sales data, metrics, and KPIs to help teams track performance and goals.
Key accounts are a company's most valuable customers, vital due to their significant revenue contribution and strategic importance for growth.
Customer centricity is a business approach that puts the customer at the heart of every decision, aiming to build loyalty and long-term value.
Microservices is an architecture where apps are built as a collection of small, independent services that communicate with each other over APIs.
Sales acceleration refers to strategies and technologies designed to speed up the sales cycle, enabling reps to close more deals, faster.
ABM orchestration aligns marketing and sales actions across channels to deliver seamless, personalized experiences to high-value accounts.
Learn about B2B leads, including identifying quality B2B leads, generating B2B leads effectively, & B2B leads vs. B2C leads: understanding the differences.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a cloud model where a provider delivers a platform for users to develop, run, and manage applications online.
Dynamic pricing is a strategy where businesses set flexible prices for products or services based on current market demands and other factors.
A payment gateway is a service that authorizes and processes payments for businesses, acting as a secure link between the customer and the merchant.
Deal closing is the final step in a sales cycle. It's when a prospect signs a contract and officially converts into a paying customer.
Psychographics categorizes people by their attitudes, interests, and lifestyles, revealing the 'why' behind their purchasing decisions.
Stress testing is a type of software testing that determines a system's robustness by pushing it beyond its normal operational capacity.
Sales territory management is the process of grouping accounts into territories and assigning them to reps to maximize sales and market coverage.
The buyer's journey maps the path a potential customer takes, from first becoming aware of a problem to making a final purchase decision.
Think of a trademark as a brand's unique signature—a word, symbol, or phrase that legally protects its identity and sets it apart from the rest.
Drupal is a free, open-source content management system (CMS) for building websites and applications. It's known for its robust flexibility.
Renewal rate is the percentage of customers who renew their subscriptions or contracts at the end of their service period.
Latency is the delay between a user's action and a system's response. It's the time it takes for a data packet to travel to its destination.
Cost Per Click (CPC) is a digital advertising model where an advertiser pays a fee each time one of their ads gets clicked by a user.
Learn about B2B, including what is it, its key elements, the benefits of B2B partnerships, the differences between B2B and B2C, and strategies for effective marketing.
Lead response time is the duration between a potential customer showing interest and your team's first point of contact with them.
An API (Application Programming Interface) is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk to each other and exchange information.
Sales funnel metrics are key data points that track how effectively you're moving potential customers from awareness to a final purchase.
A buying signal is any action from a prospect that indicates they are interested in making a purchase, helping sales teams prioritize leads.
A pain point is a specific, recurring problem your target customers face, causing them frustration, inefficiency, or added costs.
Video hosting is a service that allows users to upload, store, and share video content online, making it accessible for playback anywhere.
Account-Based Analytics measures engagement and impact across target accounts, not just individual leads, to guide B2B sales and marketing efforts.
Inside sales is a remote sales process where reps sell products or services via phone, email, and other digital tools instead of in person.
LPI, or Lead Per Inquiry, is a key metric that measures how many leads are generated from each inquiry in a marketing campaign.
A Master Service Agreement (MSA) is a foundational contract that sets the general terms for an ongoing business relationship between two parties.
Deal flow refers to the stream of business proposals and investment opportunities that a company or investor receives.
Data mining is the process of discovering patterns, trends, and useful information from large datasets to make better business decisions.
A draw on commission is an advance payment a salesperson receives against future earnings, which is later repaid from earned commissions.
Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model where businesses pay a fee each time one of their online ads is clicked by a user.
Sales performance metrics are key data points that measure a sales team's effectiveness in achieving its goals and driving revenue.
Omnichannel marketing creates a seamless, unified customer experience by integrating a company's various communication and sales channels.
A Quarterly Business Review (QBR) is a recurring meeting to assess performance against goals and align on strategy for the next quarter.
Opportunity management is the process of tracking potential sales from first contact to a closed deal, helping teams prioritize and win more.
A trusted advisor is an expert who builds a deep client relationship by consistently prioritizing their best interests over any single transaction.
Ramp-up time is the period a new hire takes to get fully up to speed and become a productive member of your go-to-market team.
Adobe Analytics is a leading web analytics solution for gaining real-time insights into user activity across websites and mobile applications.
Sales coaching is a process where managers help reps improve their skills and performance through personalized feedback, training, and guidance.
Digital Rights Management (DRM) is technology that controls access to copyrighted digital content, restricting its use, modification, and distribution.
A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is an action plan that outlines how a company will reach target customers and achieve a competitive advantage.
Website visitor tracking collects and analyzes data on user behavior to understand their journey and improve the overall user experience.
Cross-selling is a sales tactic of encouraging customers to purchase products or services that are related to what they're already buying.