What is customer experience? A comprehensive guide for 2025

The customer experience (CX) lives on a spectrum from flawless to infuriating. You’ll always remember the tailor who happily completed a last-minute alteration for an important event. At the same time, you’ll also remember the restaurant staff that unapologetically provided bad service and didn’t bother to remedy the situation.

Customers are starting to expect more of these positive, memorable experiences, and the pressure is mounting for businesses to step up their CX game—especially with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). According to the Zendesk Customer Experience Trends Report 2025, 70% of consumers believe there is a clear gap between companies that leverage AI effectively in customer service and those that don’t.

In this guide, we’ll cover CX in detail, share how you can successfully incorporate AI, and give you a blueprint for improving your customer experience.

More in this guide:

• Customer experience vs. customer service
• Why is the customer experience important?
• How to measure customer experience
• Examples of good vs. bad customer experience
• How to improve your CX strategy in 10 steps
• Frequently asked questions
• Elevate your customer experience with Zendesk

Customer experience vs. customer service

Customer experience and customer service are similar concepts, but there are a few key distinctions.

Customer experience refers to every touchpoint consumers have with a business—and how the customer feels during those interactions. This can refer to interpersonal interactions, like when consumers reach out to support teams, or impersonal interactions, like when consumers see an ad or a social media post from a business. Think of CX as a broad, all-encompassing term.

Customer service is a subset of CX and refers to the support that businesses provide to customers when they have questions or concerns. Businesses must always offer high-quality customer service. Good customer service is vital to a company’s CX and can be influential in building lasting, positive relationships.

Why is the customer experience important?

The CX is important because every exchange between a customer and a business—no matter how small—has the power to build or damage the relationship.

How customers feel about your brand is directly tied to revenue, customer retention, and brand loyalty. A good CX drives competitive advantage, and companies that deliver an outstanding experience stand out. According to Zendesk Benchmark data, 60% of consumers have purchased from a brand solely based on the service they expect to receive.

How to measure customer experience

There’s no single magic metric that measures the customer experience. It exists on a spectrum, so the more data you have, the better. Here are a few methods to gather that data so you can hone in on your ideal CX.

Send surveys

One of the most effective ways to get information on your CX is directly from the source. Surveys are a great way to collect customer feedback on specific touchpoints in the customer journey, customer satisfaction rates and consumer expectations or things your business can do differently.

Several surveys allow customers to rate their experience on a numerical scale and use popular formats and metrics like:

• Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score
• Net Promoter Score® (NPS)
• Customer Effort Score (CES)
• Other important customer experience key performance indicators (KPIs)

By collecting relevant feedback, you can learn what your customers appreciate and what they wish you would do better.

Analyse measurable data

Analysing measurable data can alert your organisation to harmful (and helpful) patterns, customer pain points and how your customers interact with your business. Look at quantitative data like:

• Churn rates
• Customer lifetime value

• Ticket reopen rates

• Time-to-resolution metrics

This approach can give you the actionable insights you need to make improvements to your customer experience.

Perform A/B tests

You will commonly use A/B tests for sales and marketing purposes, but they can make just as big an impact on the customer experience. With this method, you can send or display two versions of a web page, email campaign and other customer-facing assets to determine which performs better regarding customer engagement and satisfaction.

A good starting point is to send A/B test emails targeting CX to limited segments of your customer base. The resulting information can help you predict how these new CX assets will perform and if you need to make any adjustments before widespread release.

Use your community as a focus group

Community forums can be a priceless resource for understanding the customer experience. Customers often use forums to share their thoughts, including product or process pain points, feature requests and the most important or beneficial tools. Community forums benefit businesses by providing information brands need to understand their customers better and improve the CX.

Talk to customer-facing staff

Besides the consumers themselves, no one knows customers better than the employees who interact with them daily. Customer-facing team members often have valuable information on what customers are saying about their experience with your business. The customer is always right, so collect any feedback and use it to improve and create a better CX.

Examples of good vs. bad customer experience

What makes a good customer experience depends on the individual consumer. That said, you can implement some basic principles to provide a good customer experience versus a bad one.

Great customer experience examples

A great CX makes it effortless for customers to accomplish their goals. Businesses that excel in this area know how important it is for teams to work together to create a seamless, consistent experience. Customer loyalty and satisfaction are less about big ‘wow’ moments and more about businesses being dependable and making things easy for customers time after time.

Some examples of a good customer experience include:

• Easy-to-access self-service resources: Self-service resources like FAQ pages and community forums can help customers solve their issues quickly and independently. This contributes to customer satisfaction by giving them other options to solve issues rather than calling a helpline.
• Proactive messaging around known (and unknown) issues: Being proactive is one of the many tenets of having customer focus, or putting the customer at the centre of organisational decision-making. When businesses are proactive, they can resolve issues before they manifest into bigger problems.
• Comprehensive customer support: Providing helpful support (and short wait times) is key to enhancing the overall customer experience—just ask Liberty. The department store retailer used Zendesk AI to streamline customer support, resulting in a 73 per cent decrease in first reply time and a nine per cent increase in CSAT.
• Personalised experiences: Today’s consumer expects personalisation. They are more receptive when website copy speaks to them, and feel “seen” when businesses send relevant product recommendations, personalised emails, and more.

Adopting an end-to-end viewpoint of CX that prioritises buyers’ needs every step of the way is crucial to creating long-lasting business relationships.

Bad customer experience examples

A poor customer experience happens when a consumer feels a business failed to meet their expectations, which can lead to plenty of dissatisfied customers.

Some examples of a bad customer experience include:

• Lack of or incomplete self-help resources: Having incomplete self-help resources—or none at all—can lead to customer frustration. Businesses need to make it easy for customers to solve their problems.
• Long wait times: Extended customer support wait times are a hallmark of bad customer service. The longer they wait, the worse your CX will be.
• Lack of empathy from agents: Customers often contact customer support when they feel concerned or frustrated, and customer service teams that don’t show empathy in these interactions can harm the relationship.
• Disregarding customer feedback: Consumer feedback is one of the most valuable resources businesses can use to improve their CX. When companies ignore customer feedback, they miss out on an opportunity to improve processes based on customer wants and needs—a misstep that leads to a poor CX.

Of course, companies don’t necessarily try to deliver bad CX, but a lack of focus on several key issues can result in customer frustration. So, be mindful of the examples above to ensure your business isn’t inadvertently causing poor experiences.

How to improve your CX strategy in 10 steps

The good news is that you can improve CX, and it starts by putting the customer at the centre of business decision-making. Follow these seven tips to improve your customer experience strategy.

1. Understand your customers

Before you consider implementing new CX processes or investing in new technologies, you must understand your customers. Approach your CX strategy from a position of customer obsession to put yourself in their shoes.

For example, you could invest in a flawless self-service system, but if your customers just want to make purchases easier, you’ve wasted time and money on something that doesn’t resonate with them. Understand your customers completely—and use that knowledge to guide your CX efforts.

2. Create feedback loops

Customer feedback loops are when businesses use the feedback they get from customers to improve their products or processes. This can illuminate what’s working well and what needs improvement. Asking for feedback provides valuable insight into customer expectations and how you can better meet them. Acting on that feedback shows your customers that you value their opinions.

Additionally, businesses can create internal employee feedback loops that make it easy for agents to combine and share feedback – actions that can shine a light on any challenges in delivering great customer service. For example, there could be policies or processes that don’t suit customer needs or friction between siloed teams that slow down issue resolution.

3. Build an omnichannel experience

Customers don’t want to tell the same story to multiple support agents. Still, considering separate departments usually handle different customer interactions, it can be hard for companies to avoid this pitfall. The key is to create an omnichannel experience that meets customers where they are and provides a consistent journey.

Context about who your customer is, what they’ve told your team in the past, their shopping history and more is crucial for delivering a seamless experience across channels. Additionally, utilising customer service software with omnichannel routing enables you to direct tickets across channels to team members based on availability, capacity, and ticket priority.

4. Empower customers through AI

AI is driving sweeping changes to how consumers shop and how organisations do business. In fact, per our CX Trends Report 2025, 81 per cent of consumers believe AI has become part of modern customer service. You should invest in these new technologies to streamline your operations and create better customer experiences.

One way to empower customers through AI is to invest in AI agents. These advanced bots can provide 24/7 support and autonomously resolve even the most complex customer requests. For example, an AI agent could process a refund, relay an order status, or direct a consumer to a relevant help center article by connecting to your backend systems. If the problem is too complex for an AI agent to handle, they automatically route the ticket to a human agent with the full context of the situation.

5. Invest in customer experience software

Another way to harness AI to create a positive CX is by investing in customer experience software. CX software empowers organisations to build better customer relationships and helps them engage in:

• Customer data management to understand consumer behaviour and identify churn risks and escalations
• Personalisation for curated customer recommendations
• Omnichannel support to support consumers on their preferred channel
• AI-driven automation to streamline repetitive tasks and expedite customer resolutions

That said, be sure to select a CX software like Zendesk that is easy to use, scalable, and has comprehensive AI capabilities.

6. Offer self-service options

FAQ pages, community forums, helpful articles, and other data-driven content can help your customers solve issues on their own rather than reaching out to a live agent. You can also use AI agents as a resource to provide quick answers and point customers in the right direction. Make sure your content is accurate and up to date, since an unhelpful article can create a negative experience.

7. Train your team.

After changing internal processes or investing in AI or CX technology, make sure your team gets up to speed as soon as possible. The quicker they understand your new way of thinking, the quicker they can provide outstanding customer experiences. This can help you realise the benefits of your changes quickly.

8. Provide personalisation

Personalisation has emerged as a crucial aspect of a good CX. Businesses can offer a tailored customer experience by providing curated product recommendations, sending personalised emails like birthday deals, and engaging with customers through their preferred contact method. Also, be sure to harness AI tools here, like AI agents or CX software. According to the CX Trends Report 2025, 91 percent of CX Trendsetters believe AI can effectively personalise experiences.

Also, gather context about who your buyers are, including their preferences, personalities, and buying habits, and use the information to help agents better customise their support and provide faster resolutions. It may be helpful to conduct user experience (UX) research on your company’s support initiatives to find ways to deliver more personalised interactions.

9. Deliver proactive experiences

A top-tier customer experience anticipates customers’ needs and stays ahead of problems before they escalate—or before they even happen. Being proactive creates a unique experience that feels personal and helps build trust and customer loyalty.

For example, an e-commerce company might deploy an AI agent on its checkout page to answer any final customer questions right on the page, or an internet provider may send a text to notify customers of an upcoming outage. Whenever you can anticipate and respond to future customer concerns, you’re well on your way to developing a better customer experience.

10. Use data and analytics

Data and analytics can pen a novel of consumer information, detailing customer support team efficiency, general consumer satisfaction with business interactions, consumer behaviour trends and more.

Refining your product and processes with the customer in mind starts with interpreting this data and how it relates to your business, helping you understand customer pain points, needs, and future goals. Any collected data can be invaluable to improve the CX.

Frequently asked questions

Elevate your customer experience with Zendesk

Businesses thrive and survive based on their reputations, and your success entirely depends on your ability to attract and retain loyal customers through CX. That’s why organisations that prioritise CX stand out in the marketplace.

At Zendesk, we are experts in CX and help organisations of all sizes develop world-class customer experiences for their clientele—and our AI capabilities can help you take those experiences to the next level. So, if you’re looking for a partner who can help you build long-term customer relationships, look no further.

Explore our customer service software to see how Zendesk can help you create an outstanding CX.

Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score and NPS are trademarks of NICE Satmetrix, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc. and Fred Reichheld.