Lately, I’ve been using “customer experience” in proposals, conversations, and talks to describe the field in which I do my work. User Experience, as a label, always bothered me. It doesn’t really resonate with non-UXers or non-technical folks. It sounds more mechanical than human. Sometimes I imagine a robot voice saying, “HELLO…I…AM…YOUR…USER…EXPERIENCE… ENGINEER.”

Ok, cute, but I’m making more that just a semantic distinction here. Much of the work User Experience professionals do requires not only brilliant ideas but organizational muscle, dedication, and follow-through needed to realize and sustain those valuable experiences. We need the whole organization to be engaged.

Customer experience is something everyone should be concerned with. In an organization, employees typically (hopefully) see “customer service” as something they are responsible for, unlike “user experience” those people over in IT or the geeks in the next building do. If we use words that match the mental models of our colleagues, perhaps it will be easier to engage them in the work and broaden the impact of our practice.