Usability, user experience or customer experience?

Product development practitioners have little control over what happens after they hand over a project deliverable.

It’s a bit like delivering a baby and hoping the parents will be  responsible and caring. Because good user-experience  and ultimately the success of a website or an interactive product depends hugely on its management, perhaps more than we would like to admit. A couple of examples:

> In a content-rich site we (consultants) often have no control over the quality of incoming content.
> On an e-commerce site, we don’t determine pricing, delivery policies and fulfillment.
> A well designed, user-friendly corporate website can improve the image and perception of a traditional brand, but it can´t change the corporate culture by itself, which is ultimately what governs the relationship with their clients.

I think it’s important to differentiate  usability, user experience and customer experience in terms of expectations whenever we are to be made accountable for results and ROI.  There are many definitions – this is my understanding:

The good news is that there are several ways to extend our scope of influence so the final customer experience is closer to what we had conceived initially:

> Design flexibly to scale – sites tend to inflate in content, sections and functionality with the time.
> Speak to stakeholders during the project (marketing, customer care, IT…) – understand their requirements,  advise  on realistic resources they should plan for.
> Write a set a recommendations for post-development UX management, e.g: Fulfillment best-practices, focus areas for customer care, privacy policies, advertising and editorial guidelines, etc.

It’s great to be the product midwife but it’s much better to be the godmother!