In commerce, customer experience (CX) is the product of an interaction between an organization and a customer over the duration of their relationship.
This interaction is made up of three parts: the customer journey, the brand touchpoints the customer interacts with, and the environments the customer experiences (including digital environment) during their experience. A good customer experience means that the individual's experience during all points of contact matches the individual's expectations. Gartner asserts the importance of managing the customer's experience.Customer experience implies customer involvement at different levels – such as rational, emotional, sensorial, physical, and spiritual. Customers respond diversely to direct and indirect contact with a company. Direct contact usually occurs when the purchase or use is initiated by the customer. Indirect contact often involves advertising, news reports, unplanned encounters with sales representatives, word-of-mouth recommendations or criticisms.Customer experience encompasses every aspect of a company’s offering—the quality of customer care, but also advertising, packaging, product and service features, ease of use, and reliability. Creating direct relationships in the place where customers buy, use and receive services by a business intended for customers such as instore or face to face contact with the customer which could be seen through interacting with the customer through the retail staff. We then have indirect relationships which can take the form of unexpected interactions through a company's product representative, certain services or brands and positive recommendations – or it could even take the form of "criticism, advertising, news, reports" and many more along that line.Customer experience is created by the contribution of not only the customers' values but also by the contribution of the company providing the experience.All of the events experienced by customers before and after a purchase are part of the customer experience. What a customer experiences is personal and may involve sensory, emotional, rational and physical aspects to create a memorable experiencer. In the retail industry, both company and customers play a big role in creating a customer experience.