Are "Customer Experience" and "Digital Transformation" the Same?

You could get an argument about whether “digital transformation” is a subset of “customer experience” or vice versa. Many will use the terms interchangeably.  Marketers will tend to subsume DX as part of CX. Some will argue DX includes CX, as DX affects the whole business model, not just customer interactions with a brand. 

Supporters of the “DX is a subset of CX” might say Customer experience is how your customers perceive all of their interactions with your brand.So DX would represent all interactions between an organization and its customers experienced through a digital interface like a computer, smartphone or tablet. 

Others who might view the terms interchangeably might argue that digital transformation is the integration of digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how a firm operates and delivers value to customers. 

 

Supporters of the “CX is a subset of DX” would base their views on the idea that DX represents digital transformation is all about becoming a digital enterprise: an organization that uses technology to continuously evolve all aspects of its business model.

The business model, in turn, is the framework for everything a business or organization must do to identify a need, a customer, a solution, a means to produce and deliver that solution. 

It might be fair to argue that CX is a platform for customer engagement, the ways a firm digitizes marketing and sales experiences. It might also be argued that DX refers to business operations more broadly, including product development and manufacturing, not just sales, marketing and customer support. 

But the view of “DX as business model change” also centrally involves potential changes of problems; customers; solutions and fulfillment. 

Depending on the context and job role, user experience might also be an issue, with UX a subset of CX, with DX changing CX. Some marketers will wrap user experience inside customer experience which is nestled inside brand experience. 

source: Brian Solis  

So it is helpful when discussing digital transformation to understand which sense of the phrase we are using. All of the definitions involve brand perception in some way; sales and marketing in some way; customer support and interaction in some way. 

There are several ways to create Venn diagrams we might use in describing CX and DX and others that incorporate user experience, brand experience or other dimensions of firm operations. 

source: Gartner 

To avoid confusion, it is helpful to know which context we are using when discussing DX.