InteractionInteractions represent an especially memorable, and therefore leveraged, subset of customer experiences. They happen every time a customer contacts a business in order to buy something, learn something or comment on their experience. While interactions are the most enduring and valuable part of the customer experience, they often go unrecognized within customer satisfaction plans and CEO programs.

Interaction PlanInteraction planning is the process of developing strategies to control the quality of interaction outcomes. Essentially, planning is the only way to combat unexpected, random customer-to-company interactions.

Interaction EconomyThe next wave in value generation will come from companies actively designing and managing the details of their customer-to-company interactions.

QCIThe QCI model is a powerful tool for evaluating the quality of customer interactions. It consists of one central assumption, that 'all interactions can be described and analyzed with reference to 4 fundamental dimensions'.

Customer ExperienceHighly touted by Pine and Gilmore, the customer experience covers pretty much every aspect of what goes on when customers and companies come in contact. The customer experience can be conscious, as in the expressed opinions customers hold about marketing and brand messages, but are often unconscious, as in how customers respond to lighting or how they plan a route through a store.

Customer Experience Optimization (CEO)CEO is a set of strategies intended to effect meaningful business variables, like ROI, defector rates, NPS etc. by controlling even the most subtle, unconscious elements of the customer experience. This has resulted in serious investments in smart store designs and has many companies piping purchase-inspiring music into their sales floors. Still, no CEO programs are equipped to improve the most memorable and valuable element of all customer experiences, the interaction.

Customer SatisfactionSatisfaction is the fulfillment of a need, or appetite, but nothing more. Satisfaction attends to only what is necessary. It does not, by definition, exceed expectations. Interestingly, when it comes to customer's emotions, satisfaction does not correlate with re-purchase rate.

ExuberanceJones and Sasser brought the value of satisfaction in to question by challenging its connection to customer loyalty. They identify a customer state beyond satisfaction which they call Total Satisfaction, exuberance or WOW. Exuberance then is the emotional response a customer has when service, more than satisfied, has exceeded their expectations.

Experience EconomyDefined by authors Pine and Gilmore, the Experience Economy recognizes that companies can charge a premium for offering memorable and differentiated customer experiences. This plays out in companies' decisions to invest in aesthetically pleasing and user friendly spaces and products. Bear in mind, too much emphasis on some aspects of the customer experience often means a sacrifice in quality of customer interactions.

Satisfaction SurveySurveys are tools that attempt to gauge people's ideas and opinions. They usually consist of approximately 5-10 closeended multiple choice questions. They may ask respondents to pick from a variety of possible choices, or give a discrete rating of their level of their "satisfaction" with a company or service.

Performance/ExecutionPerformance or execution is, as Jan Carlzon termed it, 'the moment of truth', when an interaction plan goes from concept to action. One of the goals of monitoring and auditing is to measure how successfully performance reflects the plan.

Performance AuditingPerformance auditing is the process of insuring that the execution of an interaction plan succeeds in meeting and exceeding customer expectations. Crucially, performance auditing consists of the precise definition of criteria capable of evaluating execution, as well as the weighting of those criteria to reflect customer's priorities.

Benchmarking/Best PracticesBenchmarking is the strategy of imitating successful industry standards in order to bring services up to par. The challenge with benchmarking is determining what practices are worth copying in the first place. More importantly, an over reliance on benchmarking makes innovation impossible. Benchmarking strategies cannot differentiate your business from the competition and will never give your business an edge.

BrandA brand is a bundle of qualities, images and experiences that a customer comes to associate with and expect from a company. On one level brands are necessary for companies in the same market to differentiate themselves, but on another level brands develop a sort of cultural significance which can be very effective in inspiring customer loyalty.

DistortionDistortion happens when any representation fails to adequately depict its object. There are numerous forms of distortion, but invariably they all result in skewed ideas about the world. In terms of customer satisfaction, the object at issue is a sense of aggregate customer emotions and the distortions are a result of things like biased sampling methods, loaded questions and gaming the system.

StochasticA stochastic process is one whose behavior is non-deterministic in that a systems's subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions and a random element.