What does customer experience mean?

Customer experience is the experience of the customer from the period they came to know about the existence of the product until they finish using the product. For a hotel like Saravana Bhavan, the customer experience is from the point they came to know about its existence (the day they started) until they are associated with that particular customer (probably, forever for Saravana Bhavan but it depends on each of the customer).

For a typical brokerage firm, it is all about how easy it is to open the account and the experience until the customer closes the account. For BSNL or Samsung, it is from when the customer gets to know about their products (the point when they want to buy it) until the time they stopped using it. Customer service is also part of it. Its all about the customer service, once the customer has become the owner of the product.

Most of the times, I have seen, the Customer Experience is great until one procure the product or service and after that, because of the customer service, it loses its ground and go nowhere. So, its very important to concentrate on the customer service if you want to give a good customer experience. This customer experience is really of great importance, as they would get more customers by 'word-of-mouth'. Once you provide a great customer experience over-all, you are heading towards that market leadership.

I have been a user of BSNL broadband for a long time. Recently, I surrendered the BSNL broadband connection as I had to move from that place. It was seamless to close the account and I received a call from BSNL folks asking the reason for my surrendering the connection. It was indeed a good customer experience. Usually, BSNL's customer service would be pathetic is what I have heard a lot till now. But, I think, they are trying to correct it. No doubt, they are nowhere near the market leaders yet.

I have an account with Kotak Securities, my brokerage firm for the last 4 years. I, usually, trade online and haven't visited their offices for a long time. Recently, I had to fill out the form for nomination and found that they are strict in finding fault in the forms that the customer built out and usually don't approve it easily. It doesn't really makes sense, at least, to me. As its our nominee, if we give some details wrong, we are the ones, who are finally getting affected. 

For opening an account, it takes more that 50+ signatures and the  people visiting us says "Don't fill the form and I will fill that completely". This gives us some pleasure as we know few others who have done this already and its a kind of routine. I am worried that they didn't even ask for the nominee details. I found that the nominee details are not entered because of the recent drive from the SEBI that mutual fund investments should have nominee details. I would like to advise Kotak Securities here , to remind of nominee details while opening new accounts to others. Are they market leaders? 

How was your customer experience in the services and products? Share your views.