Customer experience management (CEM or CXM) includes both the individual experience in a single transaction as well as the sum of all experiences between a customer and a supplier over the duration of their relationship. A customer's perception of an organization is built as a result of their interactions across multiple-channels and different areas of the organization. Companies that succeed in delivering consistently positive CEM experiences enjoy increased customer loyalty, customer share, repeat business and vocal advocates promoting the company in online and offline channels.
Customer Experience Management
CRM solutions focus on sales, marketing and support from the company perspective. CEM has emerged to focus on the customer needs and desires. CEM solutions integrate strategy, processes and technology to optimize each customer experience. The increased alignment delivers increased customer activity, advocacy, referrals, revenue and customer share.
Customer Experience (CX) has become the go-to strategy to satisfy increasing customer demands, deliver consistent and rewarding service, retain customers and grow profitable customer relationships. The business strategy is well understood, but the execution is complex and many times elusive. Here we examine the business problem and share a proven framework to deploy a CX strategy.
Best in class customer-centric businesses research, map and automate customer interactions in order to deliver consistent, predictable, rewarding and memorable customer experiences. However, you can get quickly overwhelmed trying to identify all the possible customer journeys. Fortunately, that's not necessary. Research shows that 20% of customer journeys often account for up to 70-80% of occurrences.
Oracle today released an interesting Customer Experience (CX) research report performed by O’Keeffe & Company. Among the key findings that no CX business leader should fail to recognize are a CX execution chasm, obstacles which challenge CX success, lessons learned from CX pioneers and the specific business processes that offer early and high payback opportunities for CX programs.
It's clear to most that CX is an increasingly critical business strategy with measurable objectives, defined business processes and supporting closed loop analytics; but what's less clear is whether there is a CX software market sector to support this business strategy. Here we put vested interests aside and examine CX strategy, enabling technologies, and whether there is a CX software market.
Businesses are refocusing on their mission to acquire and retain customers, which itself is putting new focus on the business strategy of Customer Experience Management (CXM). And CXM is evolving in a way that makes serving customers less of a standalone objective and more of a mission tightly integrated with corporate culture, business processes and technology.
CXM is picking up where CRM has fallen short. New CX software solutions are enabling Customer Experience Management strategies and delivering the content and knowledge at the many points of customer interaction to empower consistent service delivery and satisfy customer expectations—and possibly achieve the last sustainable competitive advantage.
Despite the growing momentum for customer experience management, some analysts suggest customer centricity is due for replacement. With the rise of social media, customer expectations have evolved rapidly while most companies have not, and many companies that claim they are customer centric simply are not. In this article we share a 7 step plan to achieve a customer-centric model.
Customer Experience Thought Leaders In Their Own Words
In this podcast, Lior shares several critical success factors when planning or implementing a customer experience program. And he should know. Lior is the foremost authority in this topic, has published over 100 articles, including for the Harvard Business Review, and is the author of 5 books, including his newest book, Customer Experience Strategy – The Complete Guide From Innovation to Execution.
In this podcast discussion, Constellation Research Group CEO and Principal Analyst Ray Wang shares the factors driving the business imperative for Customer Experience Management (CXM) along with the promises and pitfalls that may be afforded or avoided, and a framework to methodically adopt enabling technologies to support a customer management strategy.
Denis discusses the integral relationship between Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Customer Experience Management (CXM), and shares some practical advice and industry examples for those planning to implement a CX program—including CX facets such as psychological factors and the prevalence of buyers who make business decisions for emotional reasons.
In this podcast conversation with Anthony Lye, Oracle's SVP, Cloud Applications Strategy, we discuss the objectives and factors pushing Customer Experience (CX) to the top of the board and CEO agenda as well as the underlying technologies, performance metrics and business challenges to be considered when deploying customer experience management programs.
In this discussion, Vinay adds a technology perspective and shares how Customer Experience Management (CXM) is aiding and extending CRM—and further offers expert advice in how to advance CXM beyond a conceptual strategy and leverage software technology and techniques in ways that make CX sustainable and profitable.
Oracle CX is less about being the successor to CRM and more about addressing a business opportunity using technology that supplements CRM. In fact where CRM ends and CXM starts is that intersection between company and customer—that point of engagement where suppliers use CRM data to personalize interactions and deliver a customer experience that satisfies customers.
SAP established a thought leadership position on CX early and continues to develop the links between strategy and application software. HANA and SAP mobility deliver a synergistic combination - creating new dynamics by using faster technology to increase speed for new insights and deliver those insights to mobile devices, effectively making big data personalized and available in real-time.
Avaya executives share that customers are looking at CX as differentiator and critical success factor. And the company is responding as an early leader in aligning CX strategy with application software. Here's how Avaya mixes mobile, video and social to balance a growing number of channels and devices with consumers' decreasing tolerance for untimely responses and unsatisfactory service.
Pegasystems (Pega’s) target market—the Fortune 500—represents a unique slice of the broader CRM market. In this article, the CRM publisher with unique competencies in BPM and analytics shares how its customer market is reacting to Customer Experience strategies and opportunities, along with several lessons which may benefit businesses of all sizes.
Kana is weaving together a string of acquisitions in order to assemble a rich CRM and Customer Experience application suite, and strengthen their customer service solutions across agent, web, social and mobile. The new portfolio is evolving Kana's message of Service Experience Management to CXM and rebranding Kana SEM to Kana Enterprise, or Kana Express for the midmarket.
Companies have a data problem—in that only about 20% or so of information is kept in formal databases. Most customer information is unstructured and unavailable to decision makers. Here we take an initial look at text analytics provider Attensity and how text analytics with text mining are helping to make sense of unstructured data, and enhance customer relationships.
RightNow CX doesn't squarely fit in the traditional sales, marketing and service CRM software review format. RightNow CX covers the CRM bases, and stakes unique ground in the areas of customer service and customer experience—particularly for B2C and select industries such as Government. In this CRM software review we examine RightNow's position in the competitive landscape.
KANA calls the just released KANA Enterprise the biggest release in the company’s history. This new solution has morphed the prior KANA software with the Sword-Ciboodle product acquired last year. KANA Enterprise continues to demonstrate customer service advancements over agent, web, social and mobile channels, and directly contribute to the overarching Customer Experience business objective.
The Rolling Stones are celebrating their 50th anniversary. But how does a band stay on top -- or even together -- for so long? By giving customers what Mick Jagger lamented not being able to get himself -- satisfaction. In truth, the Stones are a case study in good, solid CRM best practices, and have the customer loyalty to show for it.
This Oracle OpenWorld analysis focuses on the two questions related to Customer Relationship Management software and strategy: First, how serious is Oracle about making Customer Experience (CX) the next growth technology sector? And second, how well is Fusion CRM being adopted in the marketplace, and why?
Aligning CRM software and strategy with Customer Experience Management (CEM) is proven to develop customer advocates which increase referrals, sales and company brand. However, any business program which threatens short term efficiency for long-term objectives must be thoughtfully planned. This article references a CEM continuum and solid lessons in achieving CEM objectives.
Research shows user generated content published on social networks significantly impacts buyer behaviors and company reputations. While customer comments are publicly available, systemically harvesting that data and making it actionable remains elusive for many. Learn what to consider and what to look for when evaluating customer experience management (CEM) software solutions.
CEM is the next logical step beyond Customer Relationship Management in managing interactions and relationships with your customers. CEM attempts to go beyond CRM strategy by understanding how the customer views the totality of interactions with the company and then how the company acts upon that understanding to further improve the customer experience.
Customer experience management (CEM) is not just repackaged CRM. CEM marks a shift from internally focused, and transaction based customer management, to an external focus on customer engagement and sustained satisfaction. CEM systems provide the applications and methods to collect, aggregate and make customer information actionable - and achieve the CEM mission.
Forrester Research tracks CEM and its impact on three elements of loyalty: Consumers' willingness to purchase more, reluctance to switch suppliers and likelihood of recommending the provider. A recent research project illustrated that "customer experience leaders" had an advantage of more than 14% over "customer experience laggards" in all three areas."
Most technology vendors talk a good game when it comes to customer service, but these claims are often difficult to assess before the purchase. Fortunately, one time-honored adage holds true: you are what you measure. This article provides the How To advice to predict future performance from your technology suppliers.
Customer Experience (CX) Video Illustration
CX Market Sizing
While associated with the CRM software market, Customer Experience Management is an autonomous market sector. Market data compiled from IDC estimates the Customer Experience Management software market at a $5 billion+ market opportunity, and forecasts between 5 to 12% growth through 2015 (6% CAGR).
Customer experience management is not just repackaged CRM. The internal focus of CRM often left the consumer out in the cold. CEM marks the shift from internally focused solutions to solutions that focus externally to deliver superior customer experiences."
~ Andrew Hull, RightNow Technologies
Customer Experience—The Numbers
90%—The volume of customers that will leave a brand after 1 bad experience.
Source: Harris Interactive
$382M—The possible gain, over the course of 3 years, for U.S. businesses that modestly boost their customer experience.
Source: Temkin Group
10%—The premium customers are willing to pay to obtain better customer service.
Source: Ovum
82%—Consumers who report satisfaction with the variety of brands and products online.
Source: comScore
83%—Online consumers who report satisfaction with the simplicity of checkout.
Source: Report commissioned by UPS
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