A Complete Guide to Customer Experience Management

Today, brands realize just how critical customer experience is. A recent study has prompted approximately 77% of CEOs to profoundly change how they interact and engage with their customers, with an additional 55% of CFOs increasing their customer experience management (CEM) budget. 

Source: Adobe Digital Trends 2022 Report

However, companies need a solid understanding of CEM to do this. This guide will provide you with everything you need to know about CEM, including how it’s different from your standard customer experience approach, what makes it different from customer relationship management, and how to build the right framework to help you meet your goals. 

Let’s get started.

Key Takeaways:

• Customers’ expectations for highly personalized experiences are continuing to increase.
• A customer’s experience with a brand can make or break the business relationship.
• Customer experience management and customer relationship management are two very different concepts that fall under the same umbrella. 

What is Customer Experience Management?

Customer experience management is a framework that focuses on the complete experience a customer has with your brand. It’s crucial for modern businesses because customers significantly emphasize their experience when determining whether they will do business with the brand. 

These days, customers are more likely to avoid companies if they feel like their experience wasn’t up to par than giving them another chance. Even though 94% of marketers believe that their company delivers “good” or “excellent” personalized experiences to their customers, those same customers disagree. Only 37% of consumers believe that their experiences have improved, while approximately 63% say they’ve either stayed the same or gotten worse. 

The goal of CEM is to provide an experience that’s customized, relevant, and consistent, regardless of how or where customers choose to interact with you. This ensures that they have a positive experience, which increases the likelihood of repeat business and referrals. 

Customer Experience vs. Customer Experience Management

It’s the general idea that a customer’s experience with a brand will determine whether they come back. Customer experience management, on the other hand, is the framework that provides structure and strategy to your customer experience. It’s what sets CEM apart from your average customer service or experience management strategy. 

Customer experience management aims to provide a complete, personalized experience for your customers. This often goes beyond basic customer service and requires a unique strategy for ensuring customer satisfaction. 

The framework of CEM is often centered around four key areas: 

• Customer journey mapping: This involves mapping out the different touchpoints a customer has with your brand. It’s a way to identify where the customer experience falls short and more effort is needed. This will help you identify the right strategies for improving your performance in those areas.
• Customer research: You’ll need to do the research necessary to identify your customers’ needs, wants, and preferences. This will help you understand what they’re looking for in a brand and how to tailor your offerings to meet those needs.
• Experience design: This is an approach to creating experiences for consumers that elicit positive emotional responses, dive usage/behavior, and solve a problem.
• Experience management: This involves the ongoing process of monitoring and enhancing your customer experience, from initial to final contact.

Each of these elements is vital for providing customers with a positive experience.

Customer Experience Management vs. Customer Relationship Management

The definition of customer experience management is the act of meeting and exceeding expectations. The goal is to provide the best possible customer experience while also increasing loyalty, brand awareness, and profitability. You can accomplish this by identifying the problems that customers are on the lookout for and then creating a solution that addresses those needs. 

On the other hand, customer relationship management is the process of deterring negative experiences that may dent a customer’s relationship with the brand. The second a customer has a sub-par experience, adding a customer service representative to the system can help fix the negative experience, thus avoiding the damage done to the brand.

Source: Zonka Feedback

5 Steps to Building a Strong Customer Experience Management Framework

The right CEM strategy provides a seamless experience to the customer, making them feel appreciated and valued. Not quite sure where to begin? Here are five things you’ll want to keep in mind when working on your CEM framework: 

1. Shift Your Mindset

Shift your mindset from the traditional customer service framework. A simple mantra to review is, “We don’t want to fix problems. We want to avoid them.” 

This is the mindset you need to focus on delivering a positive experience instead of fixing mistakes. You need to make sure that your customers are getting what they want, and they will appreciate it.

If you know your customer, you can figure out the experience they’re looking for and deliver it.

2. Pay Close Attention to Your Customer Journey Mapping 

CEM is about providing a personal experience for your customers, starting from the first interaction. To do that, you need to know the current state of the customer journey and where the most significant gaps are.

Customer journey mapping is a great way to pinpoint the gaps in your customer experience. It gives you a way to envision the journey, identify the touchpoints, and brainstorm ideas for improving the experience. 

This process also ensures that everyone on your team is on the same page regarding customer experience. It gives you a clear roadmap on where you want to go with the knowledge and how to get there.

3. Eliminate Silos

Every department needs to be on the same page regarding customer experience. Silos only create friction in the process. This needs to be addressed immediately to avoid bottlenecks and frustration. 

The best way to do this is to provide clear guidelines to your team and have them work together to create a framework that addresses all customer experience needs. 

4. Build Cross-Functional Teams

Cross-functional teams are crucial to the success of your CEM strategy. The right combination of people can develop unique solutions to complex problems. 

You need to bring together the right people to create a customer experience strategy. This may include members from: 

• Sales
• Marketing
• Support
• Whoever else you need to create a holistic view of the customer experience 

5. Monitor the Right Analytics and Establish Goals for Improvement

Identify key metrics that can help you determine the success of your customer experience strategy. This can include things like:  

• Conversion rate  
• Average response time
• Repeat purchase rate  
• Feedback score  

You can use these findings to establish a clear improvement plan. This process can help you identify the right metrics to focus on, so you can shift your efforts toward achieving your goals.

Get Started with Customer Experience Management with Televerde

Here at Televerde, we’re committed to helping you provide the best customer experience possible. This is why we continuously search for ways to improve our customer advocacy solutions to help you implement a result-driven CX.

Contact us today, and we’ll help you get started!