Customer experience management (CEM) is an inflection point in marketing—one that marketers should be using to gain advantages for their companies and their customers. CEM’s role is increasingly vital in a digital world where company reputations and customer loyalty can be gained or lost in an instant.
With CEM, the focus is on managing customer engagement in context across all touch points, whether a customer is looking for information, services, or to finalize a product purchase. Along the way, customer engagement can be enhanced by inferred or specific personal knowledge that a customer my opt to provide, such as age or income or other details, as well as digital data that can be captured easily and automatically, including location, search engine used, social networking community, and other information.
Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
4. Questions
businesses must
consider with
CEM:
• How does the customer feel about
your brand during the entire lifecycle?
• Do you understand each customer’s
needs?
• Are you providing timely, contextually
appropriate content?
• Are you delivering them at the right
time and through the right devices and
channels?
4
14. Companies that embrace these
approaches will find themselves building
a pool of longer-term customers that truly
empower and support them to grow their
market share and continuously shape and
define their products and brands.
14
Customer experience management (CEM) is an inflection point in marketing—one that marketers should be using to gain advantages for their companies and their customers. CEM’s role is increasingly vital in a digital world where company reputations and customer loyalty can be gained or lost in an instant. With CEM, the focus is on managing customer engagement in context across all touch points, whether a customer is looking for information, services, or to finalize a product purchase. Along the way, customer engagement can be enhanced by inferred or specific personal knowledge that a customer my opt to provide, such as age or income or other details, as well as digital data that can be captured easily and automatically, including location, search engine used, social networking community, and other information.Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
For years, a lot of marketing and sales conversations centered almost exclusively on CRM. But with the unprecedented use of digital, social, and mobile channels, traditional ideas about managing customer relationships are changing. CRM is essentially a one-way dialog from company to customer, which can be more about “managing” then “engaging” with customers, especially when looking to connect with customers across multiple channels and devices.Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
CEM changes the conversation, ultimately making it better to do business with your company because you can offer more meaningful, relevant interactions. With CEM, companies take a multi-dimensional approach that engages customers in ongoing conversations—versus one-way communication—that respond to customers’ unique interests and goals.Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
With CEM, there are several important questions you need to consider:How does the customer feel about your brand during the entire lifecycle, whether they are interacting on your website, looking to redeem an offer delivered to a smartphone or tablet, or sharing with friends on Facebook? Do you understand each customer’s needs and are you providing timely, contextually appropriate creative assets, products, and offers, at the right time and through the right devices and channels? Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
Whether customers are in a retail location, watching TV commercials, or engaging with brands through mobile phones, websites, or social networks, CEM transforms opportunities for businesses and customers alike. It can provide the digital eyes, ears, and smart outreach through relevant offers, creative executions, and personalized communications across channels, reaching consumers when and where they want to be engaged. Ironically, many marketers tend to overthink CEM, or concentrate on what they want to do—cross-sell, upsell, or offer a discount to close a sales quarter on a positive note—instead of thinking about what provides the most value to the customer. CEM goes far beyond simply leveraging inferred or volunteered information from customers—it’s about always becoming more relevant and more engaging in the changing contexts that customers engage with your business. Of course, there’s no single context for engagement. It can vary tremendously from industry to industry, and even widely within industries, depending on a customer’s demands. For airlines, the end-to-end experience might be 24 hours, while for car dealers, it might be five years or more.Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
Ironically, many marketers tend to overthink CEM, or concentrate on what they want to do—cross-sell, upsell, or offer a discount to close a sales quarter on a positive note—instead of thinking about what provides the most value to the customer. CEM goes far beyond simply leveraging inferred or volunteered information from customers—it’s about always becoming more relevant and more engaging in the changing contexts that customers engage with your business. Of course, there’s no single context for engagement. It can vary tremendously from industry to industry, and even widely within industries, depending on a customer’s demands. For airlines, the end-to-end experience might be 24 hours, while for car dealers, it might be five years or more.Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
Today, marketers need to tie together data, analytics, and intelligence about customers to deliver relevant information in the right context at the right time via the best channels. Context can be built from customer profiles on venues such as Facebook or LinkedIn, where they came from (e.g. search engine, social network, etc.), location, and more. Then marketers need to design experiences with context in mind to grab and hold people’s interest. While CEM may seem overwhelming, it may be simpler than you think. Here’s a cheat sheet for getting started:Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
Instead focus on what provides value to the customer. That means thinking about becoming more relevant and providing a better brand experience. Many marketers tend to leave money on the table or turn people off by going too far.Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
Leading global hospitality company Hyatt discovered more opportunities to engage with customers when it started providing a better overall online experience to customers. Instead of just recommending nicer rooms to customers, the innovative company took digital services one step further and began offering online amenities such as booking reservations for customers at nearby theaters, restaurants, golf courses, and other venues. The experience was wrapped around the stay at the hotel, but the value was in the hotel acting as a personal concierge. As a result, customer loyalty for the hotel chain is increasing, as are online bookings. Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
Seriously consider the advantages but also the responsibility that context-aware technologies have on purchasing and loyalty behavior. People want you to cater to them, so, when people opt in to provide you with information, then listen and act appropriately and accordingly. You can capture everything from gender to device use and even whether a customer is right-handed or left-handed. Keep in mind that you have gained the customer’s trust, so treat the information carefully. Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
Create a dedicated team to coordinate customer-experience-focused initiatives across the organization. Marketing professionals can use information gleaned to gain firsthand input from analysts on all matters that impact customers, particularly the intersection of social marketing, CEM, digital media, and the role of mobile applications and devices.Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
Tie digital marketing initiatives together to create new CEM approaches. Every time you engage with a customer, your customer will have some kind of experience – and you want to avoid the bad ones. Rethink the notion of channels and about how technology can break silos instead of reinforcing them in the way it has to date. Recognize that product roadmaps, brands, and systems are your world as a marketer or product or technology professional, but the customers live at the center of their worlds surrounded by constantly changing options. Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
Recognize that advertising can be the only impression that fails to leave one most of the time. Also, don’t just close the deal, but instead do what it takes to build a successful customer relationship and a loyal brand advocate over the entire lifecycle of interactions. Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi
As businesses reassess what customer experience means and what is possible, it's time to take a new look at the importance of customer demands. Marketers have the opportunity, as never before, to engage customers for a lifetime, but to do so, they must think holistically across customer touch points and treat each customer not as a segment, but as an individual with unique needs and interests. Attribution required: http://www.cmo.com/reporting/move-over-crm-cem-transforming-marketing-roi