Customer Experience Management

What is Customer Experience Management?

Customer Experience Management (CEM) is currently another area that companies consciously manage to achieve higher revenues or reduce the costs of functioning of the organization. CEM is important both for industries that support a large number of customers (B2C), as well as for B2B sectors. Due to the fact that services and products are becoming more and more similar (it’s the effect of commoditization), it is the right Customer Experience strategy that builds a long-lasting advantage over the competition.

Customer Experience (CX) Definition

Customer Experience is the sum of all customer experiences, emotions, and experiences that are associated with a given product brand or company. The company as a team of cooperating systems, processes, and people generates specific events that the client experiences. The sum of the client's interaction with these events builds associations based on these experiences and emotions. This is how Customer Experience is shaped. The general CX consists of customer experience related to various contact points between him and the company or product brand.

Contact points between Customer and the Company / Product Brand

Customer Experience Management as an integral Element of the Company

Customer Experience Management must become an integral part of the company in order to work properly. It must become its main philosophy. Be present in all company departments and levels. This allows you to maintain the consistency of the company's image that is received by the customer. Staying in closed, non-communicating pillars of the company is not conducive to the company's pro-client attitude. For this to happen, CEM must be managed in an orderly and predictable manner.

How does the Customer evaluate Cooperation with the Company?

The definition of customer experience says it contains many aspects combined together. One of them is his feelings - so the client, when assessing cooperation with the company, is guided by rational arguments (price, product availability, time of delivery, quality of the product), and on the other hand, his general experience is defined by emotions.

Customer emotions are created by comparing customer experience with previous ones (e.g. client previously bought the product and he received it within 24 hours - now he is waiting for 48 hours), and in combination with their expectations (e.g. there was information that client would wait no longer than 24 hours), as well as alternatives (e.g. maybe the client should have bought the product in a stationary store).

Companies that struggle for a position in an competitive market are bidding in offers and promising their customers more that can offer: realization in a too short period of time or services not entirely technically possible to complete. The client builds their expectations based on the promise given to him by the company.

If the company keeps its word - the client will receive positive experience. If the company fails to keep its promises, it will result in raising customer anger and frustration. Therefore, more frequently we can see the flood of negative comments written by customers in social media, often supported by other users. Effects of them can be various - depending on the company's response - can seriously damage its image or on the contrary - repair the harm that was made to the company's PR.

Customer Experience Management Costs Reduction

Customer Experience Management can help with saving on advertising expenses. The mechanism is simple - the customer is very satisfied with the service or purchased goods, so he will recommend it to others, for example friends or family members. This is how word-of-mouth marketing works, which is much cheaper than classic advertising methods and can be even much more effective.

It’s important to remember that positive impressions from contact with the brand combined with product or service satisfaction is the foundation for building customer loyalty. An example of proper use of CXM can be based on a positive consumer opinion, which creates an extremely favorable image of the brand. After applying the appropriate actions and improvements, a company can be associated with friendly service, modern design, something fashionable and desirable. All this can be achieved with small expenses on promotion, and it could be seen to the naked eye how effectively orientations work on customer satisfaction.

Customer Experience Management in Practice

The improvement in CXM is primarily decided by companies in which a lot of customer interaction occurs. Telecommunications companies are a good example here. In their case, contact begins when the customer hears about the brand for the first time. It is necessary to ensure that this is positive information.

The next contact is the potential customer visit to the website. Here, the concept of web usability becomes the key, i.e. constructing a page that is convenient, user-friendly and easy to navigate. In addition, the customer should find in this place all the information he needs without wasting too much time searching for them.

It would be helpful if he also read positive opinions of other people there - thanks to this, a psychological mechanism called social proof will work. This concept is based on the fact that people who are undecided or have insufficient knowledge often follow the opinions of others. To extend the reach of opinions, a rating and review system can be used on the brand's website. Cooperation with online price comparison websites that have a built-in module of this kind can also help a lot.

In the case described here, the next contact with the customer is the moment when he comes to the stationary point to order the service. Here, the look of the premises he comes to is extremely important - its size, aesthetics, even music played in the background. The customer should not wait too long in the queue, and if such situations cannot be avoided, it is worth using a system of notifying about the expected waiting time.

A snack or coffee for customers can do a lot in terms of positive brand perception. Once the consumer has been served, the next stage of interaction is post-transaction service. It is obvious that there may always appear issues and technical problems - inevitable things that are difficult to improve as part of CEM.

It is important to ensure that the assistance provided to the recipient is of the highest quality. For this reason, comprehensive training of employees working on the hotline is necessary. Unfortunately, many companies decide to outsource such services. This results in low quality of service - the phones are very often picked up by people poorly oriented in the subject, not well paid and overloaded with work. Technical support is often the victim of cutting costs. Call center employees only know the basic formulas and patterns of actions that allow them to solve several problems, but their knowledge is not sufficient to help customers in more complex cases. It’s the biggest weak point of many companies - the critical opinions of callers and negative comments about the services provided are the obvious proof of that matter.

CEM Performance Evaluation

For e-commerce, there are many tools that can be used to measure customer satisfaction. The most basic technique is surveying - in the form of questionnaires sent to the customer e-mail or short, non-invasive questions embedded somewhere in the content of the website. It is worth carefully analyzing the traffic on the website of the online store because statistics can tell a lot about the satisfaction of visitors. Much of the attention should be paid to the circumstances of canceling the purchase. If a potential customer abandons the shopping cart on the payment page, it probably means that he has not got at his disposal convenient forms of payment for the transaction. It may also be that he was scared off by unclear terms of the agreement, poor warranty coverage or high shipping costs. All these elements are very important in the case of client evaluation of the whole purchase process.

Collecting customer feedback is difficult in regular businesses. Surveys are not very effective because hardly anyone likes to do them. Asking for quality of service a person carrying shopping bags and rushing home is a very bad idea. A better choice is to put the survey on the company's website, although in this case, the “freshness” effect is lost - the question should be asked immediately after the transaction is finalized. More and more often we can see in stores that at the checkout there are placed touch screens with which buyers can quickly and easily determine the level of their satisfaction with the service. Various techniques for answering the questions are available but the most common (and universal) are three smileys - sad, cheerful and neutral - which can perfectly reflect the opinion of the consumer. It also seems a good idea to place terminals with more complex questions that can be used voluntarily by customers. Usually, customers are interested in such things and, moreover, they do not feel the pressure that arises when questions are asked by the employee - for these reasons, such a solution is a reasonable option.

Employee Role in CEM

Often, companies on the market proclaim the slogan "The customer comes first", however they do not care much about the satisfaction of their employees, which of course negatively affects how these employees treat customers.

Generally speaking, the role of employees in creating customer experience is huge, but often very underestimated. How should an employee be enthusiastic and positive about clients if his supervisor and his environment do not create an atmosphere of work that promotes such an attitude? Building employee engagement affects how they interact with customers. The more satisfied they are, the more satisfied the client will be.

Team managers should pay close attention to what they say and how they work. It is quite simple, but in practice, not everybody is aware of this. Team members are like a sponge that absorbs every gesture and every word of their supervisor. The appearance of the boss in the workplace, with a certain attitude, facial expression, the tone of voice is immediately noticed by the employees. If there is any inconsistency between what the boss says and what he does in practice, it will be immediately sensed by others. Repeating slogans - "we make products for customers", "we meet with customers to make even better products", "we keep our word if we promise something to our customers" - will be irrelevant if the company (and in this case - the management) will not keep such promises, or when in practice employees discover that it is "only such a corporate talk" that is not followed by a genuine attitude. Let’s imagine a situation where the customer assistant yells at the client over the phone. Such an employee has definitely been trained how to work with the client and in this situation, the reason for this behavior may be the management staff who did not properly care for consistency between what they proclaim and what happens in practice in the company.

Employee Training in Customer Experience

In companies where the adventure with building positive customer experiences begins, it is worth starting the project with proper employee training. It is important to show why the customer is important, not to be afraid of presenting examples of both bad and good scenarios when the actions of the company or employees have contributed to a better or worse customer experience. Training should teach employees empathy and a patient attitude towards clients but above all how to focus on solving the customer’s problem, no matter what is the issue. The training should explain what are the contact points between the customer and the company (Customer Journey), as well as what influences the client's experience and how the employee can improve it with his actions. However, training with Customer Experience should be started from the management staff in the first place, and after that with employees that are lower in the company hierarchy structure.

The building of CEM processes in a Nutshell

It all begins with understanding the client and his point of view. According to the idea of Customer Experience Management, organizations should start possible changes by learning about the client's needs, wishes, and goals that he wants to achieve by purchasing the offered product or service. Due to the diversity of these needs, in many cases, it will be necessary to perform customer segmentation or other marketing analysis.

The next step is to proceed with "designing customer experiences". It is about thorough development and optimization of service processes using all forms of communication (i.e. personal contact with a company representative, by phone, via email, chat, SMS, letter) and at every stage of the life cycle of the customer relationship (i.e. before buying, during and after purchase).

There can be up to several dozen company-customer contact points throughout the entire customer life cycle. Therefore, it is also important to isolate the key ones that are most important from the client's point of view. This should be done in order not to invest in the development of those to which the client does not pay attention.

The next step is to create tools to measure the effectiveness of these processes. This is often one of the obstacles to the effective management of customer experiences. Not everything is measurable and quantifiable, but it’s required to somehow control the current state and the destination point. Potential measures can be here the number of new customers who purchase a product or service, the number of recommendations generated by clients, the average time of customer-company relationship.

A cyclic audit of experience is an inseparable element of CEM. Its purpose is to check whether what we offer is what the customer really expects and whether it is definitely unique on the market. As a result of such research, it may turn out that the experience of being a customer of some companies is at most average and does not stand out from the competition.

The entire strategy of managing customer experience is largely focused on changing the mentality of employees. At first glance, this may seem impossible, but with the right tools and exemplary behavior, it can be achieved.

CEM is not a one-time project, but a strategy - a long-term process of building an organizational culture focused on developing the best experiences at contact points with the client. It is a difficult and expensive strategy but can be very profitable. Everything depends on the performance. If it is done properly, the first results may be visible even within a month. However, if it’s done wrong, then CEM becomes art for art and a waste of resources - giving nothing beneficial for the company.

At least once every six months it is worth asking the question of whether recent CEM activities have shown improvements in business and the way customers perceive the company. If at this stage there are answers like "it depends", "it's hard to say", "it can't be measured so quickly", "we need more time", "yes, but in terms of image" - then it is worth rethinking the entire CEM strategy.

Facts about Customer Experience

Customer Experience Management Summary

It should be remembered that, unlike advertising, Customer Experience Management is a system of comprehensive and long-lasting activities, not a campaign closed in time schedule. Its implementation is basically a reorganization of the company in all its aspects that relate to customer interaction. Marketing as a product-centered activity is an important complement to CXM. If the product or service is of poor quality and does not meet client expectations, even the most friendly staff can do little in this case.

It is also worth knowing that replacing advertising campaigns with Customer Experience Management is a good thing mainly for large companies with an established position, fighting on the market with few rivals. Small and emerging enterprises should not give up extensive promotional activities, as they are necessary to raise brand awareness among potential customers. First, it’s needed to find customers who will choose the product or service from the offer of the company and recommend the brand to others.