Customer Experience and Customer Experience Management (CEM)
What Customer Experience and Customer Experience Management are, why they matter for a company’s growth and how to build a consistent customer experience throughout the journey.
~5 min read
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Parklab STORIES: our blog.
Customer Experience refers to the customer’s experience. Even though its translation into Italian is easy and clear, this does not mean it is a topic to underestimate.
Today, any company aiming for success must be able to offer a simple and, often, enjoyable digital experience. This in fact helps reduce the loss of customers, both potential and actual, but also stimulates brand and product advocacy.
This short guide illustrates the core principles of Customer Experience and Customer Experience Management and helps to understand their importance.
Customer Experience: what it is and why it is so important.
Customer Experience is a customer’s perception of the interaction with a company.
This perception can arise from many things: the tone of voice used on the website, how easy it is to navigate, the quality of conversations with employees or self-service bots…
Generally, the perceived value of an interaction along the customer funnel depends on the extent to which their expectations have been met.
It is an important factor because:
Tips for delivering an excellent Customer Experience.
Even though every experience is unique and personalized, because the perception of value can vary from customer to customer, there are some fundamental building blocks to always keep in mind.
The first thing to consider is the nature of the business. The needs of a B2C company’s customer are not the same as those of a B2B one, but a good Customer Experience must always:
- Let the customer make the least possible effort;
- Be based on personalized attention;
- Be designed to offer concrete solutions, based on a contextual understanding of the problem;
- Be built on proactive and clear communications;
- Offer a fast resolution of the problem, as far as possible.
Moreover, to develop a good Customer Experience strategy it is essential to start from the analysis of the customer journey, the best indicator of what a customer needs and wants.
It is also advisable to experience customer service firsthand, to get an idea of how touchpoints work, what customers are looking for and how easy it is to ask for information, find resources and answers and receive personalized attention.
Knowing the customer funnel in detail also makes it possible to discover any opportunities not yet exploited.
Then, to develop a good experience for your users, it is also important to assess the available data on customers and their journey, trying to identify which touchpoints can lead to interactions, positive and negative, and where critical issues lie.
Once you have identified what works and what does not in the company’s Customer Experience, it will be necessary to consolidate this information by designing or redesigning the CEM, Customer Experience Management.
Customer Experience Management: definition and tips to improve it.
Customer Experience Management, literally, means “managing the customer experience“, and refers to the design and management of a system for interacting with customers so that their expectations are met in the best possible way, reinforcing in them the idea of having chosen the best provider of a product/service.
Today, every company department that works in contact with the customer (from marketing to sales, through to actual customer support) must operate within a tightly unified ecosystem, capable of identifying customers’ expectations, anticipating them and managing them in the best way.
For this reason, a 360-degree view of the customer journey is needed, mapped and correlated with all the necessary data, so as to have a clear picture of the situation and its possible scenarios.
To improve Customer Experience Management, a task almost always entrusted to the figure of the Chief Experience Officer, it is necessary to build a company that revolves around the customer. This is possible with a value proposition that prioritizes the customer experience and the employee experience, where individual agents feel they have the ability and the duty to generate a positive impact on customers’ lives. Training and artificial intelligence are essential tools, in Customer Experience Management, to support this point.
From this point of view, moreover, it is important to equip the employees who interact with customers with perspective, training them on the company’s goals and brand values, to ensure consistent actions.
Then, it is useful to use automation to support the understanding of customer problems by the agents in charge of responding, together with artificial intelligence. In this way, it is possible to encourage a climate of effective collaboration, including in digital settings, and to collect data on possible improvements. In fact, artificial intelligence can support excellence, while automation can enable the optimization of operating models.
Moreover, it is also necessary to stay open to the innovations and developments in Customer Experience Management.
The future of Customer Experience Management.
Although, until a few years ago, Customer Experience was considered an issue of little value, today this is no longer the case, thanks to a deep understanding of its potential.
Companies, in addition to increasingly using artificial intelligence and data analysis to gain a complete view of customers, their needs and their journey, increasingly tend to offer highly personalized experiences, with proactive actions and responses.
Moreover, the tools for measuring Customer Experience are being strengthened.
Today, the three main ones are:
Customer Experience is increasingly relevant, thanks in part to a new awareness of its value from an economic standpoint.
Reducing customer effort and offering proactive, personalized solutions is the foundation for generating a positive impact.
To understand how, though, it is necessary to start from customer data and a careful analysis of their journey.
The information gathered then needs to be structured into a Customer Experience Management plan capable of unifying the efforts of the different departments, putting the customer at the center and offering a global view to all individual agents.
Obviously, starting from the premise that Customer Experience always varies from customer to customer and changes over time. Success will also depend on the constant pursuit of improvements.
Frequently asked questions
What is Customer Experience?
It is the perception a customer forms about the interaction with a company. It can arise from the website’s tone of voice, ease of navigation or the quality of conversations with employees and self-service bots, and it depends on how well expectations are met along the funnel.
Why is Customer Experience important?
Because it directly and indirectly affects sales, increases corporate resilience and represents a competitive advantage: a good experience fosters loyalty, word of mouth and new customers, while a poor one drives them away.
What is Customer Experience Management (CEM)?
It is the design and management of a system for interacting with customers so that their expectations are met in the best possible way. It requires a 360-degree view of the journey and the unified work of marketing, sales and customer support, often led by the figure of the Chief Experience Officer.
How is Customer Experience measured?
With three main tools: the Net Promoter Score, which indicates the likelihood that a customer will recommend the brand, Customer Satisfaction, which measures satisfaction at a touchpoint, and the Customer Effort Score, which assesses the effort needed to reach a goal. They usually start from questionnaires.
Have a project in mind?
Parklab is in Milan, in the Lambrate area. Write to us for information or to arrange a video call to talk things through.
