Customer experience management (CXM) is the management of customer interactions through each physical and digital touchpoint in order to deliver personalized experiences that drive brand loyalty and increase revenue, according to David Clarke, global chief experience officer at PwC. Brands accomplish CXM programs through a combination of software, analytics, research and data-management systems. In recent years, several brands have infused CXM with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning engines that help manage customer data and predict future interactions to allow brands to serve relevant content.
“Customer journeys are either historical or hypothetical,” said Tim Linberg, chief experience officer at Verndale. “We can guide journeys, but we can’t absolutely dictate them. And, moreover, a truly customer-centric organization wouldn’t try to. What we can do, though, is use behavioral data, customer insights and marketing technologies to better understand and optimize every step of that journey. That’s customer experience management.”
Why Does CXM Matter?
Well, that’s simple: it affects your organization’s bottom line. No longer is making good products enough. According to a report released by Forrester earlier this year, the top-performing CXM brands see a direct correlation between good CXM and rising stocks. The top 20 percent of brands in Forrester’s Customer Experience Index (CX Index™) had higher stock price growth and higher total returns than companies drawn from the bottom 20 percent, according to Forrester researchers.
Further, according to the “Customer Experience Optimization Report” by Econsultancy and Ensighten, 96 percent of company marketers and agency pundits consider customer experience optimization somewhat important or critical. Also, 94 percent of marketers and 79 percent of agency respondents said that higher engagement and conversion rates are among the many benefits of CX optimization.
The future will still be about good CX. According to the 2017 Gartner Customer Experience in Marketing Survey released earlier this year, 81 percent say that in two years they expect to be competing mostly or completely on the basis of CX. And further, PwC’s latest Digital IQ report found that 65 percent of respondents see CX as critical to advancing business performance, and 70 percent see it as crucial to achieving digital transformation.