What is customer experience management?

CXM is an approach to relationships with customers that goes beyond just marketing tools and software—with the goal of achieving a digital transformation that truly puts customers at the centre of the business. A customer experience management mindset prioritises the orchestration and personalisation of the entire end-to-end customer experience and helps to do it at scale, on any channel, in real time.

What’s the difference between CRM and CXM?

CXM is often confused with customer relationship management, or CRM, due to the similarity that they have in some basic functionality. While there is some overlap, CXM isn’t a mere renaming of traditional CRM. CXM takes the next step in managing customer relationships. Where CRM mostly deals with optimising the internal processes of a business, CXM offers an even more customer-centric approach in several ways—with new technologies, as well as processes, strategies, and customer-centric design.

CXM differs from traditional CRM in the technology itself—with added benefits and capabilities for building customer relationships. While CRMs gather data through manual or batch entry, a true CXM will enable a real-time flow of data to offer deeper insights into customer preferences and behaviour.

The CXM mindset also goes beyond a traditional CRM in its strategy and processes. A company who wants to become more customer-centric uses CXM to put processes in place to track, oversee, and orchestrate interactions and engagements with customers.

Because CXM is both a set of technologies and a set of processes, and data doesn’t get siloed, CXM allows you to deliver a true cross-channel customer experience.

Why does customer experience management matter?

Effective customer experience management is more than just good optics or good PR. By centering your customers’ experiences and making technology feel more human, you create win-win scenarios for you and your customers alike.

Customer experience has become a critical differentiator for all kinds of businesses in the competitive, hyperconnected global marketplace. While the end result for a business might be seen in lead generation, conversions, or long-term brand loyalty, the customer also comes out a winner with rich, personalised experiences, increased satisfaction, and a rewarding relationship with the brand.

Customer experience management helps to:

Achieve a deeper understanding of customers

• Gives an enhanced view of customer behaviours and preferences across all touchpoints.
• Allows more detailed segments to provide the highly relevant personalised experiences that customers demand and that drives increased conversions.

Drive loyalty and retention

• Delivers personalised experiences and create seamless customer journeys with advanced marketing automation software.
• Cultivates deeper, lasting relationships with customers through intelligent service, product recommendations, and loyalty incentives.

Maintain a competitive edge

• Improves operational performance to increase customer satisfaction and lower customer churn.
• Increases the win rate of offers and lowers service costs.

Measure the success of initiatives

• Gathers and interprets much larger volumes of data—allowing for more accurate visibility into the success of your engagement efforts.
• Helps to make more informed, customer-centric business decisions.