Customer experience management (CEM) must not be underestimated as an important facet of customer relationship management (CRM), says Paul Bornhutter, FrontRange Solutions global GM for product, Africa and the Middle East.
These ideas were presented at a FrontRange event held in Johannesburg last week, where Bornhutter described CEM as the process of strategically managing a customer`s entire experience with a product.
FrontRange, a solutions provider that offers service management, CRM and communication applications designed specifically for the small and medium and distributed enterprise markets, believes in the lifetime value of CEM.
"Customers do not buy products or services, they buy experiences and every interaction creates an experience," said Bornhutter.
"Customer preference and motivation is far less influenced by the tangible benefits of product and service than the sub-conscious sensory and emotional elements derived by the total experience," he said, quoting Marco De Veglia of the Centre for Refractive Marketing (CRM Group), a consulting firm that specialises in marketing refractive services.
Bornhutter cautioned, however, that CEM is not for everyone, saying that if more money is being invested in a CEM strategy than is being recouped, the strategy is flawed and spending more time and money on it would not fix the problem. "Grow the lifetime value of customers via CEM initiatives only if the added initiative costs are less than the added profit," he advised.
"In the absence of defined experience, customers will resort to pricing comparison." In order to manoeuvre around this, companies need to design and create a defined experience for customers, making it unique, consistent and aligned to organisational culture and values, said Bornhutter.
The most effective way to measure the customer`s experience with your company is through event driven, scheduled and ad hoc surveys. The experience delivered may range anywhere from "wow" to "never again" when rated by customers, he said.
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