Customer Experience Management (CEM)

Customer Experience Management (CEM) is a concept that describes how a company takes control of how it interacts with its customers. It is the practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed customer expectations and, thus, increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. CEM is about viewing and then improving the interactions between your business and your customer entirely from the customers’ perspective — and across the entire journey they have with your business.

How is customer experience different from customer service?

In most cases, a customer’s first point of contact with a company is usually through interacting with an employee (either by visiting a store or by speaking on the phone). This gives your business an opportunity to deliver excellent customer service. However, customer service is only one aspect of the entire customer experience.

For example, if you book a vacation on the phone and the person you are speaking with is friendly and helpful, that’s good customer service. Yet, if your tickets arrive early and the hotel upgrades your room, then that’s a good customer experience.

How important is customer experience?

A business cannot exist without its customers, and this is why companies are focusing on how to win new business and perhaps more importantly, retain existing customers.

How to create a customer experience model?

The customer experience is the sum of all the experiences that a customer or a decision-maker has with a company during its entire life cycle, from product awareness, through contact, social media, to the transaction itself or feedback on post-purchase, both in B2C and in B2B or B2B2C markets.

The customer experience can more merely refer to the quality of an individual experience that a customer has during a single transaction. Keep in mind that the whole relationship can have different methods and timing, from a single transaction to many years of brand loyalty and repeat purchases. See full article for more details.