Customer Experience Marketing & Customer Facing Systems
January 4, 2009 11:08 pmI was reading the editorial on CRMToday’s web site by John Stanhope about Customer Experience Marketing. I was particularly impressed with his definition:
“Customer Experience Marketing (CEM) is a subset of an organization’s overall customer experience management strategy and drive to become customer-centric. CEM is about managing every single part of the interaction and experience a customer has with the organization; from the visual experience of advertising, to the actual experience of interacting with a website, customer support line or physical layout of a branch office, even to the standard of the product or service delivered.”
(Joe Stanhope,Vice President, Platform Strategy, Alterian Editorial in CRMToday 4 Jan 2009 available at http://www.crm2day.com/editorial/50603.php)
I was impressed with how well what he’s saying matches with the needs of ANY Customer Facing System - ” … managing every part of the interaction and experience … “. That one phrase summarizes the whole point here. Customers see a company as a single entity. They wonder how you seem to know every part of their lives, but can’t carry on a consistent conversation. Agents who are poorly trained or CRM systems that don’t make the right information available when a customer calls, all of these are part of the failure of our CFS systems to perform the job we need done.
For me, the problem with CEM as described is that it’s put forward from the point of view of the Marketing Department and gives Marketing the responsibility for seeing that it’s done right. I don’t think so. Marketing is an important player, but good Customer Facing Systems come from involvement that ranges from the front-line to the board room. Everyone needs to step up and take responsibility. This isn’t something that Marketing teaches people to do, it’s something that must be ingrained in everyone in the organization.
Categories: Call/Contact Centers, Customer Service, Web Sites
2 Responses to “Customer Experience Marketing & Customer Facing Systems”
Having written three books on the subject of Customer Experience I would say that CE needs to be owned by someone in the organisation. Marketing, a Chielf Customer Officer etc. The systems some after that. Systems are the tool that enable CE. Just a view!
Colin Shaw
Blog: http://www.ExperienceClinic.com
Thanks for your comment Colin,
My experience in building systems has been that if the Executives as a whole don’t accept ownership, it will ultimately fail. I don’t believe Marketing’s role is small, they should be the experts in customer experience and be the guides along the road, but it needs someone with authority to step in and be able to commit the company. There are some companies where Marketing has been that organization, but in most companies I’ve worked with in many industries (government, financial, insurance, telephony, etc etc etc) whether marketing steps up or not, the executives MUST take ownership or very little happens.
Addendum: I completely agree that systems should NOT lead the effort. Part of the problem with Customer Facing Systems is that there are too many techies deciding how things work. It’s important to get someone who sees the interface, whether it’s a telephone, a computer, or a person, from the customer’s perspective.
I always used an exercise in warming up teams at the start of a Customer Facing project where I would send people out at lunch or after the end of the day with an assignment to go somewhere to buy something. Whether it was a lunch, dinner, a toy for their kid, or whatever, they were to make a detailed report to the group the next day on their own customer experience. It was amazing how few of these people had ever thought about their own experiences and translated them into the experience of the customers they were serving.
Terry
Care to comment?