Getting Started – What is customer experience management?

In today’s super-competitive marketplace, customer experience (CX) should be taken seriously by all businesses. A key metric used to analyse a brand’s overall health, the real-life business value in CX research and findings is enormous. However, in order to collate, measure and use customer experience data productively, a customer experience management process is typically required. 

This guide explains how customer experience management strategies work. It also explores what customer experience managers do and outlines why these processes are so important when it comes to the future success of your business.  

What is a customer experience management strategy?

Simply put, a customer experience management (CXM) strategy is a business framework used to collate, measure and analyse customer experience. Ultimately, the purpose of these strategies is to highlight strengths and weaknesses relating to your interactions with customers and to track how these are impacting revenue. Using this information, your business can make business decisions that focus on improved brand loyalty and repeat business. 

Successful customer experience management strategies will put customers’ needs at the centre of all business decisions. This means a customer focus when it comes to marketing decisions, sales and pricing strategies, and customer support services. Naturally, these strategies also need to remain flexible. They will need to adjust and evolve over time based on both positive and negative customer experience feedback and customer satisfaction levels.

What do customer experience managers do?

The role of a customer experience manager is to work with all areas of a business to ensure customer interactions are as positive as possible across the board. For example, this can include working with the marketing team to ensure the latest campaigns are in line with customer feedback. Or working with a business’ customer service team to improve support services. If your business works with a third party customer service partner – such as CALLCARE – it may also be the job of the customer experience manager to liaise with, and supervise, this partner. This could include overseeing processes such as onboarding, brand training and customer feedback collation.

Why is customer experience management important?

As touched on above, by effectively managing the customer experience, your business will be able to better understand your customers. This means a better grasp of what their needs are and the expectations they have of your business. From here, using this information, your business can better enhance the customer experience you offer as a whole. This not only benefits your customers, but also the entire health and success of the business. This is because, by collating, measuring and analysing customer experience metrics, your business can benefit from:

• A better understanding of customers – Data cultivated can give business owners/stakeholders a more accurate view of customer behaviours and the current effectiveness of all support touchpoints. 
• A snapshot of strengths and weaknesses – From poorly received marketing campaigns to customer service solutions that are currently out of date or not fit for purpose, CXM strategies can highlight what is working well and what needs improving when it comes to customer experience and interaction. 
• The opportunity to improve brand loyalty and customer retention – Changes and improvements made off the back of customer experience analysis can bring about a change in customer behaviour. Importantly, this can include improved brand loyalty and customer retention figures. Naturally, this can lead to increased revenues.

While a business’ bottom line is typically measured in sales, lead generation and/or conversations, the brand loyalty and good word-of-mouth reputation that is built through good customer experience management plays a huge role in generating this. 

There are a whole host of different ways in which you can manage and maintain customer experience. This includes analysing your customer data to spot trends, evaluating and enhancing your touchpoints and creating customer personas to help you target your customers’ needs and wants. You could even invest in customer experience management software that provides you with everything from a CRM to help you manage customer information and marketing automation tools, to call handling support.

There’s no denying that customer experience management is an integral part of running a successful business, so it’s worth getting to grips with why it’s important so you can implement changes that will ensure you’re meeting, and even exceeding, customer expectations. To find out more about how CALLCARE can contribute to your CXM efforts, contact us today.

Posted by Gemma Harding

As Head of Client Services, Gemma is an expert in the customer service industry. With over 20 years of experience in the call handling process she will guide your organisation to an improved customer service strategy. Hobbies include all thing equestrian.

View other posts by Gemma Harding