Customer experience management

Customer experience management

Customer experience management (CEM or CXM) involves strategy that focuses the operations and processes of a business around the needs of individual customers. Companies have started to focus on the importance of the experience. Jeananne Rae (2006) says that companies are realizing that "building great consumer experiences is a complex enterprise, involving strategy, integration of technology, orchestrating business models, brand management and CEO commitment".^[6]
According to Bernd Schmitt, "the term 'Customer Experience Management' represents the discipline, methodology and/or process used to comprehensively manage a customer's cross-channel exposure, interaction and transaction with a company, product, brand or service."^[7] Note: this is a later definition from Pine and Gilmore's seminal HBR article that defined Customer Experience, Welcome to the Experience Economy. Some authors criticize this as a reworking of what Customer Experience (and hence its management) actually means.
According to James Allen et al. (2005), 80% of businesses state that they offer a "great customer experience". This contrasts starkly with the 8% of customers who feel the same way. Allen et al. assert that businesses must be able to execute what they refer to as the "Three Ds":^[8]

1. designing the correct incentive for the correctly identified consumer, offered in an enticing environment
2. delivery: a company's ability to focus the entire team across various functions to deliver the proposed experience
3. development ultimately determines a company's success, with an emphasis on developing consistency in execution

In this view, a company must constantly teach, train and develop in order to keep up with the constant demands of providing an exceptional customer experience.
According to Harvard Business Review blogger Adam Richardson, a company must define and understand all dimensions of the customer experience in order to have long-term success.^{[9][need quotation to verify]} Some companies segment the customer experience into technical interactions with the customer such as use of the web, smartphone or tablet. Other companies define human interaction such as over-the-phone customer service or face-to-face retail service as the customer experience. In the global economy, where technology and bricks-and-mortar business often interact or even compete for the customer base, it is important to recognize all these aspects as having an impact on the customer experience. Every business offers a customer experience. The more aware a business is of what type of experience they want to offer, the more likely they will create a positive experience