Page 210 - DMGT308_CUSTOMER_RELATIONSHIP_MANAGEMENT

Unit 8: Managing Customer Relations

 Memorable experiences build loyalty—31 percent of customers in the research Notes
recommended the company to a friend or colleague, and 19 percent increased their
purchases.
 “Well-trained and helpful employees” is the top attribute of companies that provide
“consistently excellent” customer experiences.

To manage customer experiences, you must first understand what “customer experience” means.
It’s almost as difficult to pin down as “customer relationship.”
“Customer Experience” and “Management” Defined Experts interviewed for the purpose of
research of this topic, offered many different definitions, but virtually all agreed that customer
experiences included interactions with an organization’s people, processes or systems. Some
said experiences also included interactions with a product. And others said that experiences
included the feelings or emotional responses generated by the interactions.

Customer perception seems at the heart of what a customer experience is about: “the sum of all
my interactions with a brand’s products, services and people.” But one respondent highlighted
the importance of human perception in this write-in definition of customer experience: “The
feelings and thoughts resulting from all impressions, tangible and intangible, from anyone or
anything representing, directly or indirectly, an organization, brand or product.” Well said.
Customer experiences include every point in which the customer interacts with your business,
product or service. For the Starbucks customer, for example, it includes the anticipation of going
to Starbucks, walking up to a shop, opening the door, ordering and paying for the coffee, getting
the coffee, sitting down in the atmosphere of the shop to enjoy the coffee. Each interaction point
is what SAS’ Carlzon would call a “moment of truth.” That’s the point at which your customer is
engaging with your brand and at which you can make or break the relationship.

Let’s break that down to understand it more clearly:
 “Perception” is critical, because unless the customer thinks or feels that something
happened, it hasn’t. And perception can include the emotional aspect of the interaction.

 An “interaction” could mean literally anything from viewing a marketing message to the
actual use of a product or service to a post-purchase service/support activity to solve a
problem.
 Finally, “brand” means far more than a logo or marketing communication. In the
customer’s mind, the brand is a symbol for the organization and a promise to be fulfilled.

Customer Experience Management, therefore, is simply managing customer experiences. That
was easy!
But this begs the question: To accomplish what? A more useful definition of CEM is: Managing
customer interactions to build brand equity and improve long-term profitability
“Managing” anything requires measurement, but it’s tricky to quantify how customers perceive
and value experiences. “It is important to note that customers intuitively judge the experiences
they receive. That is, they often are not able to consciously point out why an experience resonates
with them, but they know when it works or, conversely, when it doesn’t,” says Qaalfa Dibeehi,
director of thought leadership and vice president for Beyond Philosophy, the London-based
customer experience advisory and consulting firm.
Those “soft” responses are what set Customer Experience Management (CEM) apart from most
other business strategies. They can’t easily be quantified by numbers and technology. It’s also
what some would say differentiates CEM from CRM, Customer Relationship Management.
When it comes to defining CEM, you can view it as an extension of CRM as a strategy, paying
particular attention to the customer’s emotion and considering the product itself as an experience.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 205