Experience Delivers

Transforming customer experiences by designing processes from the customer-in, enabling rich, meaningful interactions

Yesterday I spent a lively 45 minutes pummeling my keyboard for a very good cause. I was adding my perspective to a multitude of perspectives on the state of Customer Experience Management (CXM) in 2011 and the future of it in 2012 at CMSWire’s Tweet Jam (#cxmchat). Although it is a topic most debated among marketers, technologists and experience strategists, the innovation and understanding around it, I am convinced, impacts all of humankind.

Think about it, how many times are we all subjected to bad customer experience in our personal lives? Imagine each of these turning into a utopian interaction that inspires delight. Ah, the improvement to quality of life.

Outcomes from the Tweet Jam? Here’s my take and some of the perspectives I provided:

Most agreed that Web Experience Management/Web Content Management is a core subset of CXM. There was very little controversy on this matter from the stream of tweets.

As for other tools besides Web Experience Management that are central to CXM? I really emphasized the need for strategy and tools that enable companies and marketers to both listen and deliver experiences across all channels/touch points. I know, listening, what a concept. The notion of customer context was also hot as an area critical to CXM.

Where does the buck stop?

Most agreed it was bottom-up and top-down. I think of the executive sponsors as the CMO, CIO and CXO, the trifecta of customer experience leadership. The three musketeers of CXM. I was excited at this point. Thankfully, Twitter’s forced brevity restrained my desire to make other references to superhero trios and exclamations.

What is the most important CXM lesson you learned in 2011?

My tweet: “Any cxm strategy worth its X needs #wem digital and multi-channel element. Investment is imperative. This is Darwin in action.” I am serious about the Darwin reference. All the businesses I’ve talked to about WEM and CXM strategy in 2011 are thinking and investing hard in the area of digital and multi-channel. I firmly believe companies not doing this will fade, crumble or drop into market irrelevance.

What is the CXM opportunity in 2012?

Read the post title my friend. Full tweet: “2012 is Year of Personalization. How we make CXM and #wem intimate in a world of digital bits and bites. #cxmchat” Simplicity from the depths of complexity. It’s funny how we need sophisticated technologies to ultimately deliver the seamless, delightful experience customers crave, make the technology interfaces meld away, and in the end feel a true connection to businesses and other people.

The kicker was a bonus question from CMSWire about how one differentiates the offline and online strategy. Can you guess the response from several of the participants? I thought it was a trick question, in fact. There should be no differentiation, it must be an integrated strategy for CXM.

Period. I say no more…for now.

Loni Kao Stark, @lonikaostark

Group Manager, Solution Marketing

Ben Watson and Hank Barnes of our Experience Delivers team participated as panelists in CMSWire’s latest Tweet Jam, on Oct. 26. Over the course of an hour, the event brought together some of the strongest and most informed voices in the field of customer experience. Check out Ben and Hank’s thoughts on the event just below, as well as a recap of the complete Tweet Jam conversation.

Ben Watson (@bitpakkit): It was great to participate in this Tweet Jam and to be able to gain different perspectives so quickly to the questions while we were thinking about the challenges they represented – leadership, mobile, social, cultural and more. The conversation today really proves we are thinking about both the art and science of great experiences in the digital space and are doing digital with a huge dollop of humanity.

The patterns of customer focus and customer excellence are there now. We can see the successes of brands like Hyatt, Audi, Nike and others who have really focused on transforming their brands through more customer-centric thinking. Both the art and the science are inclusive and holistic for these brands. From co-value and shared value through service excellence, every time we interact with a brand that ‘gets it’ we feel the difference.

It starts with customer awareness and building the story around brand promise but in the mobile, social and UX-driven world we live in today it’s no longer enough to be a great digital marketer that promises a great experience. You have to deliver. You have to be awesome more. People often ask me where to start. I first tell them to figure out what they suck at, what people don’t like, and stop that first. Then move on to the aspirational stuff. And somewhere in there, take the opportunity to walk a mile in your customer’s shoes. That’s the kind of context that buzzwords can’t describe.

Hank Barnes (@HBatAdobe): The most interesting part of the Tweet Jam for me was seeing things flip from technology orientation, i.e. content management and e-commerce, to a business discussion centered around Customers and Context. That was great to see and shows the understanding that the real issues of CEM/CXM center around meeting customer needs.

That focus on the customer is both easy and hard. Easy in that if you can truly commit to it, the opportunities for experience improvements become very clear. Hard in that it requires new disciplines and approaches and it’s easy to get distracted.

When we look at things from a technology lens, we get sidetracked arguing about acronyms (WCM, WEM, CEM, CXM) and lose sight of the opportunity. You can’t do CEM, or digital marketing, or pretty much anything without technology today, but we have to remember that the idea of context is not just about “customer context”. Technology only provides value when used in the right context—otherwise it just adds complexity and confusion.

I look forward to more of these Tweet Jams with CMSWire and others.

View the full TweetJam transcript below.