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

The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) wanted to develop marketing and brand experiences that resonated emotionally with potential visitors to the country. With that in mind, STB, along with development partner XM, looked to our Web Experience Management (WEM) and Adobe Digital Marketing Suite solutions to provide rich, interactive online experiences that engage potential visitors and help to boost tourism. Since the web is the leading source for travelers planning their own vacations, STB developed YourSingapore.com – Experience, an inventive, informative platform that offers useful information about vacationing in the country. The website achieved five million unique visitors as of December 2010—representing a gain of three times the amount of traffic compared to STB’s previous online presence.

Our WEM solution enables STB to create and distribute tailored content, giving customers more personalized and memorable experiences. The single-source publishing capabilities of Adobe WEM enable dispersed STB teams to quickly update, edit, approve, and publish pages, accelerating time-to-market for new online information and services. STB also uses the Digital Marketing Suite to acquire deeper insights into customer behavior. For instance, SiteCatalyst enables the board to gather reliable, real-time data across all of its online platforms. In addition, with the help of the Digital Marketing Suite, STB achieved a five-fold increase in the social fan base of YourSingapore.com.

To learn more about STB’s story, check out the full case study here.

On Nov. 10, Gartner, Inc. positioned Adobe in the Leaders Quadrant of its 2011 “Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management” research report (see our press release here). Our completeness of vision and ability to execute were noted by the firm, which looked at 20 different vendors for the report. From an Adobe perspective, the research centered on CQ5, now part of our Web Experience Management (WEM) solution.

The evaluation criteria for a vendor’s ability to execute included product/service, overall viability, sales execution/pricing, market responsiveness and track record, marketing execution, customer experience, and operations. Criteria for completeness of vision included market understanding, marketing strategy, sales strategy, offering strategy, business model, vertical/industry strategy, innovation, and geographic strategy. We believe this recognition, combined with our previous placement as a Leader in “The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management For Online Customer Experience, Q3 ’11”, is strong confirmation of our overall WEM and Digital Marketing vision.

At Adobe, we believe Web Content Management plays a crucial role as part of a larger digital marketing strategy for engaging and serving customers. Take, for example, world leader in anti-aging products, Nu Skin.

After experiencing tremendous growth, Nu Skin is now active in 52 markets across Asia, the Americas, and Europe. As a result, the company’s marketing and IT teams have to manage more than 50 websites, with most available in at least two languages, to present local distributors and their customers with comprehensive overviews of the products available in their regions. Using our WEM solution, Nu Skin is able to manage more than 4,500 online product pages and eight web properties along with 350GB of assets. The company pulled off a complete redesign of its European websites three times faster than prior to working with us, and has reduced content localization from weeks to minutes. You can check out the details in this video.

It’s this kind of result that can lead to accolades from customers and industry. But, of course, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum or overnight. As I’ve written here before, I’m incredibly proud of my Adobe colleagues who work tirelessly to perfect our offering and its various integration points, ensuring customer and partner success every time. Wherever you are, take a moment to reflect on how far we’ve come and how we’re changing the way people do business. And to our customers, I encourage you to check out the full Gartner report and to stay in touch to continue the conversation.

-Kevin Cochrane (@kevinc2003), vice president, Product Strategy and Solution Marketing, Adobe

About the Magic Quadrant

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in our research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

On July 13, Forrester Research Inc. provided us with well-timed recognition as a Leader in “The Forrester Wave™: Web Content Management For Online Customer Experience, Q3 ’11” report.  From an Adobe perspective, the report centers on CQ5, which is now part of our recently updated Web Experience Management Solution. See the press release we issued about the report here. This independent report evaluated the current wave of 10 Web Content Management (WCM) products across approximately 115 comprehensive criteria such as overall strength of vendors’ current offerings, a clear product strategy and vendor market presence.

There are several notable elements of the report that make it a must-read for any business or technology leader faced with the tough decision of selecting a vendor-of-record to transform web initiatives into customer engagement and experience platforms.  At minimum, this speaks to the incredible opportunity unlocked when a web-savvy customer base helps you move your business and brand experience online.  In a recent post on Customer Experience Management and our own Adobe Digital Enterprise Platform launch I wrote about the strength of that brand being critical to helping any company achieve higher rates of revenue growth by entering new markets, innovating new products, acquiring new customers, or in-selling products to an existing loyal base.  The web, and the customer experience there, is a fundamental part of this – but it is not the whole story.

In the report, Forrester defines the category CXM (Customer Experience Management, which has also been shortened to CEM elsewhere) as having WCM as a cornerstone with many other technologies playing a critical supporting role.  Using survey data gathered from 218 WCM decision makers, Forrester was able to forecast the prioritized integration points that are fundamental to making WCM a key component of CXM success, which also points to the importance of working within an established ecosystem of technology and service providers to ease these integrations.

Adobe Recognized as Leader in WCM

The following excerpt from the report explains the positioning of our leadership and gives well-deserved recognition to our Adobe Solution Provider Partners who are instrumental in our success with the many deployments we have successfully launched over the past year:

“Adobe’s WCM is especially strong on enabling business users to manage presentation as well as content via slick user interfaces, and benefits from a rich media product that was built on the same architecture as its WCM product, a differentiator in this evaluation… The vendor is early in its integration plans. But it has great potential, and implementation firms report a good deal of success behind Adobe’s offering.”

The positioning is also attributed to our “excellent offering in terms of technology and features.” The report added, “Its integration with other Adobe-owned CXM components shows potential.” Adobe received high scores across a broad range of criteria such as authoring tools, customer experience management, library services, presentation management and product strategy. Adobe also received a 5-out-of-5 rating in product architecture and the highest rating for content publishing and deployment in the report.  I would like to return to that 5-out-of-5 rating and the depth of understanding that went into their assessment of our technology and offerings.

This would not have been possible without the cast of hundreds that have contributed to our success behind the scenes at Adobe, working tirelessly to perfect the platform and its various integration points, the many late nights to meet the release milestones and the supporting teams that ensured our customers and partners would be able to succeed each and every time.  A heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped us achieve this milestone is warranted – you know who you are.  We’re not done by any means, but we have been able to keep our promises and deliver what our customers want time and time again.

For our customers, I’ll close by saying simply that the Forrester Research report is timely and shows how critical WCM is to a great customer experience.

-Kevin Cochrane, vice president, Enterprise Marketing, Adobe