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.

When I think about some of the most successful organizations right now – visionaries like Facebook and Google, for example – it’s clear that consumers flocked to these companies not so much because they solved a problem but because these leaders created an experience that was remarkable and worth visiting time and time again.

As we think about delivering information in the enterprise, it’s important that we don’t lose sight of what the end user really wants and how users want to consume information from the enterprise. To be sure, business leaders have a crucial job in solving constituents’ problems, yet we must not lose sight of the experience we deliver.

Enterprise solutions shouldn’t just focus on process and data. Sure, these are essential to the equation – but we can do better than simply process transactions. And quite frankly, people expect more from enterprise interactions thanks to the groundbreaking consumer-facing applications they experience in their personal lives.

Adobe’s Customer Experience Management platform allows business leaders to substantially bolster their company brand and incite greater customer loyalty. Adobe’s CEM solutions raise the bar by enabling enterprises to focus on experiences that clearly differentiate them from the competition.

Adobe’s new Web experience management solution a major milestone

I’m passionate about Adobe’s CEM platform. And I’m really proud of the major milestone we achieved for our enterprise portfolio with today’s announcement of Adobe’s new Web experience management solution.

This new solution is clear evidence of Adobe’s rapid integration of Day Software and further highlights our strong momentum in delivering fully unified solutions that enable customers to better integrate their Web presence and business applications and unlock the value of multichannel communications across marketing, sales and services.

A key component of the Adobe CEM platform, our new Web experience management solution incorporates new product enhancements to CQ5 from Adobe including new modules for mobile and marketing campaign management as well as new integration with the Adobe Online Marketing Suite, powered by Omniture.

Adobe’s CQ5 and its integration with the Adobe Online Marketing Suite builds on our market leadership in rich content creation and adds powerful analytics for gaining customer insight and agile tools for optimizing digital channels.

Today’s announcement is a huge leap forward in Adobe’s vision to provide business leaders with best-in-class products that power immersive, multi-channel experiences that transform how enterprises engage, sell and service their customers.

– Rob Tarkoff