CEM pokes into the picture again

CRM’s cousin, brother, red-eyed stepchild CEM – however you feel about it depends how you describe it, but the relationship is doubtlessly filial – is back again in a couple of new stories and in the consciousness of CRMers.

On Customer Experience Management, there is quite an extensive piece on the subject appearing in this blog written back in October, the last time murmurs of CEM seeped into the CRM news grid.

CEM is often confused with CRM, or the relationship between the two isn’t exactly clear. Indeed, industry online publication TMCNet.com ran a piece in September of last year that contained the mots “contentwise there isn’t any appreciable difference between CEM and what we’ve been doing in CRM for years.”

CEM is the group of psychological principles that underlie compelling customer experiences and the business strategies to put these principles into action. CEM practitioners typically place heavy emphasis on the “essential first step” of making the selling environment more appealing.

Rather than high-level advertising campaigns and heavy promotion, CEM focuses on the generally cheaper but more obscure method of feedback and improvement. The main difference comes in the interest on returns: CRM is essentially based in software systems designed to maximize transactions via quantitative data, and ultimately is most effective in the short term.

The CEM philosophy seeks to investigate and exploit the relationship between the consumer and his/her “experience” with the product or service; in this way can a long-term relationship and true customer loyalty result.

First off in the news today, then, is the quaintly named privately-held San Francisco-based TeaLeaf Technology, self-proclaimed “leader in Customer Experience Management,” which announced that TeaLeaf CX had been selected by uSwitch.com to provide a comprehensive understanding of each customer journey on its website.

uSwitch.com is a free informational service to customers to assist in finding the best supplier for home services such as gas and electricity, broadband, landline calls, credit cards and current accounts.

Meanwhile, in a story that has industry news outlets throwing the word “dysfunctional” into headlines, results in a recently-performed Strativity “CEM Study” indicated numbers coming across the ‘wires translated as “Our customer relationships are dysfunctional” and “Customer-centricity is lacking in many companies.”

Speaking more specifically, some results included:

• 60 percent of senior executives claim they do not deserve their customers’ loyalty;

• 51 percent of respondents claim that their company does not deliver unique and beneficial products or services;

• 56 percent claim their company’s products or services are worth the price;

• 75 percent do not know the cost of a new customer;

• 70 percent indicated that customer strategies are more important than they were three years ago; and

• 81 percent did not know the cost of a customer complaint.

The research was conducted via a structured, anonymous, on-line survey. The survey was hosted by CustomerSat Inc. using the “advanced ECEMTM (Enterprise Customer Experience Management) solution.” 309 surveys were submitted by executives from the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Participating companies represent a wide range of sizes and cross business types.

Finally, over at TMCnet.com, Cincom CEM Products marketing director Randy Saunders comments on “Customer Experience Management: Is It Just Another Name for CRM?” (Which essentially was answered in the affirmative by David Sims of ol’ TMCnet six months ago.)

Saunders quotes statistics from Shaun Smith, co-author of “Managing the Customer Experience: Turning Customers into Advocates,” one of the seminal texts in the field; and Saunders finishes with a flourish: “When you create an experience so positively powerful that it burns a memory of your company’s brand into your customer’s mind, they can’t wait to return for more. And they’ll bring their friends and colleagues along.”

That, we can suppose, is CEM.