Customer Experience Management
Customer experience (CX) is the lifeblood of every organization, and the tools that enable successful experiences are undergoing speedy, innovative transformations.
The experience is managed by teams throughout the enterprises, though most focus their efforts on the service and support department, and in particular the contact center. That means that most of the technology used to engage with customers is purchased by and for those centers, with an emphasis on communications tools for managing the flow of interactions.
A CXM suite is a product family composed of applications that are collectively organized to optimize customer interactions, experiences and profitability.
The true scope of CX efforts, however, touches many other teams who require tools geared to their particular use cases, metrics and processes. Marketers, for example, need customer data to create segments and present content and offers and to orchestrate journeys. Sales teams need systems for tracking buyer intent and sentiment. All teams need analytics to determine their performance and to harmonize efforts across teams. This calls for high-level integrations between tools that were largely designed to work in silos by separate teams. Vendors have responded by creating suites out of niche solutions, and by building software platforms that encourage integration and bring forth tools such as artificial intelligence and automation that are new to everyone.
The market segment known as customer experience management (CXM or CEM) has been poorly defined to date, precisely because the mix of components, users and use cases have been so diverse. The broad outlines are clear: A CXM suite is a product family composed of applications that are collectively organized to optimize customer interactions, experiences and profitability.