CRM is Evolving- The Relationship is the Journey

For a while now the blogosphere has been murmuring on the topic of customer relationship management vs customer experience management. But what does that actually mean for sales teams, marketers and SMEs trying to deliver a product or service in the most efficient way possible?

CEM makes Journeys Valuable

Anoop Sahgal from Adobe, describes CEM as more focused on engagement than managing the experiences of customers. In CMO.com’s digital marketing discussion Move over CRM: CEM is transforming ROI he distinguishes between CEM, where engaging in meaningful interactions across different touch-points, both online and off, is driving the conversation, and the old model where the customer journey is controlled and dictated by specific business goals like cross-selling and up-selling.

Contacting your customers (and prospects) should not simply occur when they have an issue, or when your firm decides it’s time to re-sell, or try to market complimentary or higher value products to them.

In fact, if this is the only contact your customers expect to experience with you, they are more likely to switch-off when you do make contact, and less likely to engage with you long-term.

Focus on the Customer

Ask yourself this: Is my business customer centric enough? Is my product focused on providing customer solutions? My sales strategy and marketing process a customer-driven funnel?

SECCO, the billion dollar Chinese petrochemical company, decided to try implementing a CEM strategy in order to retain more existing customers.

They began analyzing gaps in their customer experiences and expectations, found perceptions of product reliability and a lack of targeted customer management to be their main bug-bears, and designed solutions to these issues based on a CEM approach.

Segmenting customers so they could be targeted with the most appropriate messages and interactions throughout their journey with the firm was one key learning from the CEM method. They found keeping customers engaged and returning to their touchpoints was extremely important for keeping hold of market share in a fast-expanding industry where competition was increasing.

Understanding the customer journey with your firm’s online touch-points is increasingly vital. CANDDi advocates using customer intelligence that is usually lost on your firm’s website, such as how that customer arrives at your site, how they explore and what content they like, in order to gain a deeper understanding of each individual.

With the right tools and strategy for engagement, your more likely to close that sale today. And, more importantly in the long term, to keep your customers engaged long into the future.