CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT
CONCEPTS AND TECHNOLOGIES
Chapter 7
Managing Customer Experience
Customer experience defined
Customer experience is the cognitive and affective
outcome of the customer’s exposure to, or interaction
with, a company’s people, processes, technologies,
products, services and other outputs
Importance of CX
“It is the ‘total customer experience’ (TCE) that
influences customers’ perceptions of value and
service quality, and which consequently affects
customer loyalty.”
The experience economy
Figure 7.1
Attributes of services
Intangible-dominant
Inseparable
Heterogenous
Perishable
Classifying customer experiences 1
Planned vs. unplanned
● The planned customer experience differs from the
unplanned because management tries to engage the
customer in a positive and memorable way
● The experience may become the ‘brand’
Positive vs. normative
● The positive customer experience describes customer
experience as it is. Normative customer experience
describes customer experience as management or
customers believe it ought to be.
Classifying customer experiences 2
Commodity vs. unique
● One experience of travelling to work on London
Underground is much like another, but co-piloting a jet
fighter to celebrate an important birthday would be, for most
of us, a unique experience
Core product vs. value-add
● Customer experience as the core product: white water
rafting, swimming with dolphins, feeding elephants,
paragliding, bungee-jumping. Customer experience as
value-add: charter flight vs. scheduled flight
Service quality influences CX
Customers experience quality, or lack of it, in their
interactions with service providers.
CX has been conceptualized as ‘SERVQUAL plus’.
Layered model of Customer Experience
Figure 7.4
Customer experience concepts
Touch point
● Touch points exist wherever customers come into virtual or
concrete contact with a company’s products, services,
communications, places, people, processes or technologies
Moment-of-truth
● Moments of truth occur during customer interactions at
touch-points. These are the moments when customers form
evaluative judgements, positive or negative, about their
experience.
Customer engagement
● Engaged customers are more committed to the brand or firm
than customers who are just satisfied
Four forms of customer engagement 1
Cognitive
● does the customer know our brand values? Does the
customer know about our sustainability awards? Does the
customer know the name of our local sales rep?
Emotional
● does the customer like the experience offered by our firm?
Does the customer prefer our offerings to our major
competitors? Is the customer excited about our new product
launch? Customers who are engaged might express a
sense of confidence, integrity, pride, delight or passion in the
brand.
Four forms of customer engagement 2
Behavioural
● how often does the customer visit our website? How long
does the customer dwell on the website? Does the customer
click through to our newsletter?
Social
● has the customer used our Recommend-a-Friend program?
Does the customer ‘like’ our Facebook page? Does the
customer join our Twitter conversation?
4I’s engagement measures
Desired customer experience outcomes
Companies that consciously design customer
experience want to evoke strong, positive
engagement.
Such engagement might be expressed in a sense of
confidence, integrity, pride, delight or passion
How to understand customer experience
Mystery shopping
Experience mapping
Ethnographic methods
Participant observation
Non-participant observation
Key questions for customer experience managers
1. What sort of outcomes do our customers want to
experience?
2. What is the current customer experience?
3. What tools and strategies are available to close any
gap between current and desired experience?
4. How can we measure whether we have succeeded?
CRM’s connection to CX
The way CRM tools are used influences CX at
moments of truth.
Not every CX program used CRM tools.
Appropriate, well-deployed CRM tools can enhance
CX
Features of CRM applications that improve CX
Usability
Flexibility
High performance
Scalability
Typical CRM architecture
Figure 7.5