Features

CRM Is Just One Component In the CEM Vision

By Eben Miller

Customer experience has long been an issue for companies, but in the past, customer interactions were simpler with fewer channels to interface with their customers, not as much diversity within these customer groups, and usually less demands.

But in today’s competitive, customer-driven markets, organisations across all industries will face new pressures to deliver a relevant, personalised, and consistent experience across all customer touch-points and geographies. Due to commoditisation and increasing competition many companies recognised that, using experience-based differentiation help them gain competitive advantage.

Additionally, as global companies increasingly shift their focus from cost-cutting measures to uncovering new revenue-generating opportunities, effective customer experience management has become a greater priority than in years past. Customer Experience Management (CEM) is a challenge that most global organizations will face in presenting a consistent brand message to their customers.

The Need for Customer Experience Management

Customers are dissatisfied due to receiving poor quality information that is inaccurate, out-of-date, or inconsistent across customer touch-points such as retail stories, call centers, print brochures, websites, e-mail, wireless, point of sale, and television. Brands and messages are diluted as they are used in different countries and touch-points. Deadlines slip for product launches and campaigns. And customer process inefficiencies increase the company’s costs-per-transaction, preventing a company’s ability to compete effectively.

This failure to deliver an improved customer experience can be attributed to many enterprises’ inability to effectively manage the increasing number of customer interaction channels that have arisen over the past several years due to new technology advancements. That’s where Customer Experience Management comes to play – the CEM vision is about consistent customer experience across all channels.

The Difference Between CRM and CEM

Customer Experience Management is a holistic strategy, supported by methodologies and solutions such as customer relationship management to deliver consistent customer experience across all channels. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the term for methodologies and solutions that help a company manage customer relationships in an organized way.

The focus of customer relationship management is the optimisation of transactions and business processes. The aim is to manage a relationship with the customer. With CEM, you focus on the customer – what is the customer's reaction to your brand, from advertising and marketing to purchasing to support to the actual service or product?

CRM is one component in the CEM vision. It is complimentary to the broader content assembly line for delivering the right content at the right time to the right customer across multiple channels. It incorporates consistently branded communications before CRM starts impacting.

What Components Make Up a Good CEM Solution?

A good CEM solution must enable enterprises to do the following:

Multi-channel publishing
Brand management to achieve consistent brand messaging
Segmentation and targeting to deliver the right message in the right context to the right customer

The CEM solution should be able to automate the customer experience management process and encompass end-to-end management of the entire content development process – from creation to publish, including: web content management and publishing, digital asset management, content distribution and provisioning, recommendation services, document management, and new on-demand print and wireless publishing capabilities.

According to Eben Miller, Worldwide Director of CEM, Interwoven, "Interwoven’s Customer Experience Management Solution enable enterprises to automate the customer experience management process – from the creation of customer-facing content all the way through to the publishing of this content across all customer touch-points including the web, mobile devices, contact centers, e-mail, retail stores, printed collateral, television advertisements, and more." Interwoven's new solution is addressing a critical need for global companies, which are looking to accelerate business growth and drive new revenue opportunities through a more consistent brand experience worldwide, reduced time to market for new products and campaigns, and improved customer interactions across all touch-points, says Eben.

Interwoven’s CEM customers worldwide include: Adidas, Digi, HSBC, Nike, GM, Qantas, Avaya, BT, Chunghwa Telecom, Hilton Hotels, ICICI Bank, Juniper Networks, Konica-Minolta, Nikon, VISA, Singapore Airlines, Yamaha, NEC and many more.

Customer Experience is Not a New Issue in Asia

Customer experience management is not a new concept or a new issue in Asia. As more and more companies expand into the region and grow into international powerhouses, customer experience management becomes increasingly important. It is a larger and more holistic strategy and strategy, integrating previous point solutions such as CRM.

CEM is especially relevant in Asia. Companies not only have to deliver a consistent message in the right context to the right customer, companies must also deliver the message in the right language.

Asia is one of the fastest growing regions in the world economically. This drives the rapid adoption of new technologies from cell phones to the Internet. The rapid adoption of new technologies from cell phones (WAP, GPRS etc) to the Internet is driving companies to change the way they interact with their customers.

Technology also opens up new customer channels. Companies are forced to deliver products and services beyond the traditional channels to include email, Internet, wireless etc to differentiate themselves from their competitors and gain new customers and retain existing customers.

With inputs from Eben Miller, Worldwide Director of CEM, Interwoven


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