Customer Experience Management (CEM) is a term used to describe the operational management of systems and processes used for the purpose of building and maintaining relationships a business has with its customers.
Analyst firm Gartner defines CEM as:
The practice of designing and reacting to customer interactions to meet or exceed their expectations, leading to greater customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy.
Customer Experience (CX) refers to the total of all experiences the customer has with the business, based on all interactions and thoughts about the business. Equally important, it is an all-encompassing term. It includes communications touch-points, communications, emotional experience, behavior, data management, customer data platforms and technology ecosystems, and business model design implications.
Not only is CX important to business strategy but also as a change agent to process improvement. It comes down to the ability of organizations to maximize customer value and minimize operating costs by understanding what drives customer behaviors and decisions.
In light of recent technology innovations like cloud computing and big data, it’s now possible to develop systems and methods to fully appreciate what matters to customers by harvesting data from back-office systems. In like manner, it’s also possible to determine how customers want to interact. This helps organizations to forge effective marketing programs based on facts underpinned by data.
Together with digital transformation initiatives, customer experience management is a game-changing topic that organizations choose to ignore at their peril.
Suggested Reading
Gartner definition and further reading on Customer Experience Management (CEM).
What Wikipedia has to say on the subject.
Scholarly article on CEM.
News article that presents research on the relationship between Customer Experience and (digital) Operational Efficiency